Save BIG on classic Roland plugins for a limited time at Plugin BoutiqueFor a limited time, Plugin Boutique is offering a cornucopia of Roland plugins at a fraction of the cost. The Icons of Sound sale sees the brand’s software synths, drum machines and exclusive bundles offered anywhere between 30% to 79% off until 31 May.
The biggest drop comes in the form of Roland’s Legends Bundle. Originally £442.99, a whopping 79% discount means you can grab this collection for just £89. The bundle includes three of Roland’s most coveted plugins: the TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, and the JUNO-106 polysynth. The vintage-inspired collection comes as a great way of packing some authentic, old school punch to your production.
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Elsewhere, you can grab more throwback sounds with the Vintage Keys Essentials Bundle. Sitting at 77% off, the bundle is also available for just £89. The collection is a more synth-centric offering, boasting a killer trio of the JUPITER-8 polysynth, SH-101 monophonic synth, to the soulful D-50, with its nifty joystick interface.
There’s also sales on the Analog Monosynth Collection, with the quintet of analogue-inspired synths going for £134, a 49% discount. The collection offers an array of late ‘70s and ‘80s sounds, including soft synthesisers SH-101 and SYSTEM-100, mono synth SH-2, acid house’s favourite TB-303 Bass Line, and the JUPITER-4-inspired PROMARS.

READ MORE: “Who cares if you layer two kicks if it sounds great?”: Collect 200 talk synths, samples and letting the strongest parts of your tracks speak for themselves

Speaking of the JUPITER-4, Roland’s Analog Polysynth Collection is also available for £179 and comes with JUPITER-4. The bundle also features the JUPITER-8, the JUNO-60, the JX-3P and, last but not least, the JUNO-106.
For those after a slew of drum machines, the self-explanatory Drum Machine Collection could have you sorted. A 59% discount means its not available for £179, and it features five plugins with an ‘80s flavour. The bundle offers two of the same plugins as the Legends Bundle, the TR-808 and TR-909, as well as the TR-606, TR-707 and the Latin and reggaeton magic of the TR-727.
If you’re after a specific plugin, there’s also 33% off across Roland’s drum machines, with many sitting at £89 (with the exception of an even more enticing 66% off the TR-909, which is £44). Synth-wise, there’s more variety, with the JUNO-106 and SH-101 costing £44, while the JUPITER-8 costs £89.
To discover more Roland Icons of Sound deals, head to Plugin Boutique.
The post Save BIG on classic Roland plugins for a limited time at Plugin Boutique appeared first on MusicTech.

Spotify partners with UMG on AI-powered remix tool as part of a “superfan initiative” designed to “support human artistry”Spotify is launching an AI-powered tool backed by Universal Music Group that will allow fans to create covers and remixes of songs.
The tool utilises generative AI tech and forms part of new recorded music and music publishing licensing agreements between Spotify and UMG. It will open additional revenue streams for artists, and will eventually launch as a paid add-on for Spotify Premium users.

READ MORE: Judge orders Anna’s Archive to pay $322 million for scraping 86 million tracks from Spotify

This feature will only include music from “participating artists and songwriters”, though it is not clear at this point how artists can opt out or opt in. Spotify argues that the feature will be “grounded in consent, credit, and compensation”.
Alex Norström, Co-CEO of Spotify, says (via the Spotify Newsroom): “Solving hard problems for music is what Spotify does, and fan-made covers and remixes are next. What we’re building is grounded in consent, credit, and compensation for the artists and songwriters that take part.
“Through each technological transformation, we have worked together with Sir Lucian [UMG CEO] and his team to evolve the music ecosystem into a richer, more beneficial experience for fans and a more rewarding outcome for artists and songwriters.”
Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman & CEO at Universal Music Group, adds. “The most valuable innovations in the music business always bring artists and fans closer together. That principle is at the heart of this pioneering AI-enabled superfan initiative, which is designed to support human artistry, deepen fan relationships, and create additional revenue opportunities for artists and songwriters.
“Building on our long track record of leading the industry through technology changes, and collaborating with Alex, Gustav, Daniel and the team at Spotify, this initiative is firmly artist-centric, rooted in responsible AI, and will drive growth for the entire ecosystem.”
Interestingly, Spotify has also begun to roll out a new review feature that lets artists approve new releases before they go live on their profile. The feature was made in response to the rise of AI tracks, as well as incidents of songs landing on the wrong pages. The streaming service said at the launch in March that it is making the protection of artist identity a “top priority for 2026”.
Head over to the Spotify Newsroom to find out more.
The post Spotify partners with UMG on AI-powered remix tool as part of a “superfan initiative” designed to “support human artistry” appeared first on MusicTech.

OneOdio Studio Max 2 review: the same ultra-low latency as the big brands without the hefty price£180, oneodio.com
Wireless DJ headphones have always sounded like one of those ideas that works better in a marketing meeting than it does in a club booth. A decision based on the tech bros solving a problem that doesn’t need solving. DJs are creatures of habit, after all, and few things are more deeply ingrained to a DJ than their choice of headphones and other kit. Any threat of latency, or a short battery life, has traditionally been enough to kill the concept before it ever reached a dancefloor.

READ MORE: The best headphones for music producers, DJs and musicians to buy right now

But OneOdio thinks it may finally have a neat solution; in collaboration with DJ and producer KSHMR, it could finally have made one headphone for all. The Studio Max 2 promises ultra-low-latency wireless monitoring aimed at DJs, while also functioning as a Bluetooth listening pair and wired studio headphones. On paper, it’s an ambitious all-in-one proposition and, at this price point, perhaps an unexpectedly convincing one too.
Image: Press
Going outside the box with the OneOdio Studio Max 2
Unboxed, the Studio Max 2s feel reassuringly luxurious. There’s a large sturdy hard shell carry case, an internal pouch for accessories and both straight and coiled cables included for wired use, as well as the dongle. The bundled 2.4 GHz transmitter dongle is what gives the headphones’ claimed nine-millisecond low latency performance using OneOdio’s RapidWill+ 3.0 wireless technology. And, it works. A single long press on the one button on the dongle and the central button on the right headphone cup connects you.
In use, there’s no noticeable lag while mixing. No interference, no drop-outs. Cueing tracks, beatmatching and quick cuts all feel natural in a way Bluetooth headphones simply never have before. If you’ve spent years instinctively dismissing wireless DJ headphones as unusable, the Studio Max 2 challenges that. Switching between modes is also handled neatly with the flick of a switch on the right headphone cup. Voice prompts announce connection states with phrases like “Bluetooth Mode, Connected” and “Low Latency Mode, Connected”, which is neat, but I would have personally also liked a clear visual cue on the dongle for the DJ booth.
Image: Press
Studio Max 2 are More than just DJ headphones
Part of the Studio Max 2’s appeal is that they’re clearly designed to live beyond the DJ booth. The low latency will also have appeal for gamers. Plus, connected to a phone over Bluetooth, OneOdio’s companion app lets you tweak the sound profile using a 10-band EQ, with settings carrying over into low latency mode too.
The app itself is functional, if slightly rough around the edges. Presets are oddly visualised, with one Bass Mode graphic featuring somebody playing guitar feeling particularly random, but most users here will likely ignore the presets entirely and head straight for the custom EQ.
The EQ is responsive and useful, yet it feels like a missed opportunity not to allow separate EQ profiles for Bluetooth listening and DJ monitoring. This would be a great feature in an update.
Image: Press
Build and comfort
The Studio Max 2 looks and feels more premium than its price might suggest. The 180-degree rotating and reversible earcups follow the familiar DJ headphone formula, although the plastic hinge sections do raise long term durability concerns if you’re picking up your cans by the ear cup. In my experience this is where most DJ headphones eventually fail. But being wireless, maybe you are leaving these on your head or neck, so picking up and putting down headphones less often? Again, those things I mention will depend on how you use your headphones when DJing. That said, during gig use the headphones feel solid enough, with no obvious creaks or weaknesses developing and I’m not worried at all about build quality, at least in the short term.
Comfort is another strong point. The earcups sit well during extended sessions and the headphones can handle high volume levels comfortably without becoming harsh. One particularly welcome touch is passive operation via cable even when the battery dies. That may sound basic, but it’s absolutely essential for any DJ headphone.
Image: Press
The sound of OneOdio’s Studio Max 2
I don’t feel short-changed on the sound. OneOdio has equipped them with 45mm drivers, comfortably within the standard range for DJ focused headphones, and there’s plenty of output available when needed. Obviously with sound, this is where things become a little more subjective. For DJing specifically, the Studio Max 2 lacks some of the instantly aggressive low-mid punch associated with classic booth headphones from brands like Pioneer DJ or Sennheiser. Out of the box, mixes can feel slightly lighter and less forceful while cueing in loud environments.
However, that sensation seems partly tied to isolation of the cups, rather than outright sound quality. The earcups don’t block external noise as well as others I have used, meaning club volume bleeds through more than I’m used to.
Outside of DJing, though, the tuning makes much more sense. For casual listening, production work and general studio use, the Studio Max 2 sounds balanced, detailed and enjoyable without becoming overly hyped or fatiguing.
Image: Press
Should I buy OneOdio’s Studio Max 2?
Studio Max 2 is a success, because it avoids trying to be purely a DJ headphone. Instead, it aims to become the single pair you use for everything, from studio work and Bluetooth listening to wired sessions and low latency DJing, and for the most part, it succeeds.
The wireless performance is the real breakthrough here. For the first time, ultra-low-latency DJ headphones feel genuinely viable. Although, like Bluetooth, it would be nice if manufacturers could all agree on a low-latency wireless audio standard that could be built into pro devices like DJ kit and audio interfaces. The AlphaTheta HDJ-F10 are locked into Pioneer’s SonicLink which new mixers like the A5 have built in, but unless that becomes standard, we are going to replace a cable with a dongle, which doesn’t feel like much of a win for me.
Hardcore club DJs may still prefer the isolation, impact and battle tested durability of traditional wired options. But for DJs wanting flexibility without sacrificing usable performance, the Studio Max 2 makes a surprisingly strong case for cutting the cord. They deliver exactly as promised, and are hard to fault at the price.
I do think most DJs are happy with their robust, wired reliability for now. But, if you want to dance on top of the DJ booth or slam cakes into the faces of your audience, OneOdio’s Studio Max 2 offers wireless freedom at a mega-competitive price point.
Image: Press
Key Features

Wireless closed-back headphones
Ultra-low latency mode (9 ms)
Bluetooth 6.0
120-hour battery life and fast charging via USB-C

The post OneOdio Studio Max 2 review: the same ultra-low latency as the big brands without the hefty price appeared first on MusicTech.

XRP price trades in ‘value zone’ near $1.40 as whales pull $170M from exchangesWhales withdrew $170 million in XRP from Binance as the price holds a key $1.35-$1.40 accumulation and support zone.

Lost Version of Amiga Unix Suddenly ReappearsSome of you may know there’s a version of UNIX for the Commodore Amiga, aptly called Amiga Unix or AMIX. There is an almost complete record of versions from 1.0 to 2.03, but 2.02 was lost media–until [Forgotten Computer] found it on an old Amiga.
It starts with an auction held for the 40 year anniversary of the Free Software Foundation where, by just one second, the highest bidder was too late. What do you do first with an artifact as valuable as an old FSF computer? You image the hard drive. Then you make several copies, including on different computers–after all, you wouldn’t want to lose the data on it. Preservation secured, the natural next thing is to boot it–and that’s when we see the magic 2.02c version number.
According to thorough digging by [Forgotten Computer], this version was–until now–lost.
In the video after the break, [Forgotten Computer] goes over what Amiga Unix is, the discovery process, and explores what’s on the disk–including FSF staples like GCC, G++ and core utilities like GNU less.

Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for the tip!

34Audiovisuals RhythmDieRhythmDie is an industrial FM / ring-modulation drum machine. Every one of its 16 voices is a complete synthesizer in its own right — a dual-oscillator engine with frequency modulation, ring modulation and a noise source, followed by independent pitch and amplitude envelopes, a multi-mode resonant filter, four distortion flavours, a compressor, and per-voice delay and reverb sends. The result ranges from clean analog-style kicks and snares to violent, metallic, bell-like and atonal percussion that no sample library can reproduce. The voices are driven by a polymetric step sequencer with per-step velocity and probability, swing and full host tempo sync. 16 synthesis voices — each a dual-oscillator FM / ring-modulation engine with a noise source. Per-voice multi-mode resonant filter, four distortion flavours, compressor, and delay / reverb sends. Independent pitch and amplitude envelopes on every voice. Polymetric step sequencer — 16 channels, up to 32 steps each, with per-step velocity and probability. Swing and full host tempo sync; up to 5 patterns held in memory and switched live. Sampler mode — load any audio file as a voice carrier for one-shot playback. Per-voice modulation matrix (velocity, LFO, amp env, random pitch, FM depth, ring, filter, drive). Export patterns as MIDI or print a MIDI clip onto the grid; responds to incoming MIDI (notes 36–51 voices 0–15). All 550 parameters fully automatable from the host. Time-limited fully functional demo — no feature restrictions. Activate on up to 2 machines with a single license. Read More

What ClickUp’s mass layoff tells us about the future of workThe nine-year-old startup is replacing hundreds of employees with thousands of AI agents.

Stability AI’s Julian Parker, a key researcher behind Stable Audio, joins Spotify’s ‘artist-first AI’ team – days after streamer’s landmark UMG remix dealParker's announcement of the move arrived less than 24 hours after Spotify and Universal Music Group unveiled landmark licensing agreements for AI-powered covers and remixes
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Hit the Decks! It's FlourItalian underground techno DJ and producer Flour started DJing around the age of 16, "playing 80s music in some lounge bars."

"At that time it was more of a passion than anything else," Flour says. "Production came later, in 2021 during the pandemic, and that’s when I truly felt it was my calling."

Flour describes his sound as a fusion of energy and atmosphere.

"I like to create something that is not only powerful, but also emotional and immersive, almost like a journey," he says. "I always try to tell a story, to create something that can stay with the listener. In every track, there’s a part of my soul. If I had to describe it in a few words, I would say epic, cinematic, emotional, and at the same time powerful."

Flour's latest release is the Fallen Angel EP.

"[It] represents both a milestone and an evolution of my sound," he says. "I always try to create a connection between the tracks, as if it were a story that listeners are free to interpret in their own way.It’s a project I’m truly proud of because it fully represents my musical vision. I’m really grateful to Amelie Lens and the entire Exhale team for giving me the opportunity once again to express who I am and how I see music."

As for gear: "In the studio I mainly use Ableton Live along with plugins like Serum 2 and FabFilter. I also use my Native Instruments Kontrol S49 MK3 MIDI keyboard to create melodies. For DJing, I enjoy playing on CDJ 3000s with a Pioneer DJM A9 mixer, but also the V10. For headphones, I use AIAIAI TMA 2."

Looking ahead, Flour has plenty planned for 2026.

"In the coming months I have a lot of new music planned," he says. "In July I’ll be making my debut at Tomorrowland the Atmosphere stage hosted by Exhale. That’s truly a dream coming true."

The post Hit the Decks! It's Flour first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Get Legendary cinematic sound design library FREE for Kontakt and WAV
Audio Plugin Deals is offering Legendary, a cinematic sound design library for Kontakt and WAV, as a free download for a limited time. Legendary normally costs $39, and the free version includes both the Kontakt instrument and standalone WAV files. The library contains 459 sounds recorded at 96 kHz / 24-bit. The included categories cover [...]
View post: Get Legendary cinematic sound design library FREE for Kontakt and WAV

Eventide Music Mouse review: The rodent collaborator I never knew I needed$29, eventide.com
It’s 1986. Pixar is founded, the Soviets launch the Mir space station, and American composer Laurie Spiegel creates Music Mouse — an algorithmic harmony tool for the Atari, Amiga, and Macintosh. Within its user manual is Spiegel’s foreword, uncanny in its prescience for the AI tempest that will follow 40 years later:
“This is a very exciting time for music. With the advent of computers, many of music’s past restrictions can begin to fall away, so that it becomes possible for more people to make more satisfying music, more enjoyably and easily, regardless of physical coordination or theoretical study, of keyboard skills or fluency with notation.”

READ MORE: Generative AI’s threat to music sample libraries is existential — Splice thinks it has a solution

Despite her optimistic view of the time, I can’t help but notice an almost perverse parallel with Mikey Shulman’s controversial 2025 comments around AI music production. It’s fitting, then, that Eventide has breathed new life into Spiegel’s vintage software, given the barriers have now been reduced to stringing together a Suno prompt.
In a world where virtually every component of the production lifecycle can be outsourced to an app, Music Mouse offers a wholly different proposition — but is it one that’s relevant to modern producers?
Laurie Spiegel. Image: Donna Ferrato
What is Music Mouse?
Conceived as ‘an intelligent instrument’, Music Mouse generates chords and melodies using the computer mouse — no piano chops required. I’m greeted by a simple grid, its axes bordered by perpendicular keybeds that form the foundation of an intuitive system: move your cursor and the notes change.
By default, the horizontal axis plays a triad and the vertical axis plays a single note, so you can play melodies over chords, or perhaps a bass part underneath:

Pitch is snapped to the selected scale, so it’s impossible to play a ‘wrong’ note — only more or less interesting ones within your selected tonal space, depending how you navigate between them.
Though by no means revolutionary by today’s standards, I’m struck by the software’s immediacy. And it’s an attractive premise: define the system’s behaviour, feed it some input, and enjoy the fruits of the machine’s labour.
Much of Spiegel’s decade-spanning discography has been built on such algorithmic labour. She even went as far as using the genetic code of an infectious pathogen, mapping its RNA sequence to musical notes in Strand of Life (“Viroid”). A substantial portion of Unseen Worlds — the 1991 album to which the piece belongs — was composed using Music Mouse. As I familiarise myself with the program, my understanding of how she did so deepens.
Laurie Spiegel in 1985. Image: Enrico Ferorelli
Composing with Music Mouse
Creating with Music Mouse is all about gesture. Short cursor movements deliver linear melodic motion, while more drastic shifts result in sharper harmonic jumps. Each swipe triggers new notes, but playback can be temporarily muted by holding the left mouse button.
I quickly notice coaxing out a desired result requires some finesse. Although playback is quantised to the set tempo, there’s a knack to getting the timing just right. Life becomes easier once I plug in a USB mouse.
You’ll also need to watch the grid’s axes to see how far you’ve gone if you’re targeting specific notes. In this sense, Music Mouse does fall short of its objective — there’s still some theoretical understanding of intervals necessary for more intentional composition.
With my right hand on the mouse, my left rests on the keyboard, shaping the program’s behaviour in real time through various shortcuts:

Things get particularly exciting once I start experimenting with Treatment and Pattern settings. Many delightful ostinati emerge, though ideas are hard to repeat. If you’re feeling precious, it’s worth recording Music Mouse’s output.

By Spiegel’s own admission, Music Mouse is encoded with her own aesthetic biases, including a nudge towards stepwise contrapuntal movement. With certain settings, things quickly veer into baroque territory. I momentarily ponder what Bach would think.
This bias is restrictive, at times. There are only six Harmony modes, and I can’t help but wonder why Eventide didn’t add more to this modern edition of Music Mouse. It’s a curious omission for a tool built around abstracting theory — modal options or even custom scales would provide a much wider palette.
Using Music Mouse’s built-in sounds
Music Mouse doesn’t just provide harmony — an FM-style synth engine is built in, with 32 presets crafted by Spiegel herself. There’s a distinctly New Age flavour to the sounds — flutish tones, meditative bells, optimistic pads. They won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I find they complement the program’s musical output, and are ideal for doodles and sketches.

A few basic controls allow timbral shaping, but Music Mouse’s sound design options are fairly limited. Fortunately, its MIDI output can be piped into external instruments or the DAW, likely where the tool’s most potential lies. I try pairing it with Baby Audio’s Grainferno synth, then with a TR-808 drum rack in Ableton, which results in intriguing grooves.

I then discover each voice can be routed to a separate MIDI channel, and set up a four-part ‘band’ of synths. As its conductor, Music Mouse really comes alive:

Is Music Mouse worth buying?
I have the most fun making music when I treat it as play. There’s usually an end goal lurking in the background, but the enjoyment comes from experimentation — nudging, tweaking, seeing what happens. Music Mouse is a reliable foil for that discovery process.
Compared to a modern theory tool like Scaler, Music Mouse doesn’t do all that much, but that’s kind of the point. Rather than overwhelm the user with options, it gives you a defined and relatively simple system, and lets you explore it.
It feels more like a toy than a tool, but not in a bad way, and its relatively low price makes it worth a punt, especially once combined with your DAW’s integrated MIDI tools and virtual instruments.
I’m left pondering: how much of the artistic process can we delegate to a machine before the result is no longer our own?
Speaking in a 1987 demo, Spiegel might have the right answer: “That’s the trick. It’s deciding what things should be reserved to the individual’s control at all times, and which things can be usefully automated, and yet to never do so in a way that deprives a person altogether of control.”
The question isn’t whether we use tools to assist creativity — we always have. It’s how much of the decision-making we’re willing to give up along the way.
With Music Mouse, you’re still doing the bulk of the creative work, still making choices, still shaping the outcome. Four decades on, in an era where tools have almost entirely collapsed the distance between input and output, Spiegel’s software remains a compelling example of where the line should lie.
Key Features

Play up to 4 voices with just your mouse
6 scale presets
Parallel or contrary motion options
Transpose playing range on the fly
10 arpeggiator-style patterns
2 switchable tempos
Staccato, half legato, and legato articulations
Independent MIDI channel for each voice
Built-in FM-style synth with 32 presets and basic controls
Send MIDI to the DAW or external instruments

The post Eventide Music Mouse review: The rodent collaborator I never knew I needed appeared first on MusicTech.

“The Prophet-5 set the standard for how it’s done today… but there are other ways”: Why the UDO DMNO might just change the polyphonic landscape as we know itUnidentified Dancing Objects. That is what the letters ‘UDO’ stand for— and here I was calling it ‘yew-dough’ all this time. “It was my brother Magnus who came up with the name,” laughs company founder George Hearn, speaking from his base in Bristol. “We wanted a name that was quite nice and simple, maybe an acronym. It has a playful meaning. Because we make playful instruments, essentially.”
That they do: since unveiling the Super 6 at Berlin’s Superbooth in 2019, the Hearn brothers’ company has risen at a dizzying pace to become one of the UK’s premier synthesiser developers. This spring, UDO brings us its fifth instrument: the DMNO. An eight-voice two-part multitimbral polysynth, the DMNO is as much a love letter to the music that started it all for Hearn as it is a bold foray into brand new territory.
The UDO DMNO on the MusicTech Cover. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
With two independent four-voice analogue-hybrid synths, each equipped with UDO’s new Dynamic Multi-Core Stereo VCF, its eight different Play Modes facilitate all sorts of dynamic interactions between the synth’s two layers— or halves, if you like. There’s a slew of onboard effects and performance features, a formidable Binaural Mode for immersive stereo imaging and a rather gorgeous keyboard to boot.
It might seem like a daunting array of functions, but UDO’s design philosophy is as much about limitation as it is about freedom. With the sheer amount of possibilities available to synth developers in 2026, there has never been more emphasis on the decision-making of the designer.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“That is UDO!” exclaims Hearn. “That is why we exist as a company. Our whole idea is that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It’s about having something that says: ‘Do you really need this? Do you really need that?’”
“Very rarely do you need all of everything, all at once,” he argues. “Most of the time, you just want a lot of something to do a particular thing. Making a game out of that ‘resource-puzzle’ is, I think, enjoyable. But I also think it leads to more creativity.”
Hearn comes from an impressive design background. Over the course of his career, he’s worked on high-stakes designs for surgical, industrial and aerospace equipment. “I also had a stint working for a Formula One team,” he recalls breezily. Looking at UDO’s catalogue and its somewhat off-kilter approach to design, such a varied resume comes as little surprise. It follows that throughout our conversation, Hearn is far keener to talk about his favourite music than he is about his favourite synths.
“UDO’s whole idea is that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”
He pinpoints the period of 1991 to 2005 as his “musical upbringing”. “I was really into bands like The Prodigy, but also listening to lots of psy-trance, acid techno and indie dance music. When I was making the DMNO, I wanted to make an instrument that captured some of that rawness and that roughness of 90s dance music and indie dance music. I wanted to make something that could make squealing guitar noises and feedback and some of those classic Prodigy, Apollo 440, Chemical Brothers-type sounds of the era, which was just so massive.”
As for the song that got him into electronic music and into synthesisers, he recalls hearing John Peel spin On The Wires Of Our Nerves by the band Add N To (X). “That’s still in my head— the organic niceness of it!” he exclaims. “I’m desperately trying to get to the sounds that are in my head, and I still haven’t quite got there. But every time I get a little bit closer or try a different angle, it’s a little bit better. And something interesting happens.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
It’s no wonder that the DMNO has the distinctive feel of a synth from another era, not least helped by its deployment of an electroluminescent glass vacuum fluorescent display in its screen— a technology that is, by many standards, rather dated.
“It’s like the screens you see in Alien,” Hearn agrees, nodding to the cathode ray tube (CRT) screens which he calls a “big version” of what’s in the DMNO. “Phosphor glows a very particular colour, so even though it’s a digital display, it has an analogue feel to it. The brightness isn’t completely uniform and it shimmers slightly. It has a sort of imperfect-ness to it, while also being really crisp and and long-lasting, and having a really high viewing angle. And it works at absurd temperature ranges. Not that that’s any use, of course, because the rest of the synth probably wouldn’t work at minus 60 degrees. But the screen would!”
It didn’t take long after its announcement for the DMNO’s aesthetic design to garner comparisons across the blogosphere and in forums to Oberheim’s early polyphony-adopter, 1975’s iconic Two-Voice. Like the DMNO’s twin-synth design, the Two-Voice comprised two of Oberheim’s monophonic Synthesiser Expansion Modules to achieve its polyphony, much like the Four-Voice and Eight-Voice that followed it. What was it about the Two-Voice that provided such inspiration for the DMNO?
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“I wanted to look at the evolutionary ‘dead branches’ of polyphonic synthesis— before the [Sequential] Prophet-5 came along— to find the new gold standard of how to do it,” answers Hearn. “People tried all sorts of things. There was the Two-Voice, there was the Four-Voice and Eight-Voice from Oberheim… There were various sorts of paraphonic technology types. There was your Korg PS-series synths, which had a complete synth for every key on the keyboard… All these different approaches. And I wanted to see if there was a dead branch that had died just because the Prophet-5 killed it. Because the Prophet-5 set the standard for how it’s still done today…But there were other ways of doing it.”
It was while foraging for said dead branches that the Hearns realised the Two-Voice “just seemed like the logical one to look at…Here is a synth that was made like that simply because they had the SEM, and it was possible to get two voices out of a keyboard and then a digital scanned version, and you could put them together,” explains George. “It was quite groundbreaking, but it wasn’t necessarily designed to be like that, and there are lots of frustrations trying to set up individual SEMs to follow the same voice if you want to play a traditional polyphonic sound. So the DMNO comes along and says, ‘Right: let’s take some of those curiosities and that fun, and let’s make that central to it.’ So it looks like a Two-Voice— but it’s nothing like it!”
“The job of hardware, in my estimation, is not to compete on features with software…. It’s to give you that immediacy and sense of play”
Indeed, the DMNO might have a distinctly Oberheim-ish look on first impression (and one can’t but assume UDO have consciously leant further into this with the DMNO’s cream finish) but from the moment you switch it on it’s clear that this is a different beast entirely. Creative and playful, yet deadly serious; it’s an instrument, explains Hearn, that trades in immediacy and tactility.
“That’s really that’s where the fun comes from– and the muscle memory,” says Hearn. “You can make a really great sound without doing too much.”
Where the DMNO really shines– and I daresay cements its monumental contribution to the synth landscape in 2026– is in its unwavering commitment to the hardware format as an approach to making music. The DMNO doesn’t promise everything. But nor is anything missing.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“The job of hardware, in my estimation, is not to compete on features with software— which will always have more features,” says Hearn “It’s to give you that immediacy and sense of play. To allow you to get into that kind of flow state.”
Hearn remains shrewd as he reflects on the DMNO’s journey from conception to completion. A synth is, after all, a mosaic of components whose true form is almost impossible to discern until a relatively late stage in its development.
“At the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of parts,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It’s a bunch of oscillators and it’s a bunch of circuits and capacitors and filters, and you stick them all together and hope that all of these thousands of little decisions you’ve made throughout the course of designing something will gel together and work. Because they might not!”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
It’s clear to see, though, that UDO’s first step beyond the Super range is a confident one that has paid off. Instead of trying to outperform its predecessors, the DMNO brings a new set of capabilities and— just as importantly— a new set of limitations to the UDO catalogue. “The DMNO has a different sonic character to all of the Super instruments,” explains Hearn. “Does it sound better or worse? Well, you can’t make a DMNO have that really pleasing, warm and clean sound that you can get from a Super 6. But you can’t make a Gemini or a Super 6 squeal and distort, the way you can with the DMNO. They’re different.”
Certainly the immediacy, playfulness and tactility of the DMNO is enough to set it apart from the rest of the UDO catalogue– if not from many other synths we’re likely to see this year. Moreover, those qualities are clearly foundational to Hearn’s overarching philosophy of synthesis in general.
“I think music technology has a problem with admitting to itself what it’s all about,” he says. “And it’s about enjoyment, isn’t it? And play. And enjoying music. Enjoying creativity!”
Words: Vincent Joseph
Photography: Simon Vinall
The post “The Prophet-5 set the standard for how it’s done today… but there are other ways”: Why the UDO DMNO might just change the polyphonic landscape as we know it appeared first on MusicTech.

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NoiseCloud: Storing Data On YouTubeStorage is expensive these days, whether you’re looking at the prices of spinning rust or magic little sticks of silicon. But what if there was some benevolent overlord that you could trick into giving you unlimited storage? That’s where Noisecloud comes in.
Created by [Lucas], Noisecloud is a tool that lets you use YouTube as a form of effectively-unlimited file storage. It works by taking whatever file data you have on hand, and turns it into frames of digital noise that can be stored and transported as an MP4 file and uploaded to YouTube. The encoding process involves first compressing the data with gzip, then packaging it into a high-constrast series of video frames that are then encoded with FFmpeg. Video containers can be produced in various resolutions, all the way down to 640×360 @ 30 fps. There’s also a special “TikTok mode” which is optimised to best preserve data on short form sites that use vertical orientation as default. More commentary from the creator is available via the supporting article on Github.
It’s probably not a practical way to store your files, given the fussy encoding and decoding required to actually use the data. However, it’s an interesting proof of concept that explores how data can be stashed in unexpected places via publicly-accessible services. We’ve explored similar work before, too.