SCALER on remixing their music for stage, the Novation Peak, and 200 channels of basement re-ampingAd feature with Novation
Hailing proudly from Bristol, England, four-piece experimental band SCALER have spent the past decade fusing metal, techno and trip-hop, both onstage and in the studio. Their latest album, 2025’s Endlessly, is an intricate collage of metallic synths, thumping percussion and, crucially, rich vocal parts from five different local collaborators. The band’s shared and intimate studio space in the city is where these ideas begin and transform.
The quartet of lads in their 30s stress that the live show is where SCALER REALLY comes to life. “The concept behind the band was always to create the best live show that we possibly can,” says SCALER’s guitarist and self-confessed tech-head, Nick Berthoud. “We’re writing songs to facilitate the live show; the reason we’re writing music is to play it live in some capacity, basically.” Beyond laptops, they rely on several choice instruments and essentials — Novation’s Summit and Focusrite’s Clarett chief among them — to bring their vision to the stage.
A SCALER show is an organised chaos of an audiovisual experience. Having supported Squarepusher and performed with Daniel Avery in recent years, the band attract a distinct type of fan with their collision of acid basslines, crunching guitar riffs, and permutating drums.
We sit down with bandmates Berthoud and James Rushforth to learn more about their live-first approach to music production, the reverb-rich environment they used to re-amp the elements of Endlessly, and the gear that’s crucial to SCALER’s sound.

Endlessly is now eight months old. How is it evolving SCALER as a band, both in the live shows and in your approach to making new music?
Nick: “We took quite a long time to make Endlessly as a record. And from a songwriting standpoint, it’s quite different from our live shows; we placed a bigger focus on vocal features, and we just wanted to explore a different side to the band. We almost always remix the songs to play live.
“Some tracks from the record have been completely reworked, because what works within our live show versus what they are on the album are two different things, so we do have to work that out. I think that’s a process we quite enjoy, though, and it keeps things quite interesting [for fans]. If we just played all of the songs exactly as they are on the record, then…I don’t know, it’s just a bit naff.”
James: “Endlessly has been really difficult — the conversion into the live show. When we perform it, it definitely feels like we’re doing an album show. It’s much cleaner, which is fine, but we’re kind of in the process of enacting a response to that chaos.”

Why do you place such a strong focus on the live show?
James: “In the age of playback, I think there should be a bit more responsibility to try harder with the arrangement. People just don’t do that enough, and it’s very lazy.”
Nick: “Our back catalogue has never streamed well. It’s just not that type of music. But it’s not a worry for us that we’re not getting millions of streams because the reason we make a record is to come and get people down to the live show to experience the full thing.
“We don’t want to just play exactly what we’ve heard for a year whilst making an album. It’s much more interesting for us to take elements from that and make it exciting again. We’ll even sometimes rewrite a song for specific shows. Like, if we’re playing a techno event or playing a more metal event, we’ll think, ‘Okay, how can we like dance-ify that song even more for this show?’, and it keeps evolving.”
Image: Press
SCALER tracks are complex and layered, almost like tapestries. How do you actually start a song together?
James: “Conventionally, a song will start from a simple but strong idea, which then gets pitched to the group. However, when working across an album, we end up being responsive as we’re writing. It’s a lot easier, with this band, to conceptualise the track first [and] be like, ‘What actually are the limitations of it? What are the things that it’s borrowing from?’ Being able to put the building blocks of an album [together] is much more satisfying to me, because you have this longer form to play with, so you can be reactive as you’re making it.”
“The much bigger picture, about us making music…Like, when we were making a lot of these songs [on Endlessly], I was saying, ‘Let’s just make something that when we get older, we’re going to look back and be happy with those decisions.’”
You’re speaking to us from the studio right now — can you tell us more about the gear there that inspires you?
Nick: “We’ve got most things piped into a Focusrite Clarett audio interface, so everything is good to go. There’s a wall of synths that changes — because we all have some synths at home as well, and we bring them back and forth. That’s all parked into a Soundcraft mixer that then goes into the Clarett.
“We also use the Novation SL MIDI controller, which controls the wall of synths. It’s really nice how you can set up each individual synth and have the MIDI CCs control [each synth].
“But the biggest thing for us was the Novation Peak synth. [It] was used at various points on the record — probably not as much as the Arturia MiniFreak or the Roland JP-8080 — but for live, we’ve taken a lot of the synth lines onto the Peak. So Alex [Hill], who performs the electronic instruments, can control it live. It’s this idea of consistency… Being able to take a lot of those sounds and put them all into the Peak for live means that we have that consistency across the live show, where a single, versatile synth can play all the sounds that — some of which it created, some of which it doesn’t create in the studio. That’s been a game-changer for the live show.”
Image: Press
What do you think it is about the Peak that makes it such a valuable centrepiece for you?
James: “It’s got analogue oscillators with digital control. That’s the whole setup, really. And then, within that, the effects sound great; multiple different filter modes. You’ve got these Animate buttons that you can assign stuff to, which seems kind of gimmicky, but you can actually use them really well. It’s also got a wavetable thing going on as well, so you’re kind of somewhere in between analogue and wavetables. So you can have a nice low end and then a really bright high end.”
Nick: “For a professional or semi-professional, it’s one of, if not the best synth you could use, because it’s built like a tank and it can just kind of do everything you would want it to do.”
Beyond synths and straight-up gear, you also used some interesting recording techniques for Endlessly, right?
James: “Yeah, the whole record was basically an exercise in feedback and resonances. Conceptually, that’s across the album, in the loops and you can kind of see it in the artwork. But at the end of the album process, we went to a manor house, and we took the stems from the record and re-amped them in the basement of this empty manor. So across the whole record, there are lines and lines of re-amps mixed in with absolutely everything: different mic positions, two Fender Twins and a bass amp, and then a shit amp in the other room, multiple mic positions on the stairs…There’s like, 200 channels on one of the songs [laughs].”
“I basically made this spreadsheet, going through section by section — ‘We need this one, we need this one…’ Then, yeah, we just spent three days in this cold basement and spent two and a half grand to do it.”
“You go back and listen to Cold Storage, in the middle eight it goes right down into this bleepy arp, and then you can hear you’re fully in the underground basement…It’s crazy. But once you do that stuff, you never look back.”
Image: Press
There are a few collaborators on the album, too, who are all local to Bristol. As a quartet, what’s the collaboration process like for you, and how did you end up working with these artists — Art School Girlfriend, Akiko Haruna, Tyla X An…
James: “Well, when we were making this album, we were unsigned, so we funded the creation of the album ourselves — it’s not like we were going in with a budget. I was basically going cap in hand to some people I didn’t even know, and cold-calling people. So my olive branch was always, ‘We’ve made you a track. We want you to do this. Here it is.’”
“This project specifically was about collaboration, and to also be a real illustration of the landscape and the people that we’re surrounded by. We want it to be an authentic representation of a moment in time in Bristol, really. We love to do it. We’re always going to be doing it. It’s always gonna be part of what we do.”
With Endlessly now out there, what’s your focus from here on out?
Nick: “We’ve got some festivals over the summer — we’re going to Sonar in Barcelona for the first time. But we’re also focusing on writing some new music at the moment as well, which should keep things rolling.”
James: “Also, just within our lives, we’re trying to make the band financially stable, and make sure we’re consistently putting out stuff in a way that is comfortable and actually enjoyable. We want to make sure that, A) we can sustain all our fixed costs in a reasonable way, and B) consistently put out music that we all enjoy and not kill ourselves doing it. That’s crucial, because Endlessly killed us — not in a bad way, but that’s what it takes to make a record like that.”
The post SCALER on remixing their music for stage, the Novation Peak, and 200 channels of basement re-amping appeared first on MusicTech.

Analog Obsession releases MuChild, a FREE Fairchild 660 emulation plugin
uchDeveloper Analog Obsession has released MuChild, a free Fairchild 660 emulation for macOS and Windows. It’s a good day for Analog Obsession fans; we’ve already had LAEA and RazorClip from the developer this year, and here we are getting ready to discuss another new release. This latest release is MuChild, Analog Obsession’s take on the [...]
View post: Analog Obsession releases MuChild, a FREE Fairchild 660 emulation plugin

Pulsar Audio Smasher is FREE for a limited time again
Pulsar Audio is giving away Smasher, its €49 FET compressor plugin, as a free perpetual license. If the name sounds familiar, it should. We’ve covered Smasher being free four times before, going back to 2020. If you’ve somehow missed it every single time, here’s another chance. And I’m having a hard time coming up with [...]
View post: Pulsar Audio Smasher is FREE for a limited time again

Mastering The Mix releases STEREOVAULT, a new stereo width plugin (LAUNCH OFFER)
Mastering The Mix has released STEREOVAULT, a stereo width plugin for macOS and Windows. The plugin addresses a common problem where stereo widening can make audio sound bigger immediately, but it often weakens the low end, blurs the center of the mix, and introduces phase issues that hurt translation outside the studio. STEREOVAULT fixes this [...]
View post: Mastering The Mix releases STEREOVAULT, a new stereo width plugin (LAUNCH OFFER)

As crypto cools, a16z crypto raises a $2.2B fundAs some of the biggest VCs in crypto start to consider funding AI startups, a16z crypto's new fund will stay the course.

Black Lion Audio Auteur 8DAT The Auteur 8DAT is an eight-channel microphone preamplifier and A/D converter designed to expand interface setups via ADAT. The unit combines the company's signature high-speed transparent preamplification with integrated digital conversion, offering a solution for tracking full drum kits or large ensembles within a single rack unit. The Auteur 8DAT features eight channels of Chicago-style transformer-coupled preamps. The first two channels include front-panel Hi-Z inputs for direct instrument tracking. Each channel is equipped with a dedicated gain control, polarity flip, 10dB pad, and 48V phantom power. The analog circuit is designed to provide a wide frequency response and low noise floor, while the IC-based input stages ensure rapid transient response. For digital integration, the unit utilizes high-quality A/D converters capable of resolutions up to 24-bit/192kHz. Connectivity is handled via dual ADAT Optical outputs, allowing for full eight-channel counts even at higher sample rates (S/MUX). The unit also includes a Word Clock I/O for synchronization with external digital clocking systems. Key Features Eight-Channel Preamplification: High-speed transparent circuitry with Cinemag output transformers. Integrated A/D Conversion: Supports sample rates from 44.1kHz up to 192kHz. Front-Panel Access: Two Hi-Z instrument inputs for guitars and basses. Flexible Connectivity: Dual ADAT outputs and BNC Word Clock I/O. Per-Channel Controls: Independent 48V phantom power, phase invert, and 10dB pad. Metering: 8-segment LED meters for accurate signal monitoring on every channel. Form Factor: 1U rack-mountable chassis with an external power supply to minimize internal noise. Technical Specifications & Requirements Preamp Type: Solid State (Transformer-coupled output). Digital Outputs: 2 x ADAT Optical (Toslink). Max Sample Rate: 192kHz. Analog Inputs: 8 x XLR (Rear), 2 x 1/4" TS Hi-Z (Front). Word Clock: 1 x BNC In, 1 x BNC Out. Power: External 24V DC Power Supply. Read More

Crypto PAC spends $500K in support of Indiana candidate ahead of primaryDays before an Indiana primary, the Defend American Jobs PAC reported spending about $514,000 on media in support of a Republican House member running for reelection in the state‘s 4th Congressional District.

Cutting Steel Gears with Homemade EDM
Electrostatic discharge machining (EDM) may be slower than alternatives like laser cutting, water jets, or a milling machine, but for some applications there’s no alternative: it can cut through any conductive material, no matter how hard, and it leaves no mechanical or thermal stress in the workpiece. Best of all, they’re relatively accessible for a resourceful hacker, such as [Inofid], who recently built the second iteration of his desktop wire EDM.
The EDM’s motion system comes from a cheap desktop CNC router, which had a water tank mounted in its workspace and had the spindle replaced with a wire-management mechanism. The wire-management mechanism needs to continuously wind a tensioned brass wire from one spool through the cutting zone onto another spool. The tensioning system uses two motors: one to pull the wire through, and one to maintain tension by slightly counteracting it, with a tension sensor and Ardunio to maintain the proper tension. If it detects that the wire has broken, it can stop the CNC controller. To keep the wire from breaking or short-circuiting with the workpiece, a current monitor counts sparks between the wire and workpiece and uses this to predict whether the wire is getting too close to the metal, in which case it slows down the movement.
As a first test, [Inofid] cut through a five by three centimeters-thick block of aluminium, taking two hours but producing a clean cut. To speed up the next cut, [Inofid] added a pump and filter to remove sludge from the cutting area. The next cut was an aluminium gear, and then a meshing steel gear, which took about ten hours but turned out well.
EDMs of various kinds appear here from time to time, particularly since the popularization of 3D printers. We’ve even seen one built into a lathe.

Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip!

Reffrey is a FREE reference track plugin for Mac and Windows
Reffrey is a free reference track plugin available in VST3 and AU formats for Mac and Windows, with no account required to download. Plugins like this one are useful when you want to quickly compare your track to your favorite mixes, and referencing is one of the most important parts of mixing, in my opinion. [...]
View post: Reffrey is a FREE reference track plugin for Mac and Windows

Native Instruments expands its Komplete series with Komplete 26Native Instruments has made its Komplete bundle that little bit more complete. With 69 new instruments and effects to play with, Komplete 26 comes as the Komplete bundle’s most comprehensive collection to date.
Expanding on the already impressive Komplete 15 bundle, Komplete 26 boasts over 340 products and over 180,000 sounds in total. The selection spans Native Instrument’s premium instrumental offerings, as well as mixing tools from iZotope, Brainworx and plenty more.
Stand-out additions come in the form of semi-modular synth plugin Absynth 6, grand piano instruments Noire and Claire, as well as Moments: Vocal Clouds’ ethereal soundscaping abilities.

READ MORE: ROLI on the Seaboard BLOCK M: “MPE has become accepted in many producer’s workflows — MIDI 2.0 will be another big step forward”

Elsewhere, Marco Polo Drums, 24k Drums and Songwriter Drums also all allow you to experiment with a vast selection of drumming sounds. There’s also the new Definitive Electric Keys Collection to add a vintage edge to electric keyboard sounds, Session Bassist’s Jam Bass, as well as LCO Producer Strings’ array of unique string parts specially captured and performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra.
The expanded bundle also features Scene variants Bloodplant, Lotus, Nightshade and Willow, with the Scene offerings coming as a specialised tool for composers, geared towards sonic storytelling to accompany visual worlds.

Alongside all the new offerings, Komplete 26 of course comes loaded with all of Komplete 15’s previous tools and sounds, like FM8, Kontakt 8, Massive X, and more. It’s also designed to seamlessly integrate with Kontrol keyboards, as well as Maschine and NKS partners.
Though, users should note that there are three different tiers on offer, with a different price depending on if you’re upgrading a Komplete bundle or buying it new. If you’re a pre-existing Komplete user, the Collector’s Edition comes in as the most loaded collection, sitting at an update price of $399.
There are cheaper alternatives available, but they provide you with slightly less upgrades; the Ultimate bundle sits at $299, while the Standard bundle costs $149, with lowest tier missing out on Absynth 6, the Scene series the LCO Producer Strings to name a few.
For those keen to dive into Komplete for the very first time, Komplete 6 Standard costs $549, while the Ultimate bundle sits at $1249. The complete Collector’s Edition will cost you $1949.
For more information, head to Native Instruments.
The post Native Instruments expands its Komplete series with Komplete 26 appeared first on MusicTech.

The next drop of Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid is imminent – and this time it sports a transparent designThe momentum never seems to stop for Telepathic Instruments; hot off the back of the official launch of the Orchid companion app Pistil, the Kevin Parker-headed brand has revealed details about the next drop of the groundbreaking Orchid synth, which this time arrives with a limited-edition clear Arctic design.
In reality, it hasn’t been long since the Orchid landed on the market. The music producer community first caught wind of the chord-generating synthesizer in late 2024, and in less than two years, the unit has become an industry favourite, named as one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025, and more importantly, in our favourite new studio gear roundup of last year.

READ MORE: Ableton Live 12.4 has arrived – here’s everything you need to know

Now, a new drop of Orchids is set to land on 11 May, with the transparent limited-edition Clear Orchid: Arctic variant capped at 3,000 units worldwide, plus a bunch of classic Orchid colourways alongside it.
To mark the launch, Telepathic Instruments has created a new short film, TeleVision, which you can watch below:

The film sees Darlene LeClair – a “musical medium of considerable charisma and questionable credentials” – channel the cosmos to aid “creatively crunched musicians”. Narrated by Queens of the Stone Age leader and Orchid owner Josh Homme, the film also sees endorsements from familiar faces including Lewis Capaldi, Janelle Monae and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst.
“Lewis Capaldi, Janelle Monae, Fred Durst and Josh Homme are Orchid owners. They’re also, as it turns out, longtime Darlene clients. We didn’t plan that. Darlene probably did.”
Credit: Telepathic Instruments
Orchid has also been adopted by the likes of Kid Cudi, Diplo, Ryan Tedder, Fred again.., Joy Anonymous, Madison Beer, Logic, Mark Hoppus and many more.
Clear Orchid: Arctic and the classic Orchid will be available exclusively through the Telepathic Instruments website. Members of the waitlist will receive priority access to regional drops (9AM PDT for North America and 10AM CEST) on 11 May, ahead of the wider public launch an hour later.
For more information, head to Telepathic Instruments.
Credit: Telepathic Instruments
The post The next drop of Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid is imminent – and this time it sports a transparent design appeared first on MusicTech.

Beyond Abysnth: Into the depths of Native Instruments’ Komplete 26Ad feature with Native Instruments
Native Instruments Komplete 26 is here, and with it comes the return of an old friend. The mighty Absynth 6 has rejoined Native Instruments’ lineup, and, like some sort of green eclipse, its resurrection has drawn so much focus that we can all be forgiven for missing the other incredible instruments joining the mega bundle.
Across the three core editions – Standard, Ultimate, and Collectors – there are goodies aplenty. Here are a few standouts that might have flown under your radar.

Speedy Songwriting
One of Komplete’s biggest drawcards is its ability to cater to a range of different workflows. There are times when you want in-depth control over every parameter, and times when quickness is key – and the new Session Guitarist Neon Essentials falls neatly into the latter category. Available in the Standard edition, it sounds slick immediately, has a streamlined UI, and comes with ‘song’ patterns to get an arrangement past those pesky writer’s blocks.
Native Instruments Komplete 26: Session Guitarist Electric Neon
As it says on the tin, this instrument boils things down to the ‘essentials’, and so you don’t get all the playing techniques of a full-fledged Session instrument, but in practice, I find Neon’s four includes articulations (open, muted, flageolet, and tremolo) more than enough to get started. And, while I could easily have been satisfied with the 30-odd amp and effects presets that come with the instrument, I couldn’t resist running the signal through Guitar Rig 7 Pro to open up new vistas of tone.
Anyone familiar with Komplete will already know the Guitar Rig series, but I feel compelled to state that this has become one of my absolute essential tools – not just for guitars, but for sound design too. I’ve put everything from vocals to bird tweets to a recording of an espresso machine through this thing, and every time I end up getting something surprising.
Since first joining the Komplete lineup in version 14, another set of essentials has been the Brainworx suite of mixing and mastering tools. In particular, I regularly pull up bx_glue when tackling multitracked guitars or vocals. Also available in the Standard edition, this dual band compressor offers independent control over both the high and the low end frequencies, and if I need some vintage saturation on a subgroup I seldom need to look further.
Scene stealers
A similar ‘it just works’ tool is Scene. This collection of cinematic instruments offers minimal controls – just an XY pad to blend between two sound sources and a smattering of envelope, tone, and effect macros. While each is ostensibly tailored to a specific mood, the whole series broadly lends itself to horror, sci-fi, and dystopia.
K26 Scene
I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to like these. ‘Too streamlined and too simplified’ was my initial takeaway. However, after coming back to them a few times, I have to admit that there is a real attraction to loading up a lightweight plugin that creates a specific kind of musical atmosphere, and does it well.
If your music needs a bit more meat on the bone, look no further than Claire. Developed in collaboration with Galaxy Instruments, and sampled from one of the world’s largest concert grand pianos—a massive 10ft Fazioli F308 —there is serious weight to this instrument. It’s not all sonorous chords and bright arpeggios, however; Claire is a surprisingly versatile library. It can sound soft and intimate, punchy and modern, and even believably evoke the rich acoustics of a classical concert experience. This adaptability is largely thanks to its easy ability to blend between close, mid, and far microphones, and to control the instrument’s overtones, resonances, pedal dampening, and key noise.
Claire might give me the sound of a concert piano, but my keyboard skills certainly don’t approach that of a pianist. Luckily, Kontakt 8’s MIDI Tools have gotten me out of more than a few jams. There’s plenty of Tools to choose from, but my favourites are Scale Lock, which allows me to quickly improvise a melody safe in the knowledge that every note I play will be shifted to fit with a chosen key signature, and Chord Builder which lets me work out complex harmonies and then trigger them all from a single note.
The new Kontakt 8 player is available in Standard, but both Claire and Scenes are reserved for Komplete 26’s Ultimate edition. However, for my money, the most exciting new additions are the instruments which push into sound design territory.
Extending The Sound Palette
The first of these is actually a companion library to Claire, titled Claire Avant. Instead of normal keyboard techniques, this library sees the piano’s strings stroked with brushes, thumbed with ivory or wooden plectrums, and hit with soft, metal, and rubber mallets. It’s the kind of sample library that was almost impossible to find a decade ago, and to hear these techniques sampled on such an impressive instrument is a delight.
Native Instruments Komplete 26:
Another newbie I enjoy is Erosia. The source material, which includes creaking ironing boards, squeaky wheels, and rattling chains, would probably be more at home in a mechanics workshop than a recording studio; the results speak for themselves. Hard to define tones grow into enveloping walls of sound thanks to four audio layers that can be quickly morphed using a macro knob. Dual LFOs, granular synthesis, waveshaping, and harmonic resonators offer extensive sound design potential – especially when working with such idiosyncratic samples.
Last but not least is Odes, which occupies a space between sound design and contemporary scoring. This is the third entrant in a trilogy of instruments developed by Evolution Series, the others being Fables and Lores. Where those two instruments draw heavily on strings, woodwinds, and choir to craft beautifully evolving textures, Odes instead puts rhythm front and centre. Staccato notes and pulsing drones are all tempo-synchronised to your DAW.
Alongside a well-considered sound engine and plenty of articulations to choose from, the primary attraction in Odes is the gorgeous and somewhat lesser-known instruments that have been sampled. We get bowed instruments like the Iranian kamancheh, the Mongolian horse-head fiddle, plus a Japanese shakuhachi bamboo flute and a Swedish nyckelharpa.
While Erosia is available in the Ultimate edition, both Odes and Claire Avant are reserved for the Collector’s tier. So, you’ll need to be serious about your sound design and have seriously deep pockets to access these beasts. However, if you’re not ready to splurge on the higher tiers, then I’d recommend trying iZotope’s Vocalsynth 2 as an off-label sound design tool. Available in the Standard edition, and designed for voice processing, there’s actually a wealth of weird and wonderful effects here to discover. Whether you’re working on monster sounds for a video game, or running some nature recordings through it to get some psychedelic ambience, it’s a surprisingly powerful plugin.
A strong move by Native Instruments
I’ll readily admit my bias toward weird and wonderful sounds, but I genuinely think the move by Native Instruments to include more libraries of rare and non-Western instruments, extended playing techniques, and hybrid textures is spot on. Increasingly, these are the kind of sounds that media composers are looking to work with, and Komplete 26 offers a wide selection.
Of course, for those who didn’t already grab it on first release, Absynth 6 is sure to be the first thing you boot up when Komplete 26 lands in your Native Access library. But once you break free of that intoxicating green fairy, there is plenty more here to keep you busy.

Check out the full suite at native-instruments.com
The post Beyond Abysnth: Into the depths of Native Instruments’ Komplete 26 appeared first on MusicTech.

From Wine to Diamonds, Every Major Consumer Industry Protects You From Fakes. Why Doesn’t Music?Music supervisor and Catalog founder Frederic Schindler argues it's time for standardized 'Music Facts' labels – modeled on food nutrition panels – to make the origin of every track in the supply chain visible to consumers.
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Native Instruments release Komplete 26 Available in four versions, Komplete 26 delivers everything from virtual synths and orchestral sample libraries to high-quality mixing and mastering processors, and as you’d expect, offers tight integration with NI’s hardware controllers. 

How Sennheiser’s HD 480 PRO headphones have become essential to my daily workflowAd feature with Sennheiser
Sennheiser’s new HD 480 PRO headphones offer closed-back isolation and an enjoyable and accurate tonal voicing, with an extended bass response and smooth highs. To top things off, they’re also supremely comfortable.
Despite having only recently been launched, I managed to get early access, so my experience of using these headphones stretches back a few months.
It was a “wow” moment as I strapped on the headphones for the first time, and I’ve been a firm fan ever since. From recording and mixing in the studio during the working day, to more casual listening in the evening at home, I’ve found myself reaching for the HD 480 PROs more and more — so much so that they’re fast becoming my new daily drivers, booting out a pair of open-back planar magnetic headphones.

In session: A balance of comfort and isolation
Credit: Sennheiser
It’s a bright April morning, and I’m getting ready to track rough takes for a new acoustic guitar and singing-led album. The performers don’t need a click track or headphones, but since my studio is a one-room affair, I put on the HD 480 PRO to monitor the signals coming from microphones in the room. A morning of wearing closed-back headphones usually fills me with fear, but any worries quickly dissolve with the HD 480 PRO. While many closed-back headphones clamp your head with considerable force, there’s a more gentle force at play with the Sennheisers, combined with deep and soft ear cups, and cleverly-designed grooves to make things more comfortable for those wearing eyeglasses; often overlooked, but for which I’m really thankful. My audio interface is able to channel plenty of level to the headphones, and I’m pleased to note that I could attach the cable to the opposite ear cup if it was getting in the way of the work being done.
And so, onto the tonal signature of the HD 480 PRO. I’m embarrassed to hand over some of the closed-back headphones in my studio to performers unless I’ve applied drastic EQ correction beforehand — a tweak that’s not easily possible on most audio interfaces — but this is simply not required with these Sennheisers. The harsh, jagged high-mid presence peaks built into competing headphones (presumably to bring out vocal clarity and make things sound ‘exciting’) are contrasted here with a smooth, even yet articulate high-mid range that you can comfortably listen to for hours. The more neutral approach to this particular frequency range helps you home in on how well each microphone is working on the instruments and voices being recorded, and the contribution of a microphone’s own presence peak in its voicing.
Isolation from the outside world is solid too. In my recording situation, I’m able to hear the signals being recorded through the headphones in great detail without much spill from the voices and instruments projecting live into the same room. They are only rough takes, but I can be confident that I can rely on what I’m hearing to be an accurate representation of what’s being recorded. To complete the picture, I notice a really solid bass response that gives a full picture of the proximity effect in this setting, but would be even more handy when tracking a bass guitar or kick drum.
I work for hours, in contentment.
Mixing it up: Firm foundations
Credit: Sennheiser
It’s late in the afternoon, and I now turn my attention to mixing for another album project. Much of my mixing is carried out on planar headphones tuned to a Harman curve that helps mixes translate to loudspeakers and other playback systems. The HD 480 PRO has a similar contour out of the box, so I can use these headphones without EQ to focus acutely on the multitude of editing and mixing decisions I need to make. Bass sounds have a full extension without having to press the ear cups to my ears — great for placing punch stompbox and bass guitar tracks in my mix. And the full mid-range is used to great effect when shaping EQ and dynamics for the competing acoustic chord and melody instruments and vocals in this ever-crucial frequency range. There’s no feeling of the recessed,’ V-shaped’ mid range many headphones have, so I can make informed decisions as I work through the mix. And because the headphones are closed, I can do this without disturbing others around me.
Though the treble presentation is smooth and non-fatiguing, there’s a satisfying, fizzy quality to the air band at the very top of the range — perhaps a psychoacoustic phenomenon associated with the HD 480 PRO’s ultra-wide frequency response reaching up to supersonic 28 kHz (from a super-low 3 Hz). This makes homing in on bad edit points, taming keen transients and auditioning different saturation circuits a breeze. There’s a sensation of excitement at the top end, but when coupled with the smooth high-mids, it’s a tonal voicing that’s always comfortable to listen to.
Songs for the soul: Pleasurable listening, at any volume
Credit: Sennheiser
It’s a laughably short commute from my garden studio to the house, but I’m really glad of the compact carry case that’s included with the HD 480 PRO PLUS model. As well as providing protection in transit, it’s also handily shaped to stack on top of my laptop without sliding away.
After I’ve given my ears a few hours’ rest and the kids have gone to bed, I grasp the opportunity to listen for fun — at a louder level — on the HD 480 PRO.
I enjoy subby yet tight basslines and kick drum on my evergreen reference, Naughtyboy’s La La La, while I’m also enamoured by the smoothness of the top end, which typically has the tendency to poke out on snare sounds in this track. Louis Tomlinson’s The Imposter is my guilty pop pleasure of late: here, too, there’s punchy kicks, assured separation of mid-range chord parts, plus a high end that never becomes harsh despite the bright pop production aesthetics. There’s a deeper stereo field than most closed backs, too, allowing me to get fully immersed in the music — lost in the moment.
To wind things down, I shift to the more sonorous sounds of The Flood from Irish acoustic duo Ye Vagabonds, and I’m delighted that the deep bass extension doesn’t disappear when I scale back to a lower listening level. Another winning feature of HD 480 PRO.
With the day done, I now have a new favourite all-rounder set of headphones.
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