Plugin Alliance is offering these top plugins at up to 92% off for the whole of JuneSummer’s officially here, so why not upgrade your plugin collection in a bid to spark some inspiration?
Over at Plugin Boutique until the end of June, Plugin Alliance is offering a massive range of plugins at up to 92% off, so you can level up your in-the-box studio for less – much less.

READ MORE: FabFilter make some of the most-loved plugins on the market – and you can save 25% for a short time

With offers in plugins from Brainworx, Unfiltered Audio, AMEK, Elysia, Shadow Hills, SPL and more, you’re bound to find the right plugin – or several plugins – to add to your collection.
[deals ids=”31qxFt7OdFifDJzdgvIh9H”]
Some of our favourites of the plugins on offer include the Shadow Hills OptoMax compressor, now just £27 down from £135 (that’s 80% off!) There’s also Swivel Audio’s Click Boom Transient Shaper for just £27.50 down from £45, referencing tool HEARS Perfection, now £27 down from £117, and the NEOLD RZ062 EQ for only £22.50, down from £116.
Yep, the Plugin Alliance June Sale has compressors, EQs, multi-effects, audio restoration tools, and even a vast array of digital guitar amp emulations, too – so there’s bound to be something in there that will upgrade your workflow as a producer.
Head to Plugin Boutique to browse the full range of plugins on offer.
The post Plugin Alliance is offering these top plugins at up to 92% off for the whole of June appeared first on MusicTech.

XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color is 60% off on Plugin Boutique
Plugin Boutique is offering XLN Audio’s hugely popular RC-20 Retro Color for $39 until June 14, 2026. The regular price is $99, so this is a 60% discount. RC-20 Retro Color has been around for a while, but it remains one of the most recognizable character plugins for lo-fi, vintage, and slightly broken textures. I [...]
View post: XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color is 60% off on Plugin Boutique

III Points announces the return of the ::444:: stage with 11.1 L-Acoustics surround soundMiami’s alternative electronic music festival, III Points, will return this October, and attendees will once again be able to experience true immersive sound. The event has confirmed it will host its ::444:: stage for the third time, built with an 11.1 surround system and operated with L-Acoustics patented technology for spatial mixing: L-ISA (L-Acoustics Immersive Sound Art). This program allows different channels of music to be placed within a three-dimensional grid, as opposed to simply expanding stereo to different speakers.
Both the DJs performing on the stage and the sound operators will have access to L-Acoustics DJ as well, which uses machine learning to break apart stereo tracks into four distinct elements: drums, bass, vocals, and mid-range sounds. From there, users can individually arrange the four parts around the circular L-ISA grid or use built-in functions to create immersive audio experiences at the touch of a button.

READ MORE: FabFilter make some of the most-loved plugins on the market – and you can save 25% for a short time

In terms of the speakers themselves, the stage will use L-Acoustics L2 line arrays with Progressive Ultra-Dense Line Source (PULS) builds. PULS is based on using multiple loudspeakers inside each L2 unit. This achieves the greatest amount of sound coming from each line array while reducing the number of speakers to reach the desired SPL.
The title of the stage refers to the programming, with three DJs each playing four-hour sets throughout both days of the festival. This extended runtime will offer the opportunity for the artists to maximize the advanced audio setup. III Points hasn’t shared which artists will be performing on the stage as of now, but in the past, renowned dance artists including Seth Troxler, DJ Koze, and Danny Daze have had their turn.
Then, following the conclusion of the festival, Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen back to each mix from the ::444:: stage in full spatial audio. Apple Music’s team will place microphones around the room to capture the complete audio picture of each set to be mastered in Dolby Atmos.
III Points will take place on October 16-17 in Miami. For more information, head to the festival’s website.
The post III Points announces the return of the ::444:: stage with 11.1 L-Acoustics surround sound appeared first on MusicTech.

nClear releases FREE Sibalance and VocRide vocal plugins
nClear has released Sibalance and VocRide, two pay-what-you-want vocal processing plugins for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Both plugins are available through Ko-fi, and you can optionally enter zero to download them for free. That said, these are full versions of these two plugins, not lite versions or time-limited trials. The tools started as more complex [...]
View post: nClear releases FREE Sibalance and VocRide vocal plugins

Get Melodyne 5 Essential for $24 on Plugin Boutique
Plugin Boutique is offering Celemony’s Melodyne 5 Essential for $24 until June 30, 2026. The regular price is $99, so this is a 75% discount. The same promotion also includes Melodyne 5 Assistant for $71 instead of $248. That one is still a bigger purchase, but it is a nice discount if you know you [...]
View post: Get Melodyne 5 Essential for $24 on Plugin Boutique

What happens to Bitcoin if the Nasdaq falls further?Bitcoin eyes a rally toward $92,630 as BTC defends key long-term support while the Nasdaq flashes deeper correction risks.

Is this the dawn of the Tokenpocalypse?We're likely to see more price increases as the big AI companies plan to go public.

Bluetooth Gramophone Has Surprisingly Contemporary RootsSo you happen to have a gramaphone– maybe a big old Victrola/HMV, perhaps a Columbia– regardless of brand, it’s a big, beautiful conversation peice for your living room. It might not be the most practical listening device, since isnomuch as there is a vinyl renessance, it’s restricted to vinyl, not the old shellac 78s the these all-mechanical beasts were born for. [JGJMatt] decided to bring his gramophone into the 21st century, turning it into a bluetooth speaker without altering any of its original internals.
What’s really interesting is that this hack was once a commercial product– sort of. Back in the 1920s when everyone was listening to Jazz, the problem of ‘ what do I do with this massive gramophone cabinet when I’m not cutting a rug?’ was equally valid, and a solution was found: the Dulce-Tone Radio Speaker. A very weak speaker sits under the needle, turning the gramaphone mechanism into an amplifier for the radio. The very same concept, [JGJMatt] would work equally well in the 2020s with a bluetooth signal as in the 1920s with an AM one. There’s no demo video for this project, but you can hear how its 1920s inspiration sounded in the video below.
The driver for this device is made using a neodymium magnet and the voice coil from a 3W speaker. A 3D-printed needle-holder captures the gramophone’s needle– a much thicker and sturdier thing than the tiny diamond-tip you’d find on a modern turntable, we should note– and holds the magnet to it. The voice coil gets driven via a MH-M38 bluetooth module, and everything is held in a nice 3D-printed case along with the battery.
The hack is, of course, totally reversible: at any moment, you can remove the needle from this device and drop it on a 78 for some Jazz-era fun, or swap back for 21st century brainrot. If you happen to have some of those old shellac records and a modern turntable, note it takes more than the right RPM to get good sound.

Eli & Flo HiPanHiPan is a free frequency-based panning utility for Windows and macOS. Instead of moving the entire signal left or right, HiPan allows independent panning of low and high frequencies using an adjustable crossover frequency. Typical applications include keeping bass and low-end information centered while positioning higher frequencies elsewhere in the stereo field. Features: • Independent low and high frequency panning • Adjustable crossover frequency • Stereo Spread control • Low Mono mode • Solo monitoring • Lightweight CPU usage • Free forever. Available as: • VST3 for Windows • VST3 for macOS. Audio Unit (AU) support is currently in development and will be added in a future update. Read More

Decksaver’s Sping 2026 Drop Decksaver's new collection introduces hard-shell covers for major new releases from a wide range of manufacturers, including Akai, Roland, Behringer, Moog, Dreadbox, Erica Synths, AlphaTheta, Allen & Heath, Native Instruments, Reloop, Ecler, Expressive E, OXI Instruments, Melbourne Instruments and Novation.

OpenAI unveils Lockdown Mode to protect sensitive data from prompt injection attacksEven with Lockdown Mode, ChatGPT could be still vulnerable to prompt injections, but the goal is to reduce the likelihood that sensitive data gets shared in the process.

Pi Pico Puts Bluetooth Keyboards on the I2C BusIf you’ve ever worked with I2C, you know its one of those things that makes working with modern microcontrollers such a pleasure. With a few wires and not many more lines of code, you can communicate with all sorts of hardware such as sensors, displays, and input devices. There are even I2C keyboards out there, although they tend to be a bit pokey — and not in the good way as it pertains to keyboards.
But the bt2i2c project from [Roberto Alsina] promises to improve things. With his firmware flashed to a Pi Pico W, you can establish a connection with any standard Bluetooth keyboard and have the keystrokes sent over the wire via I2C. As far as your project is concerned, the input will appear to be coming from a BlackBerry BBQ20/BBQ10 keyboard using the address 0x1F, which means that there’s already plenty of code out there to work with. While [Roberto] explains its not strictly necessary, connecting a ST7789 display to the Pi Pico over SPI will give you some visual feedback on connection status.
As microcontrollers become increasingly powerful and capable of the sort of thing we would once have done on a “real” computer, a project like this has some fascinating potential. We’ve seen a number of “writerdeck” projects running on chips like the ESP32, and it’s not hard to see the appeal of being able to easily pair your favorite Bluetooth keyboard up to one of them.

Bitcoin most oversold since 2020 crash: Can BTC rebound to $70K next?Bitcoin’s latest oversold RSI mirrors 2020 and February 2026 setups that preceded 50% and 30% rebounds, putting $70K back in focus.

Umbral Audio AetherAether is an AI co-producer that lives on a track in your session. Instead of clicking every note into a piano roll, you tell it what you want, "a dark, driving minor-key bassline at 124 BPM," or "a warm lo-fi chord progression in F minor," and it plans the part, generates the MIDI, and hands you notes you can drag straight onto a track. Aether reasons about key, scale, voice leading, and rhythm, so the parts it writes sit in your track instead of fighting it. Don't like something? Ask for a change in the next message and it refines the MIDI it already wrote rather than starting over, so you iterate toward the idea in your head. Generate separable Bass, Harmony, and Lead parts on their own MIDI channels, solo or mute any of them, capture and reload earlier takes from the built-in MIDI Library, clean things up in the piano roll, and export multi-track MIDI with tempo and time signature intact. Everything Aether produces is standard, editable MIDI. Aether is bring-your-own-AI. Connect the model you already pay for with your own API key, or run a model locally and generate offline. You own the plugin outright for a one-time price, with no forced subscription. Key features: Text-to-MIDI: generate melodies, chord progressions, basslines, and full multi-track ideas from natural-language prompts. Conversational refinement: follow-up messages edit the MIDI it already wrote. Music-theory-aware phrasing (key, scale, voice leading, rhythm). Separable Bass, Harmony, and Lead parts with per-part solo, mute, and MIDI channels. Drag-to-DAW MIDI and multi-track .mid export with tempo and time signature. MIDI Library with idea and version history. Built-in piano roll, post-processing, MIDI capture, and reusable custom prompts. Supported AI providers Claude (Anthropic), ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), Grok (xAI), DeepSeek, OpenRouter, and Hugging Face via your own API key, or local models through Ollama and LM Studio. Formats and system requirements: Formats: VST3, Audio Unit (AU), and Standalone. OS: macOS and Windows. Runs in Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro, Cubase, Studio One, Bitwig, Reaper, and other AU/VST3 hosts, or standalone with no DAW. Requires an AI provider API key, or a local model via Ollama / LM Studio; internet connection required for cloud providers. Pricing and licensing One-time purchase of $60. Includes free lifetime updates across Aether 1.x and activation on up to three machines. No subscription required when you use your own API keys. Read More

Spitfire Audio bring Originals to Akai MPC Following on from their partnership announcement at NAMM 2026, Spitfire Audio and Akai Pro have announced the release of two new sample libraries that can be run entirely on MPC hardware.