Music and AI Roundtable: Your Morning Coffee Special EpisodeOn this special edition of the Your Morning Coffee podcast hosts Jay Gilbert and Mike Etchart sat down with a panel of experts for a music and AI roundtable on how AI is re-shaping the music industry. LISTEN HERE.
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It looks like Spotify lossless audio is coming later this yearLossless audio has been the elephant in the Spotify boardroom over the last few years. First teased in 2021, the green streaming giant’s competitors have since beaten the company to the post. But, rumour has it Spotify is set to roll out a Music Pro tier by the end of this year. It’ll add a cost of around £6 on top of your monthly bill.
While Spotify’s CD-quality streaming has had a number of potential names over the years (from Spotify HiFi to Supremium), Music Pro is said to be the final name of the new tier, which will also offer AI mash-up features and exclusive access to gig tickets, an anonymous source tells Bloomberg.

READ MORE: So…How did Apple Music become a hero of streaming services, and Spotify a supervillain?

Currently, Spotify’s highest quality offers playback at 320kbps. In comparison, CD-quality audio works can amount to 1,411.2kbps – that’s around four and a half times better quality, in theory.
The source claims the price of Music Pro will vary depending on where you are in the world. Less-developed markets will have a lower cost, while the highest cost will be £5.99. That’s around half of the current standard premium rate, so, if you opt in for the extra quality, it’ll raise your £11.99 a month charge to about £18.
The cost is notably higher cost than some of Spotify’s competitors. Tidal and Apple Music both currently cost £10.99 per month and boast lossless streaming as standard.
There are some extra perks for those who opt in for the Music Pro tier, however. Users will also be able to mix together songs. While Tidal does also offer some remixing tools, Spotify will reportedly allow users to mix songs from different artists with the help of artificial intelligence.
In terms of ticketing perks, Spotify will reportedly allow fans access to exclusive pre-sales. While Spotify already offers some pre-sale codes and concert information, the updates will increase the amount of pre-sales it provides, as well as offering access to better seats. The anonymous source reports that the company has been in discussion with ‘major promoters,’ yet plans are still being finalised.
The news comes as a real treat for the curious data-miners sleuthing over the last few years. The first murmurs of ‘Music Pro’ as the tier name emerged last April. Reddit user Hypixely discovered the term in some code on Spotify’s Android app (via The Verge), with the code confirming “lossless has arrived” in one snippet, and that Spotify would support “up to 24-bit/44.1kHz” FLAC files.
The Music Pro tier is apparently set to release in phases, with each tool and feature being introduced over time.
While Spotify will be hiking up prices for the new premium tier, the company reported record-breaking profits in 2024. Last year was also the company’s best year for user growth, with its user base now at a total of 640 million.
The post It looks like Spotify lossless audio is coming later this year appeared first on MusicTech.

HG-Q from Black Box Analog Design The hardware HG-Q equaliser that was modelled and released by Plugin Alliance in November 2024 has now reached the end of it’s seven-year development, and is available to pre-order. 

Take your music streaming to luxurious new heights with McIntosh’s $4,000 DS200 Streaming DACAmerican audio company McIntosh has announced the DS200, a streaming DAC packed with a range of built-in casting technologies to stream your music.
At its core, the DS200 boasts a next-generation Quad Balanced 8-channel, 32-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) designed to deliver “huge dynamic range and low distortion” for pristine sound reproduction.

READ MORE: AI training on copyrighted content ruled not “fair use” by US court – how could this impact the music industry?

Billed as the “ultimate solution for music enthusiasts who demand the perfect blend of high-end audio quality and seamless streaming capabilities”, the DS200 supports an impressive array of wireless technologies, including Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, and Google Cast. It is also a Roon Ready endpoint device for use with the Roon music player.
On the Bluetooth side, the DS200 is compatible with the standard SBC and AAC codecs, as well as aptX HD. There’s even support for the less-common aptX Low Latency.
No extra apps are needed to control the DS200 — you can stream your favourite tunes directly to the unit from your smart device. For those who prefer wired connections, the DS200 also features eight digital inputs, allowing you to hook up other audio components like a CD player or tuner.
True to McIntosh’s promise of “luxury listening”, the DS200 delivers high-res audio, with USB input supporting DSD512 and DXD up to 384kHz, and coax and optical inputs decoding up to 24-bit/192kHz. The HDMI (ARC) input also enhances your TV audio, outperforming typical TV speakers or soundbars. Plus, it converts Dolby and DTS multi-channel formats into pristine two-channel audio for top-notch playback. The DS200 can also serve as a preamplifier in an all-digital system.
And unlike McIntosh’s previous streamers, the DS200 is a cast-to streamer, which means it doesn’t store music on a hard drive, eliminating a potential point of failure.
Priced at a hefty $4,000, the DS200 doesn’t just impress with its sound – it also stands out visually. The unit showcases McIntosh’s classic style with a sleek black glass front faceplate, rotary control knobs, an illuminated logo, and custom-machined aluminum end caps, making it a striking addition to any audio setup.

The DS200 marks the company’s first release since it was acquired by Bose in 2024.
Learn more at McIntosh Labs.
The post Take your music streaming to luxurious new heights with McIntosh’s $4,000 DS200 Streaming DAC appeared first on MusicTech.

SSL Native X-Saturator is Just $10 until February 2
Solid State Logic’s (SSL)  Native X-Saturator analog-style saturation plugin is available for just $10 until February 25, which slashes 92% off the $119 list price.  The deal is available at both the SSL and Plugin Boutique web stores.  However, if you buy from Plugin Boutique, you can also pick up the site’s February gift, a [...]
View post: SSL Native X-Saturator is Just $10 until February 2

23DSP BloomBloom – Harmonic Enhancer & Loudness Expander Bloom is a harmonic enhancer designed to add presence, density, and perceived loudness while preserving dynamic integrity. Utilizing... Read More

These researchers used NPR Sunday Puzzle questions to benchmark AI ‘reasoning’ modelsEvery Sunday, NPR host Will Shortz, The New York Times’ crossword puzzle guru, gets to quiz thousands of listeners in a long-running segment called the Sunday Puzzle. While written to be solvable without too much foreknowledge, the brainteasers are usually challenging even for skilled contestants. That’s why some experts think they’re a promising way to […]
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How Hard is it to Write a Calculator App?How hard can it be to write a simple four-function calculator program? After all, computers are good at math, and making a calculator isn’t exactly blazing a new trail, right? But [Chad Nauseam] will tell you that it is harder than you probably think. His post starts with a screenshot of the iOS calculator app with a mildly complex equation. The app’s answer is wrong. Android’s calculator does better on the same problem.
What follows is a bit of a history lesson and a bit of a math lesson combined. As you might realize, the inherent problem with computers and math isn’t that they aren’t good at it. Floating point numbers have a finite precision and this leads to problems, especially when you do operations that combine large and small numbers together.
Indeed, any floating point representation has a bigger infinity of numbers that it can’t represent than those that it can. But the same is true of a calculator. Think about how many digits you are willing to type in, and how many digits you want out. All you want is for each of them to be correct, and that’s a much smaller set of numbers.

Google’s developer, [Hans-J. Boehm] tackled this problem by turning to recursive real arithmetic (RRA). Here, each math function is told how accurate it needs to be, and a set of rules determines the highest required accuracy.
But every solution brings a problem. With RRA, there is no way to tell very small numbers from zero. So computing “1-1” might give you “0.000000000”, which is correct but upsetting because of all the excess precision. You could try to test if “0.00000000” was equal to “0”, and simplify the output. But testing for equality of two numbers in RRA is not guaranteed to terminate: you can tell if two numbers are unequal by going to more and more precision until you find a difference, but if the numbers happen to be equal, this procedure never ends.
The key realization for [Boehm] and his collaborators was that you could use RRA only for cases where you deal with inexact numbers. Most of the time, the Android calculator deals with rationals. However, when an operation produces a potentially irrational result, it switches to RRA for the approximation, which works because no finite representation ever gets it exactly right. The result is a system that doesn’t show excess precision, but correctly displays all of the digits that it does show.
We really like [Chad’s] step-by-step explanation. If you would rather dive into the math, you can read [Boehm’s] paper on the topic. If you ever wonder how many computer systems handle odd functions like sine and cosine, read about CORDIC. Or, avoid all of this and stick to your slide rule.

Afroplug Afrofusion Series LiteIntroducing Afrofusion Plugin Series by Afroplug, your ultimate toolkit for creating over 100+ Afro genres in a series of plugins. This comprehensive series is designed to provide everything... Read More

Variety of Sound released FREE FeenstaubTC tube compressor for Windows
After his successful exciter and transient shaper FeenstaubTX, developer Variety of Sound is back with his second instalment in the Feenstaub series, the FeenstaubTC tube compressor. Note that the plugin is 64-bit, VST3/VST2 and Windows only. Whenever Variety of Sound releases a plugin, people get excited. And for a good reason, I might add. In [...]
View post: Variety of Sound released FREE FeenstaubTC tube compressor for Windows

RipplerX is a FREE and open-source AAS Chromaphone-inspired synth plugin
The RipplerX synth, in its various stages, began life as a research project studying physically modeled drums. The first iteration used the open-source Sai’ke Partials as a reference and developed into a synth heavily inspired by AAS Chromaphone and Ableton’s Collision. RipplerX is built with JUCE and is available in AU, VST3, and LV2 formats [...]
View post: RipplerX is a FREE and open-source AAS Chromaphone-inspired synth plugin

Dreamtonics' upcoming Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro Set for release on 21 March 2025, Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro boasts an improved algorithmic design and enhanced multi-threading support, improving rendering times by up to 300% and achieving more natural-sounding vocals.

North Carolina Amazon workers vote against unionizingWorkers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina voted against unionizing in election results announced today. According to Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the worker group seeking to form the union, 3,276 ballots were cast in the election, with 25.3% of votes in favor of unionizing and 74.7% against. The results […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Octet of ESP32s Lets You See WiFi Like Never BeforeMost of us see the world in a very narrow band of the EM spectrum. Sure, there are people with a genetic quirk that extends the range a bit into the UV, but it’s a ROYGBIV world for most of us. Unless, of course, you have something like this ESP32 antenna array, which gives you an augmented reality view of the WiFi world.
According to [Jeija], “ESPARGOS” consists of an antenna array board and a controller board. The antenna array has eight ESP32-S2FH4 microcontrollers and eight 2.4 GHz WiFi patch antennas spaced a half-wavelength apart in two dimensions. The ESP32s extract channel state information (CSI) from each packet they receive, sending it on to the controller board where another ESP32 streams them over Ethernet while providing the clock and phase reference signals needed to make the phased array work. This gives you all the information you need to calculate where a signal is coming from and how strong it is, which is used to plot a sort of heat map to overlay on a webcam image of the same scene.
The results are pretty cool. Walking through the field of view of the array, [Jeija]’s smartphone shines like a lantern, with very little perceptible lag between the WiFi and the visible light images. He’s also able to demonstrate reflection off metallic surfaces, penetration through the wall from the next room, and even outdoor scenes where the array shows how different surfaces reflect the signal. There’s also a demonstration of using multiple arrays to determine angle and time delay of arrival of a signal to precisely locate a moving WiFi source. It’s a little like a reverse LORAN system, albeit indoors and at a much shorter wavelength.
There’s a lot in this video and the accompanying documentation to unpack. We haven’t even gotten to the really cool stuff like using machine learning to see around corners by measuring reflected WiFi signals. ESPARGOS looks like it could be a really valuable tool across a lot of domains, and a heck of a lot of fun to play with too.

Thanks to [Buckaroo] for the tip.

DIY and Independent Musician News Last WeekLast week, our tips, advice and independent musician news covered how get superfans via email, identify fake streams, use AI, wisdom from Jack White and Taylor Swift, and more...
The post DIY and Independent Musician News Last Week appeared first on Hypebot.