Audeze launch the LCD-S20 The LCD-S20 feature Audeze's new SLAM technology, and are said to deliver extended, dynamic bass while retaining a clean sound even at high listening levels.

Final Mix Software Mix Bus EQ IIIThe Mix Bus Equalizer is specifically designed for use on your Master Fader. Incredibly smooth & natural. We think it's the best Mix Bus EQ ever. Silky Highs. Massive lows. Punchy midrange. The user interface is simple & elegant. The boost/cut controls are incredibly smooth. The Mix Bus EQ has 60 frequencies across 7-bands with a Low Cut filter to tighten the bottom end. Other features include: Precision Low Shelf & High Shelf filters. Air1 & Air2 EQ for the shine. Soft saturation for transparent peak level control. Read More

How Sober Curiosity and Music Are Redefining NightlifeGen Z is changing how we socialize and redefining nightlife by embracing sober curiosity with music leading the way. With a focus on inclusivity and connection, nights out are becoming more about the people, the music, and the memories, not just what’s in your glass.
The post How Sober Curiosity and Music Are Redefining Nightlife appeared first on Hypebot.

One of the world’s smallest acoustic pianos raises $45k on KickstarterStartup brand Keybird is crowdfunding to support the launch of its new uber-portable, acoustic L1 piano.
This new model follows on from its predecessor, the Keybird X1, and is even more compact, making it one of the smallest acoustic pianos on the market. The brand is “dedicated to bringing the acoustic piano to broad audiences and to people who love the piano, but never imagined they could have one in their living space”.

READ MORE: Teenage Engineering’s EP-133 K.O.II just got its first major OS update – here’s what’s new

Keybird’s L1 design makes the piano far more lightweight and accessible for both established and aspiring players. It takes up just a tad more space than an average acoustic guitar would in your home, and can be tuned with similar ease.
The L1 weighs just 39 kg and has dimensions of 70cm (Width) x 115cm (Height) x 55cm (Depth). Though some may argue that digital pianos and keyboards already offer a smaller alternative to traditional pianos, Keybird argues that nothing beats the feeling and touch of an acoustic classical piano, hence why its model fills a significant gap in the market.
Image: Keybird
Users can also install MIDI to its pianos, and even play them silently with the use of headphones and a foam bar that mutes the sound of the keys while playing. With a USB-C MIDI Out on the L1, you can connect to a computer and use your Keybird as a MIDI controller in DAWs such as Ableton, Logic, or Reaper.

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Currently, Keybird has a funding goal of €59,400 ($67,551 USD), which covers essential production costs and confirms demand for the design. The model itself is priced at roughly $3,378 (not including taxes and shipping), and so far, over $45,000 has already been raised to support its launch.
You can find out more via the Keybird Kickstarter page, or head to the Keybird official website to shop its current products.
The post One of the world’s smallest acoustic pianos raises $45k on Kickstarter appeared first on MusicTech.

Sonarworks update SoundID VoiceAI With the latest update installed, SoundID VoiceAI is capable of generating up to eight unison parts from a single voice recording.

Is a Daft Punk comeback happening… in Fortnite?Daft Punk could be making a comeback, but not as you might expect – the electronic duo are currently rumoured to join Fortnite Festival for its Season 9 event.
Fortnite Festival is a music-driven game mode for Epic Games’ Fortnite, in which players can play their favourite hits in different virtual stage environments. Pop superstar Sabrina Carpenter was recently unveiled as its Season 8 icon, bringing tracks such as Espresso and Please Please Please to the game as playable songs.

READ MORE: “Daft Punk were deadpan people trying to be techno… It was too gimmicky”: Why John Lydon turned down a collab with the robots

Talk of a Daft Punk revival within Fortnite were first rumoured by a prominent leaker for the gaming franchise, FNBRintel, on X earlier this April. The pair have remained in retirement since 2021, but have put out a 10th anniversary edition of their final album, Random Access Memories, and other archival releases since their disbandment.

BREAKING: DAFT PUNK WILL REPORTEDLY BE THE NEXT FORTNITE FESTIVAL ARTIST
(Via @FNBRintel) pic.twitter.com/nzqeYEgpPU
— Stream (@StreamFNBR) April 7, 2025

While many are excited by the potential addition of the famous robotic duo, others are a little doubtful that it will happen – for examples, some fans are perplexed as to why Daft Punk would choose to collaborate with Fortnite, rather than make a comeback for the new Tron: Ares film. The pair formerly scored music for Tron: Legacy, released in 2010, but the new movie is being tackled by Nine Inch Nails instead.

Though most fans and fellow artists are convinced that Daft Punk will not be making a real-life reunion anytime soon, a former collaborator has previously claimed that they are sitting on an unreleased fifth album.
Session drummer Quinn worked with Daft Punk on Random Access Memories, and made the claim in a 2024 interview with the student-run media organisation, alt.news 26:46. In the interview, he mentioned that Daft Punk began working on what would have been their fifth album in 2018, and he was also supposed to be involved with it.
Neither Epic Games nor Daft Punk have confirmed any of the rumours surrounding Fortnite Festival. Be sure to check back on MusicTech for any further information.
The post Is a Daft Punk comeback happening… in Fortnite? appeared first on MusicTech.

Best free plugins 2025: 14 free drum machines that’ll help you make beats fasterPhysical drum machines are brilliantly tactile and can give you punchy percussion sounds that aren’t always immediately available in your DAW. However, there are plenty of plugins that can get you in the groove and shake up your workflow with functions that most hardware is simply not capable of achieving. We love the charm of hardware, but sometimes it’s best to build interesting beats in the box and experiment with the power of software.

READ MORE: Best free plugins 2025: 15 free synths that you didn’t know you needed

What’s even better is there is a range of drum machine plugins out there that are free to download, with many compatible on both macOS and Windows. We’ve collated some of the most impressive drum machine plugins that come at no cost at all and are far more fun than lining up samples in your DAW’s arrangement window.
The best freeware drum machines at a glance:

Native Instruments Beats Collection
BPB Cassette Drums
99 Sounds Drum Machine
606 Koncept
Synsonic BD-909
AudioSpillage MiniSpillage
Beat Factory Drums
Drum Pro
MeldaProduction MDrummer Small
Manda Audio MT Power Drum Kit 2
Jamstix 4 Free
Speedrum Lite
Triaz Player
BFD Player

Native Instruments Beats Collection
Image: Native Instruments
NI’s Beats Collection is part of Native Instruments’ free Komplete Start plugin suite. It offers 288 pre-made Grooves across 90 kits for fast rhythmic patterns. You can play your own rhythms with a keyboard or pads, export Groove patterns with MIDI drag and drop, and customise drum sounds with studio-grade effects like chorus and reverb.
Features:

288 pre-made Grooves across 90 kits
Customisable drum sounds with studio-grade effects
Dedicated parameters for tweaking built-in effects
Grooves page for pattern playback adjustment

Find out more at Native Instruments.
BPB Cassette Drums

The BPB Cassette Drums plugin bundle includes three digital drum machines, using sounds sampled from BPB’s Cassette 606, Cassette 808 and Cassette 909 drum sample packs. You get Roland TR-606, TR-808 and TR-909 replicas that sound pretty convincing. Not bad, considering you’re not paying a dime for them.
Each of these lovely-looking and easy-to-use plugins have three modes, effectively giving you nine separate drum machines to play with. The clean original sounds of each drum machine are available, while the Warm and Hot modes give you saturated recordings and have been re-sampled from an audio cassette deck, giving each engine a slightly different feel.
Features:

Compatibility: VST/AU, 32-bit, 64-bit, PC/macOS
Number of voices: 7
Clean, Warm and Hot kits
Release and volume knobs
Options to route drums to individual outputs
On-screen keyboard

Find out more at BedroomProducersBlog.com.
99 Sounds Drum Machine

The simply named Drum Machine by 99Sounds is a nifty little thing used, in the developer’s video tutorial, to make bright, energetic EDM beats. But, of course, it can be used to build drum patterns for any genre and style, so long as you spend the time getting to know it.
It boasts 12 kits with the ability to include eight drum sounds per kit, with each sound being sourced from the 99Sounds Drum Samples library. Users can pan each drum sound, or the whole pattern, to their preference. There is also a low-pass filter and a high-pass filter, giving you options to tweak your sound within the plugin.
Features:

Compatibility: 64-bit VSTi/AUi Host, macOS & PC
Number of voices: 8
12 drum kits
Low filter & high filter
Multiple outputs

606 Koncept

Sample Science’s 606 Koncept plugin is a free 606 emulation with its unique own processing capabilities.
You can pitch sounds down or up using the plugin’s intriguing pitch control feature, change the decay of each track, and set the individual levels and panning. There are multiple LFO options including the depth and rate of filters. You can add glide, reverb and set the cutoff of your drum sequence, and, on top of all that, users are able to add vinyl, tape and sub sound layers to provide a layer of texture over everything.
Features:

Compatibility: 64-bit VSTi/VST3/AUi Host, PC & Mac
Number of voices: 7, each with polyphonic, monophonic and legato modes
Vinyl, tape-hiss & sub sound
Multi-pitch sum mixers
LFO & room reverb effects
Amplitude range controls

Find out more at Sample Science. 
Synsonic BD-909

You didn’t think we could possibly do a freeware drum-machine round-up without including at least one TR emulation, did you? This is (obviously) a 909 emulator, but only the actual kick drum from that machine. Okay, that’s not a lot, you might think, but the 909 kick has backed tens of thousands of dance tracks and there are plenty of controls to shape it into just any incarnation of that sound you can imagine. There are 16 presets, too, if you think you need them.
Features:

Compatibility: macOS and PC, 32/64-bit
Multiple tweaking controls: pitch, accent, decay, tune decay, attack, hold, tune depth, noise decay, distort
Distortion effect
MIDI control
Factory presets

Find out more at Synsonic.
AudioSpillage MiniSpillage

A returning drum favourite and must inclusion is MiniSpillage, a synth/drum plugin. It’s still macOS only, we’re afraid, but an essential download for that platform. It’s a cut-down version of AudioSpillage’s DrumSpillage with three drum pads for kick, hat and hollow drum. It comes with several kits and synth features – LFO, filter, modulation and distortion – to stretch those kit sounds far and wide. It’s been around for aeons, but several updates keep this as one of the best macOS drum/synth freebies.
Features:

Compatibility: macOS (AU), 64-bit
LFO, filter, modulation & distortion
12 exclusive drum models
Classic analogue, physical modelling and FM synthesis

Find out more at Audio Spillage.
Beat Factory Drums

Some of our free drum plugins do dance music, some rock – and Beat Factory Drums is designed to fill in the gaps, since it’s aimed primarily for hip-hop, dubstep and more. It features 10 kits, limited but essential sonic tweaks and hands-on MPC pads. It sounds great and is very well worth the 50MB download, which gives you the kick sounds and a plugin that runs on any system, old or new.
Features:

Compatibility: macOS & Windows/ 32/64-bit
10 drum kits
120 drum hits included

Find out more at Beat Skillz.
Drum Pro

Make no mistake, Drum Pro is unashamedly a shell drum machine to add paid-for kits later, but it does come with 20 kits sampled from nine drum machines (from Roland, Boss, Novation and more) so you get a very decent start, without paying a thing. You get MPC-style pads and basic mixing and while it won’t quite cover all your drumming needs as developers Studio Linked claims from the off – but will with their paid-for packs – it still delivers a great variety of beats, for free.
Features:

Number of voices: 12
Compatibility: macOS and PC, 32/64-bit
Attack, decay, sustain & release
Global ADSR/ reverb

Find out more at Studio Linked.
MeldaProduction MDrummer Small

Melda doesn’t seem to be shouting about MDrummer Small as much as it once did, but you can still download it from the download/archive part of the company’s website. It’s well worth it, featuring hundreds of drum sets, components, multisamples, rhythms and loops and some of the features from the larger, paid-for MDrummer. So it might be worth downloading fast before it (possibly) disappears.
Features:

Compatibility: macOS and Windows
30 drumsets
500MB of samples
400 drumset components
AI engine loads new editable loops (2,500 available)

Find out more at Melda Production.
Manda Audio MT Power Drum Kit 2

It was all getting a little bit too electronic around here, so how about a piece of freeware to rock your world? This will still shake your cones like any TR drum machine, though, because MT Power Drum Kit 2 is all about power sounds, albeit from a pop, rock or metal perspective. You get plenty of kit sounds and groove, fill and rhythm MIDI files to get you up and running. It’s a great real and acoustic option if your world is to machine led.
Features:

Compatibility: macOS and Windows
32/64-bit
Number of voices: 13
1000s of assorted rhythms
In-built compresser
Easy-to-use Composer tool
DAW-like track dashboard
MIDI capability

Find out more at Power Drum Kit.
Jamstix 4 Free
Jamstix 4 Free. Image: Press
This lite version of Rayzoon’s drum modelling instrument has no restrictions that will slow you down – just a smaller content set than the paid version. In VST and AAX formats for Windows only, it has 8 drummers and 21 style models as well as 200 acoustic drum samples. Focusing on the feel and style of a real drummer, it provides 3D models of real drums that sound great when programmed by MIDI or played by hand.
Features:

VST for Windows
Onboard sequencer
Onboard FX
200 drum samples
Can be upgraded to the full version with all content

Find out more at Rayzoon. 
Speedrum Lite
Speedrum Lite. Image: Press
This cool MPC-style sampler instrument comes for macOS, Windows and Linux. Designed to be quick and easy to use with a fast workflow, it provides 16 MPC-style pads onto which you can drag and drop samples, plus swap samples between pads.
There are a couple of filters and mono or poly voice modes, and flexible pad behaviours, including cut and cancel for more advanced performance styles. Edit waveforms inside the plugin and route each pad to one of 16 outputs if required.
Speedrum Lite has support for all major audio formats so you don’t even have to convert files first – just get making beats and loops! Also check out Transperc by the same developer, a transient shaper that pairs well with the instrument.
Features:

16 MPC-style pads
Supports multiple audio file formats
Onboard sample waveform editing
Cut and choke groups for pads
Multiple audio output routing

Find out more at Apisonic Audio. 
Triaz Player
Triaz Player. Image: Press
Triaz Player by Wave Alchemy is a surprisingly fully-featured free version of Triaz, a sample player plugin for macOS and PC. It comes with 4,000 samples and 200 presets and lets you tweak sounds with filters, envelopes, LFOs and other effects. You can import expansion packs, and though some features of the full instrument are disabled in this free version, you are able to export beats by dragging and dropping audio stems, mixes, one-shots or MIDI right into your DAW. While the full version offers more content, this free one has a ton of cool stuff to get you started.
Features:

4,000 samples
200 presets
Mac or PC plugin
Sound tweaking
Drag and drop from plugin to DAW

Find out more at Wave Alchemy. 
BFD Player
BFD Player. Image: Press
BFD is a legendary “real” drum plugin, and the Player version is completely free! With a slick interface based on the paid version, it runs as a plugin or in standalone mode, and the developers have provided a mixture of professional drum kits sorted into separate elements and grooves to get you up and running, making beats in no time. It also supports expansions, should you want to grow your sound set in future.
Though you can play it manually, BFD Player encourages you to use any of the 340 bundled grooves across the different kits to make a backbone for your tracks. Then, use the built-in mixer to tweak your sound, even routing the drum sounds out individually for more processing with your favourite effects plugins.
Features

Plugin or standalone for Mac and PC
340 bundled grooves
Expandable with new packs
Built-in mixer
Kits split by drum element

Find out more at BFD. 
For more buyer’s guides, check here. Looking for more freeware? Head this way.
The post Best free plugins 2025: 14 free drum machines that’ll help you make beats faster appeared first on MusicTech.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick walks back tariff relief on electronicsCommerce Secretary Howard Lutnick walked back the recent reciprocal tariff exemption on select electronics announced in an April 12 bulletin from the United States Customs and Border Protection.On April 13, Lutnick told ABC News that the reciprocal tariff exemption was temporary until the administration established a sector tariff regime for semiconductor products, which includes phones, graphics processors, and computing chips in a "month or two." Lutnick added:"President Trump has called out pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and autos. He called them sector tariffs, and those are not available for negotiation. They are just going to be part of making sure we ensure core national security items are made in this country.""We can't be relying on China for fundamental things we need. Our medicines and our semiconductors need to be built in America," Lutnick continued. The official also said he was confident that the US and China would arrive at a trade deal through negotiations.The emphasis on national security and onshoring critical industries could signal that the trade tariffs will be a long-term geostrategic policy and not simply a short-term negotiation tactic to make US exports more attractive, as some analysts have suggested.The Volatility S&P Index (VIX), a measure of the S&P stock index’s volatility, remains elevated amid macroeconomic uncertainty. Source: TradingView Related: Bitcoin ‘decouples,’ stocks lose $3.5T amid Trump tariff war and Fed warning of ‘higher inflation’Trade war heightens volatility and sends markets tumblingTrump's trade tariffs crashed the stock and crypto markets, wiping away trillions in shareholder value as investors dumped riskier assets on fears of a lengthy trade war between the United States and its trading partners.In an April 10 X Post, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas cited the SPY US Equity History Volume chart as evidence that the S&P 500 stock market index is now more volatile than Bitcoin (BTC).According to the analyst, the S&P 500 Index hit a volatility level of 74 in April, compared to Bitcoin's 71.Stocks and crypto pumped following rumors of the Trump administration initiating a 90-day reciprocal tariff pause. Approximately $2 trillion was pumped into stocks on rumors of softer trade policies.Much of this value was then wiped away when Trump claimed that rumors of a 90-day pause were false and returned once the Trump administration did, in fact, issue a reciprocal tariff pause in the following days.Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again

Access to future AI models in OpenAI’s API may require a verified IDOpenAI may soon require organizations to complete an ID verification process in order to access certain future AI models, according to a support page published to the company’s website last week. The verification process, called Verified Organization, is “a new way for developers to unlock access to the most advanced models and capabilities on the […]

3D Printed Milling Machine is Solid as a RockThere are no shortage of CNC machines in the DIY space these days, but sometimes you just need to do things your own way. That’s what [Chris Borges] decided when he put together this rock-solid, concrete-filled CNC milling machine.
The concrete body of this machine is housed inside a 3D printed shell, which makes for an attractive skin as well as a handy mold. Within the concrete is a steel skeleton, with the ‘rebar’ being made of threaded rods and a length of square tubing to hold the main column. You can see the concrete being poured in around the rebar in the image, or watch it happen in the build video embedded below.
In goes the concrete, up goes the rigidity.All three axes slide on linear rails, and are attached to lead screws driven by the omnipresent NEMA 17 steppers. The air-cooled spindle, apparently the weak-point of the design, is attached to a pivoting counterweight, but make no mistake: it is on rails. All-in-all, it looks like a very rigid, and very capable design — [Chris] shows it cutting through aluminum quite nicely.
Given that [Chris] has apparently never used a true mill before, this design came out remarkably well. Between the Bill of Materials and 45 page step-by-step assembly instructions, he’s also done a fantastic job documenting the build for anyone who wants to put one together for themselves.
This isn’t the first concrete-filled project we’ve highlighted from [Chris], you may remember seeing his lathe on these pages. It certainly isn’t the first CNC mill we’ve covered, either.

GIK: The Basics of Room Acoustics If you’re struggling to get your head around acoustic treatment, it’s well worth taking a look at The Basics of Room Acoustics, an informative video produced by the experts at GIK Acoustics. 

Senator Tim Scott is confident market structure bill passed by AugustSenator Tim Scott, the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, recently said that he expects a crypto market bill to be passed into law by August 2025.The chairman also noted the Senate Banking Committee's advancement of the GENIUS Act, a comprehensive stablecoin regulatory bill, in March 2025, as evidence that the committee prioritizes crypto policy. In a statement to Fox News, Scott said:"We must innovate before we regulate — allowing innovation in the digital asset space to happen here at home is critical to American economic dominance across the globe."Scott's timeline for a crypto market structure bill lines up with expectations from Kristin Smith, CEO of the crypto industry advocacy group Blockchain Association, of market structure and stablecoin legislation being passed into law by August.The Trump administration has emphasized that comprehensive crypto regulations are central to its plans for protecting the value of the US dollar and establishing the country as a global leader in digital assets by attracting investment into US-based crypto firms.Senator Tim Scott highlights the Senate Banking Committee’s goals and accomplishments in 2025. Source: Fox NewsRelated: Atkins becomes next SEC chair: What’s next for the crypto industrySupport for comprehensive crypto regulations is bipartisanUS lawmakers and officials expect clear crypto policies to be established and signed into law sometime in 2025 with bipartisan support from Congress.Speaking at the Digital Assets Summit in New York City, on March 18, Democrat Representative Ro Khanna said he expects both the market structure and stablecoin bills to pass this year.The Democrat lawmaker added that there are about 70-80 other representatives in the party who understand the importance of passing clear digital asset regulations in the United States.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, pictured left, President Donald Trump in the center, and crypto czar David Sacks, pictured right, at the White House Crypto Summit. Source: The White HouseKhanna emphasized that fellow Democrats support dollar-pegged stablecoins due to the role of dollar tokens in expanding demand for the US dollar worldwide through the internet.Bo Hines, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, also spoke at the conference and predicted that stablecoin legislation would be passed into law within 60 days.Hines highlighted that establishing US dominance in the digital asset space is a goal with widespread bipartisan support in Washington DC.Magazine: How crypto laws are changing across the world in 2025

Apple’s ‘Mythic Quest’ is ending with an updated Season 4 finale“Mythic Quest,” the Apple TV+ workplace comedy about the making of a popular online roleplaying game, is ending after four seasons. A new version of the show’s fourth season finale — first aired on March 26, and now the de facto series finale — will premiere on Apple TV+ next week, with a new ending. […]

Vibe Check: False Packages a New LLM Security Risk?Lots of people swear by large-language model (LLM) AIs for writing code. Lots of people swear at them. Still others may be planning to exploit their peculiarities, according to [Joe Spracklen] and other researchers at USTA. At least, the researchers have found a potential exploit in ‘vibe coding’.
Everyone who has used an LLM knows they have a propensity to “hallucinate”– that is, to go off the rails and create plausible-sounding gibberish. When you’re vibe coding, that gibberish is likely to make it into your program. Normally, that just means errors. If you are working in an environment that uses a package manager, however (like npm in Node.js, or PiPy in Python, CRAN in R-studio) that plausible-sounding nonsense code may end up calling for a fake package.
A clever attacker might be able to determine what sort of false packages the LLM is hallucinating, and inject them as a vector for malicious code. It’s more likely than you think– while CodeLlama was the worst offender, the most accurate model tested (ChatGPT4) still generated these false packages at a rate of over 5%. The researchers were able to come up with a number of mitigation strategies in their full paper, but this is a sobering reminder that an AI cannot take responsibility. Ultimately it is up to us, the programmers, to ensure the integrity and security of our code, and of the libraries we include in it.
We just had a rollicking discussion of vibe coding, which some of you seemed quite taken with. Others agreed that ChatGPT is the worst summer intern ever.  Love it or hate it, it’s likely this won’t be the last time we hear of security concerns brought up by this new method of programming.
Special thanks to [Wolfgang Friedrich] for sending this into our tip line.

SlapAsSound VoXoV vol.02 – Human Vocal VSTIntroducing VoXoV vol.02 – Human Vocal VST. I'm excited to present VoXoV vol.02, the second release in my new series of vocal-based instruments. This VST is crafted to bring an entirely fresh layer of human vocal textures into your music, giving your productions a new depth and vibe. Whether you're creating cinematic scores, electronic beats, or anything in between, VoXoV vol.02 will introduce a distinctive vocal element that enriches your sound design. Unique Vocal Sounds. High-Quality Samples. Easy to Use. Works with Any DAW. Sparks Creativity Collaborative Effort with FOX. To make this project a reality, I teamed up with FOX, whose extensive experience and exceptional skills have elevated the sound quality of this VST. Thanks to his input, every sample has been meticulously engineered to bring depth and soul to your tracks. Limited-Time Release - so grab it while you can! Get it here: https://www.slapassound.com/voxov-plus Enjoy exploring this new vocal universe, and stay tuned for more releases coming soon. Read More