How a Mastering Engineer Works With (and Without) AIThis week, Ari is joined by Daniel Rowland mastering engineer, producer, and tech innovator to discuss mastering, the future of music and AI.

Milk & Honey expands in UK, adding Bigfoot Music Management and clientsAs a result of the pact, Jeremy Ford, Adam Beyer’s longtime manager, becomes Senior Vice President of Electronic for Milk & Honey globally
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Wyoming's Timber Canyon Studios Opens with Solid State Logic ORIGIN ConsoleAccording to news on Tuesday, "Veteran engineer, mixer, producer and musician Jim Roberts and his wife and business partner, Marie, have launched their new private music production facility, Timber Canyon Studios, in the Laramie Mountains of southeastern Wyoming. The studio’s control room is centred around a Solid State Logic ORIGIN 32-channel analogue mixing console and additionally features U Series DAW controllers, Fusion and THE BUS+ analogue processing units, as well as SSL 500 Series modules."

"The couple, who have known each other since high school, lived and worked in New York for 46 years before relocating their studio to Colorado in 2012. Several years ago, inspired in part by the famed Caribou Ranch in Colorado, they began planning a destination studio that could similarly attract major artists to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The 2,100-square-foot recording studio, designed by renowned acoustician Sam Berkow, incorporates windows throughout the spacious tracking space and control room that offer expansive views of the mountains and herds of pronghorn that roam the 35-acre property."

ORIGIN: pushing the frontier of hybrid workflow"Jim Roberts, whose credits include work with Kansas, Steve Walsh, John Entwistle and Leslie West, among others, jumped at the chance to replace his SSL Matrix with the new ORIGIN console."

“I work in the hybrid world, but I come from an analogue world, and it felt very much like an SSL 4000. It was the right time, right price point, right feature set and right kind of routing, with an eye towards the hybrid workflow that I enjoy now.”

At Timber Canyon, he continues, “I wanted to mix analogue and do the recall in Pro Tools, and I wanted to have a tracking studio.” Having worked on various SSL analogue desks over the years, he says, “I still think there's tremendous value when you're tracking to be able to put your hands on everything at once, including the headphone mixes and the EQ — and ORIGIN has the EQ flavour you want on a board - SSL’s ‘242’ black knob design.”

A host of tools from Solid State LogicRoberts keeps all his SSL audio tools close at hand. “The ORIGIN’s centre section is configurable, so I chose to put the UF8 8-fader DAW controller in the centre section, directly above the analogue stereo group faders. That’s brilliant, because you're right in the sweet spot and you can control both legs of the journey, analogue and digital. And I've got the UF1 DAW controller on a rolling cart, right where I would once have had the tape machine auto locator, off to my right hand. With the integrated UF8 and UF1 directly on hand, I really don’t feel the need for a fully automated console. Then I have THE BUS+ and the Fusion in the left sidecar of the console with a 500 series ‘lunch box’ with two 611DYN modules.”

Choosing an SSL console for its sound quality is a given, but beyond the sonics, Roberts says, “Taking away all those physical switches that you had on the older SSL consoles, all those points of failure, and using logic and a digital matrix to control the analog routing is brilliant and is also infinite in terms of how you can group things and bus things. You can change up your workflow. The number of possible permutations far exceeds anything that I currently do, but it’s very reassuring knowing the console will allow me to take my workflow in any direction I like.”

He also appreciates SSL’s thoughtfulness in maintaining a vintage feel and retaining SSL’s console design legacy with the ORIGIN, while also enabling it to integrate seamlessly into today’s hybrid workflow. “The Unity gain button on each channel, on both sets of faders, makes it easier to break out stems from Pro Tools. A quick button push and everything's at 0 dB, and you can do that across 64 faders if you want to. To me, that shows that they're paying attention to modern workflows,” he says.

Realising the ultimate vision with no boundariesThe past three years, building the studio, a home and accommodation for two or three visitors, has been hard work. “But this was the ultimate vision, where we had no physical boundaries,” he says, noting that his previous studios were retrofits into existing spaces. He and his wife conferred with several architects and acousticians. “Sam sent his proposal, and we looked at each other and said, ‘Let's make this investment.’ Because, A, we want to get it right and, B, it's going to bring an air of legitimacy to the space.”

Laramie is well located for anyone travelling to the region, Roberts notes, with Denver Airport just a two-hour drive away or a short hop from Laramie’s regional airport. “We're just a few miles from the University of Wyoming and its music department, which was another reason why we picked this location. It's a big music town, with lots of live venues. There's plenty of music going on nearby, let alone regionally or nationally.”

Meanwhile, following the facility’s soft open in September, Roberts and a group of friends are now producing a third full-length record of the band they put together during the COVID pandemic. “That was just a little passion project. We're not going to tour or gig. I also have a second personal project with some friends of mine from around the country. We record cover tunes, and I license them. We put the songs out just for fun; it’s music therapy, which we probably all need!”The post Wyoming's Timber Canyon Studios Opens with Solid State Logic ORIGIN Console first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Universal Audio update UAFX pedals Universal Audio have built up quite the selection of guitar pedals since their UAFX line-up was launched in 2021, and thanks to a free update, the whole family has just gained a range of new features.

Soundtheory's Black Friday Sale This year’s Black Friday sees Soundtheory offer the biggest discounts to date on their popular Gullfoss intelligent equaliser and Kraftur loudness enhancer plug-ins.

Have a Slice of Bumble Berry Pi[Samcervantes] wanted a cyberdeck. Specifically, he wanted a Clockwork Pi uConsole, but didn’t want to wait three months for it. There are plenty of DIY options, but many of them are difficult to build. So [Sam] did the logical thing: he designed his own. The Bumble Berry Pi is the result.
The design criteria? A tactile keyboard was a big item. Small enough to fit in a pants pocket, but big enough to be useful. What’s more is he wanted to recycle some old Pi 3Bs instead of buying new hardware.

The result looks good. There’s a 4.3″ touch screen, a nice keyboard, and enough battery to run all day. If you already have the Pi, you are looking at about $60 and two 3D-printed parts. There is some soldering, but nothing that should put off the average Hackaday reader.
Does it run Doom? From the photo on the GitHub repo, yes, yes, it does. This would be a fun build, although we have to admit, the beauty of doing a build like this is making it your own. Maybe your pants have differently shaped pockets, we don’t know.
Either way, though, you can get some ideas from [Sam] or just clone his already good-looking deck. If we’re being honest, we are addicted to multiple screens. Plus, we want a built-in radio.

Kulshan Studios City Techno Soundset for Moog Sub Phatty59 driving Techno presets, compatible with the Moog Sub Phatty and Subsequent 25 analog hardware synth. This soundbank is 100% Techno-oriented, which means no weird clangs, bleeps, effects, drums, shrieks, or cheesy 70s funk leads. The patches in City come straight out of songs by big name artists of the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. So this soundset is designed to fully exploit the fat Moog sound to its max. Patches in City are based on sounds from songs by the likes of Argy & Goom Gum, Anyma, Chris Avantgarde, Stephan Bodzin, Tale Of Us, KAS:ST, CamelPhat, ARTBAT, DJ Andy De Gage, Innealla, Boris Brejcha, Luigi Tozzi, Dycide, Tender H, Aura Fresh, Franky Wah, Circuit Breaker, Emmanuel Top, MRAK, Reestar, Ekstendia, Slownoise, and many many more. Only FX used on these sounds outside the onboard FX was Virus TI2 reverb and delay on the plucks, leads, and acid sounds. Sounds in this preset pack are suitable for the Melodic Techno, Deep Techno, Dub Techno, and Minimal Techno genres, and are organized by category into Leads, Plucks, Pads, Acid sounds, and Basses, for quick reference. All patches are royalty-free and delivered instantly via email as a 24-hour download link. Requirements: Moog Sub Phatty, or Subsequent 25 synthesizer. Read More

SoftBank’s Nvidia sale rattles market, raises questionsWall Street can’t help but wonder: does Son see something right now that others do not?

This orchestral library is totally free courtesy of Spitfire Audio – download yours nowSpitfire Audio has launched its “largest free sample library” yet, Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover (SSO Discover).
Essentially a lite, free-to-use version of the brand’s best-selling Spitfire Symphony Orchestra, this library, recorded at the legendary AIR Lyndhurst Studios in London, features 44 curated instruments and 73 techniques, including strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, piano and more.

READ MORE: I’ve fallen in love with ribbon mics all over again with Warm Audio’s Fen-tone

The launch follows 2020’s BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover – a free sample library utilising sounds from the BBC Symphony Orchestra – which now boasts over 1 million users. Like BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover, the new Discover pack brings “professional-quality” orchestral samples to music creators, totally free.

As Spitfire Audio explains, Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover offers professional audio output, and is designed for seamless use with Native Instruments Kontakt Player.
In addition, Spitfire Audio has partnered with ThinkSpace Education on an ‘Introduction to Writing for Orchestra’ free course, which helps composers get started with orchestral composition using SSO Discover.
“We’re really excited to get these high-quality orchestral sounds into the hands of as many music creators as possible – so everyone can experience the joy of having these incredible musicians contributing to your tracks,” says Spitfire Audio co-founder Paul Thomson.
“Having access to the full dynamic range and vibrato control gives you the full musical experience of Spitfire Symphony Orchestra – and a taste of the huge range and level of articulation detail that the full library has.”
Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover is available to download now totally free.
Learn more at Spitfire Audio.
The post This orchestral library is totally free courtesy of Spitfire Audio – download yours now appeared first on MusicTech.

Yes, “Great Things” Really Do “Start in Little Rooms.”A simple OpEd reflection on Andre 3000's impromptu statement, shared Sunday night in Outkast's Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction acceptance speech.
The post Yes, “Great Things” Really Do “Start in Little Rooms.” appeared first on Hypebot.

Everything You Need to Know About Playlist Pitching in 2025Let's help you understand the ins and outs of getting placed on streaming playlists in 2025.
The post Everything You Need to Know About Playlist Pitching in 2025 appeared first on Hypebot.

Crates allows you to create cross-streaming platform playlists all in one convenient appEver wish you could listen to all your YouTube, Spotify and Bandcamp playlists all in one place? Well, now you can. Regardless of your preferred streaming service, Crates is a brand new app which brings all of your music together – and that includes your personal local files and downloads, too.
Designed to make music listening more streamlined and convenient, Crates allows you to listen to all of your playlists in one nifty app. Whether you use Apple Music, Discogs, SoundCloud, or something else, Crates is able to access the main streaming services. It’s a quick and easy way to navigate through your favourite tunes, with the ability to create cross-platform playlists without restriction.

READ MORE: I broke up with Spotify — it was hard work with a huge payoff

While Crates imports your playlists from streaming services, it also allows you to listen to personal files on your computer. That means you can pop in any local MP3, FLAC, AAC, WAV or AIFF files into your playlists – and mobile sync abilities mean you can seamlessly stream any of those local files on the go, too.
When creating playlists, Crates keeps it simple and intuitive. The app automatically sources artwork, as well as any genre, artist or label information it can find. Crates also calculates BPM, key and waveforms, adding some extra visuals to your listening experience.
Above all else, the Crates team hopes that the platform creates a strong, supportive music community. This is due to the ability to search through Gems, Crates’ own discovery and recommendation system that helps users find new music that will fit their personal taste.

Whether you’re sharing a rare, underrated, or previously unreleased track, Gems offer a totally new way of sharing music. Alongside the standard tags, users can add a small blurb to really sell their Gems, and the community can either upvote or downvote a song, helping or hindering its spread throughout the Crates community. Gems can be posted Post rare, upcoming or underrated tunes, complete with tags and a personal blurb
As Crates puts it, Gems are a way of building an “intentional, community-powered way of engaging with music”, prioritising the values of “artists, curators, and listeners” alike.
Crates is currently in Public Beta, and its available to download for Mac, iOS, and Windows. An Android app is coming soon. While the app is free, syncing abilities and access to the Gems community are only available for paid Supporters.
To find out more and download the app, head to Crates.
The post Crates allows you to create cross-streaming platform playlists all in one convenient app appeared first on MusicTech.

KV331 Audio offers the iPad version of SynthMaster 2 for FREE for until November 17
KV331 Audio is giving away its flagship synth app, SynthMaster 2 for iPad, for a limited time. The SynthMaster 2 app typically costs $19.99 on the Apple App Store, but you can download it for free until November 17, 2025. SynthMaster, in its various forms, is a synth that might still be somewhat underrated, and [...]
View post: KV331 Audio offers the iPad version of SynthMaster 2 for FREE for until November 17

Messy DAW projects? SessionDock is here to help you stay organised – with cross-DAW compatibilityLet’s face it – when you’re in the creative flow, your DAW can become a total mess. Luckily, SessionDock is here to save the day. Available on macOS and as an iOS app, SessionDock is designed to help you rein in a chaotic project, even helping you stay organised across multiple DAWs.
Whether you’re working with Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, Pro Tools, or using a mix of DAWs, SessionDock brings all of your sessions into one clean, central library. The tool essentially provides you with a clean and clear ‘snapshot of your creative process’, allowing you to revisit a project without having to open each individual DAW.

READ MORE: RipX is an AI-powered DAW with augmented reality – and it’s now available on iOS

In a brand-new update, SessionDock has also added the ability to put timestamped comments on your mix. Waveform Notes work in a way that’s similar SoundCloud’s option to comment on tracks, yet it transforms this public feature into a private, convenient way of precisely noting your ideas down throughout the creative process.
Again, like SoundCloud, these notes sync up during playback, appearing in a handy Notes panel beneath your track. And that’s on top of the pre-existing ability to add artwork, general notes and customised tags to tracks, meaning you can search through your projects with ease.

The iOS app serves as a perfect ‘companion’ to the desktop DAW. Thanks to the app being synced up to your desktop projects, it allows you to play tracks in your car through Apple CarPlay. It’s the perfect solution for busy producers on the move, as it’s easier than ever to listen to your mixes and brainstorm new ideas on the go.
Whether you’re keen to keep tabs on your demos, neaten up your project folders or simply want to track your revisions in the run up to a final project, SessionDock could be the perfect answer to your prayers. And it’s available for free, with the ability to handle unlimited desktop projects. However, those keen to explore the mobile sync options will have to pay for SessionDock Pro.
SessionDock is available to download now from the App Store. For more information, head to SessionDock.

The post Messy DAW projects? SessionDock is here to help you stay organised – with cross-DAW compatibility appeared first on MusicTech.

I broke up with Spotify — it was hard work with a huge payoffI’ve been ready to leave Spotify for years, but like a bad relationship, I limped onto my subscription for far too long before finally calling it quits. For me, the signal to finally abandon ship came with the recent wave of artists pulling their music off the platform in a boycott of founder Daniel Ek’s odious investments in AI weaponry.
I took the leap. I broke up with the troubled platform. In a flash, the sum total of all recorded music disappeared from my devices, and I was left to date around with some alternative streaming providers. Questions swam around my head, had I made a mistake? Could I really find anything that replaces the weighted blanket of personalised algorithms and infinite content? Should I go crawling back to my Swedish music masters? Just thinking back over Spotify’s many controversies gave me the answer I needed.

READ MORE: Daniel Ek just stepped down as CEO of Spotify — now what?

The red flags that pushed me to make this drastic change were obvious long ago. Spotify had spent 17 years running its business at a loss; the company had been found guilty of commissioning no-name generic music for its curated playlists; Daniel Ek repeatedly insulted music makers; and the vast majority of artists are unable to make a living off Spotify’s payment model.
Then there is Spotify’s beleaguered interface, which clearly shows, in my opinion, that it is no longer a music-first company. Take the introduction of video clips: at first, there was a natural reason to believe a fresh update to the interface might enhance the music listening experience. For all we know, it could have been a real MTV moment that put music videos back into the limelight. But instead, Spotify followed the herd and implemented a ‘carousel-of-clips’ style of video playback. It’s entertaining but ultimately feels a lot like the disposable video content you see on TikTok or Instagram.
When I want to listen to music, I don’t want to be flashed with looping videos and graphics that spin and glitch. I want to get to the music I’m looking for without having to duck and weave past advertisements for Countdowns, events or an AI DJ. All these distractions had me questioning if I even owned a premium subscription or if I had somehow been downgraded to the ad-supported tier without realising.
Beyond the interface, there’s also the glut of non-music content. Spotify has increasingly allowed audiobooks to creep into the music app. Believing it to be a lucrative means of making profits, the company has embarked on a hubristic goal to “grow the entire publishing industry”.
The common denominator between audiobooks and music is, yes, audio, but these are two separate industries with vastly different licensing, rights and payment structures. More to the point, and as many critics point out, if you only listen to music using your Spotify premium subscription, you are still subsidising authors like Dan Brown while siphoning money away from the likes of Daft Punk, since they’re both bundled in the same plan.
As if the publishing industry wasn’t big enough to chew, Spotify has now partnered with the screentime behemoth, Netflix, to bring popular video podcasts to both platforms. A smattering of non-music-related offerings in the field of True Crime, Pop Culture and Sports will be available in the app, with exclusive in-house productions in the pipeline. If Spotify wanted to become an ‘everything’ app, then I’d rather jump ship with all the other artists who are leaving.
The process of actually leaving the platform, however, was itself an obstacle course. There were screens asking if I was sure I wanted to leave. There were reminders that I would be bombarded with advertisements once I was no longer Premium. There were even thirsty discounts on offer if I would just stick around one more month. And after finally convincing Spotify that I really did want to go, I was rewarded with a meme-worthy playlist that informed me, ‘If you leave us now, you’ll take away the biggest part of us,’ alongside an AI-generated image of a sad dog. How cute.
A free agent at last, I began shopping around with a few aims in mind: I wanted high-quality audio, better payouts to artists and a clean conscience that I wasn’t supporting ethically dubious financial investments on behalf of the company or CEO. On this last point, I was sick of giving any more money to Jeff Bezos, so that ruled out Amazon Music. As for quality, Tidal and Apple Music are strong contenders, both offering lossless audio formats and resolution rates of up to 24-bit/192 kHz. In the end, however, I opted for Qobuz, a company that combines high-res audio with royalties payouts that are roughly five times higher than the market average, and, particularly important for me, a very strong focus on human-curated playlists and music discovery.
After signing up, however, a funny thing started to happen. No longer content with just streaming music, I found myself doing something I hadn’t done since my early 20s: buying albums. Partially, this was down to the gaps in Qobuz’s catalogue, which doesn’t feature some of the indie acts I want to support. Patching over these gaps in my music collection led me to the doorstep of online music stores like Bandcamp and Beatport, and to offline music players like the revitalised Winamp and my favourite lightweight option, MusicBee.
Building my offline digital library required careful strategising. First and foremost, I prioritised buying obscure albums that I couldn’t find on my music streaming app. Knowing that underground artists receive next to nothing in royalties made it even more important that I buy their records and send the profits directly to the artists. There’s also a big difference between paying a subscription and buying the music outright. Similar to buying a book instead of loaning it out from the library, purchasing music felt more meaningful. Knowing that I owned these tracks forever gave them a non-disposable quality; I listened repeatedly and deeply, and gave them a special value in my day-to-day life.
I didn’t make my life easier by leaving Spotify. It’s a lot harder to search for music in multiple places and switching between streaming music and offline collections – across multiple devices at that – is not what anyone would call seamless. But nor is it easy digging through record crates, yet it’s something that still gets music fans up early on record store day, to hunt through piles of music, for hours on end. There is satisfaction and joy in buying music, collecting, and arranging tracks in your library, and discovering new music through other humans, as opposed to accepting the suggestions of sterile computer algorithms.
I take one look at my imperfect, janky, music listening system, cobbled together with constituent digital parts, and I feel connected to the music community in a far greater way than I ever did before.
Was it frictionless, easier or cheaper? Absolutely not. In countless ways, large and small, I have to work harder to be a music fan. But was it worth it? Absolutely. I now feel like I’m doing right by the artists I care about and not tacitly endorsing the schemes of billionaires for market domination. I regularly discover brilliant new indie artists, and there’s no soulless AI steering my music tastes. So, in the only way that Spotify seems to understand, let me say it through a playlist: breaking up is hard to do, but it was time to get away. I don’t love you anymore, so, walk on by, because we are never ever getting back together.
The post I broke up with Spotify — it was hard work with a huge payoff appeared first on MusicTech.