MDC is building a surgical robot that operates inside an MRIMRIs are an indispensable tool for surgeons, though the technology certainly has its limitations. Take, for instance, surgeons using the machines to guide their procedures. The current process entails putting the patient into a machine to get an image, before pulling them out to advance a needle one centimeter at a time. It’s a time-consuming […]
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US Treasury strategy for financial inclusion mentions digital assetsLael Brainard credited Vice President Kamala Harris, who is campaigning to be the next US President, with helping expand “access to capital, credit, and economic opportunity.”

Custom Fan Controller For Otherwise Fanless PCsMost of us using desktop computers, and plenty of us on laptops, have some sort of fan or pump installed in our computer to remove heat and keep our machines running at the most optimum temperature. That’s generally a good thing for performance, but comes with a noise pollution cost. It’s possible to build fanless computers, though, which are passively cooled by using larger heat sinks with greater thermal mass, or by building more efficient computers, or both. But sometimes even fanless designs can benefit from some forced air, so [Sasa] built this system for cooling fanless systems with fans.
The main advantage of a system like this is that the fans on an otherwise fanless system remain off when not absolutely necessary, keeping ambient noise levels to a minimum. [Sasa] does have a few computers with fans, and this system helps there as well. Each fan module is WiFi-enabled, allowing for control of each fan on the system to be set up and controlled from a web page. It also can control 5V and 12V fans automatically with no user input, and can run from any USB power source, so it’s not necessary to find a USB-PD-compatible source just to run a small fan.
Like his previous project, this version is built to easily integrate with scripting and other third-party software, making it fairly straightforward to configure in a home automation setup or with any other system that is monitoring a temperature. It doesn’t have to be limited to a computer, either; [Sasa] runs one inside a server cabinet that monitors the ambient temperature in the cabinet, but it could be put to use anywhere else a fan is needed. Perhaps even a hydroponic setup.

Chris Brown and Drake sued for at least $5m over alleged copyright infringement on ‘No Guidance’'No Guidance' has been streamed more than 1 billion times on Spotify, and viewed more than 480 million times on YouTube
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Guitar Center and Martin Guitars to host “An Afternoon with Chris Martin | The Legacy of Martin & Co.”WHO: Guitar Center and Martin Guitars, hosting “An Afternoon with Chris Martin | The Legacy of Martin & Co.,” featuring Christian Frederick Martin IV, known as “Chris” (the executive chairman of the world-renowned C. F. Martin & Co.), in collaboration/conversation with artist and Martin brand ambassador Craig Thatcher.

WHAT: The event will showcase up to a dozen specially selected Martin Guitars from Chris’s personal collection at the Martin Guitar Museum in Nazareth, PA. Founded in 1833 in New York City, C.F. Martin & Co. has been making the world’s finest acoustic guitars for nearly 200 years. For this special talk in association with the Guitar Center, Chris will be sharing stories about Martin Guitar's deep history with Country Music, as well as personal anecdotes from his 35 years at the helm of this iconic American brand. Audience members will get to hear the priceless instruments played by Martin clinician and singer/songwriter Craig Thatcher, along with Q&A and autograph signing.

A few of Martin guitars that Chris and Craig will be showcasing during the event include Joan Baez 0-45JB, Jimmie Rodgers 000-45JR, Gene Autrey D-45S, Hank Williams D-28HW, D-11E Rock The Vote and many more!

WHEN: Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, 3:00 p.m. CST

WHERE:           Guitar Center Nashville721 Thompson Ln, Nashville, TN 37204Nashville, TN 37204

Contact media@guitarcenter.com to RSVP and for additional media queriesThe post Guitar Center and Martin Guitars to host “An Afternoon with Chris Martin | The Legacy of Martin & Co.” first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

HYBE’s CEO just issued an apology to K-Pop artists, fans and rival labels amid a torrent of controversies from leaked internal documents. What’s going on?Disparaging comments about certain K-pop stars have angered fans, while other revelations have piqued the interest of regulators
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Another Commodore Portable We Never (Quite) ReceivedThe story of Commodore computers is one of some truly great machines for their time, and of the truly woeful marketing that arguably spelled their doom. But there’s another Commodore computing story, that of the machines we never received, many of which came close enough to production  that they might have made it.
[Old VCR] has the story of one of these, and it’s a portable. It’s not a C64 like the luggable which did emerge, neither is it the legendary LCD portable prototype in the possession of our Hackaday colleague [Bil Herd]. Instead it’s a palmtop branded under licence from Toshiba, and since it’s a rare device even its home country of Japan the article gives us perhaps the only one we’ll ever see with either badge.
The Commodore HHC-4 was announced at Winter CES 1983, and since it was never seen again it’s aroused some curiosity among enthusiasts. The article goes to some lengths to cross-reference the visible features and deduce that it’s in fact a Toshiba Pasopia Mini, a typical palmtop computer of the era with not much in the way of processing power, a small alphanumeric display, and a calculator-style QWERTY keyboard. We’re treated to a teardown of a Toshiba unit and its dock, revealing some uncertainty about which processor architecture lurks in those Toshiba custom chips.
Looking at the magazine reviews and adverts it seems as though Commodore may have had some machines with their branding on even if they never sold them, so there exists the tantalizing possibility of one still lurking forgotten in the possession of a former staffer. We can hope.
If Commodore history interests you, you really should read [Bil]’s autobiographical account of the company in the 1980s.

Wes Audio unveil Pandora 500-series module The latest addition to Wes Audio's ng line-up is a three-slot 500-series module that offers something that’s fairly scarce in the analogue world: multi-band compression.

50,000 Oasis tickets CANCELLED, Live Nation endorses resale price capIn the latest proof that concert ticketing is broken more than 50,000 Oasis fans will have the tickets they bought to the band's reunion gigs cancelled. 
The post 50,000 Oasis tickets CANCELLED, Live Nation endorses resale price cap appeared first on Hypebot.

iZotope Neutron 5 has arrived Neutron 5 promises to kit users out with everything they need for mixing, and introduces some powerful new modules alongside an improved Mix Assistant feature.

Essential Artist Accounts to claim before you release musicGet your music release off to a strong start by claiming and optimizing your essential artists accounts aon major streaming and music platforms. This guide covers the must-have tools and accounts to boost your track's reach and make a lasting impact from day one.
The post Essential Artist Accounts to claim before you release music appeared first on Hypebot.

DistroKid Union ramps up allegations: ‘No non-union staff’ laid offThe Union representing DistroKid workers has shared added new details and allegations in its fight with the world's largest d.i.y. digital music distributor.
The post DistroKid Union ramps up allegations: ‘No non-union staff’ laid off appeared first on Hypebot.

Run outboard as plug-ins with Freqport FreqInOut FO1 Freqport's second release makes it possible to turn any piece of analogue outboard into a DAW plug-in.

AI mastering vs human engineers: Benn Jordan conducts massive study to find which reigns supreme – but LANDR is disqualified“A bad master can easily ruin an otherwise great song,” says YouTuber, producer and content creator Benn Jordan. “And that’s because it’s a much overlooked creative process that’s always been a very necessary part of recorded music.”
He’s right – mastering is key in any music intended to be released publicly. Mastering engineers are responsible for enhancing the final sound quality of a track, optimising it for consistent playback across devices, and much more. But professional engineers don’t come cheap.

READ MORE: Benn Jordan “needs to hear” Sexual Eruption by Snoop Dogg during soundchecks

“A good, experienced mastering engineer can be pretty expensive,” Jordan explains. “I’ve personally charged between $1,500 and $2,500 for albums I’ve mastered in the past.”
Naturally, when an essential part of the process like mastering costs a lot, other solutions – like AI mastering platforms and plugins – crop up to allow those with smaller budgets to participate. But are they really a substitute for a proper, experienced, human engineer? Benn Jordan takes a look in his latest video.

In an impressively vast experiment, Jordan handed a mixdown of his 2017 track Starlight to a selection of AI mastering plugins, online mastering platforms and professional mastering engineers, randomised the results, and asked 472 people to listen to and rate them all in a “giant double-blind study”.
The study originally consisted of 12 semi-finalists in total – both AI and human – which were then culled down to seven finalists as Jordan didn’t want to subject all 472 people to listening to the same song 12 times. Intriguingly, LANDR, one of the most popular online mastering services, didn’t produce a good enough master, and was disqualified.
The seven finalists placed, in descending order: Native Instruments Ozone 11 in 7th, then Kits.ai, Compound Audio’s Stereo Mastering, Ozone + Neutron, and open-source site Matchering 2.0 in 3rd.
As you might have guessed, both top spots went to human mastering engineers: Ed the Soundman in 2nd, and the winner, Max Hosinger, in 1st place.
See more from Benn Jordan via his official YouTube channel.
The post AI mastering vs human engineers: Benn Jordan conducts massive study to find which reigns supreme – but LANDR is disqualified appeared first on MusicTech.

Louis Cole on producing his album, ‘nothing’Louis Cole’s musical vision is endless.
Whether he’s splicing videos of himself playing different instruments on YouTube, splitting creative duties with fellow polymath Genevieve Artadi for their collaborative project KNOWER, or playing drums (his primary instrument) with the late jazz prodigy Austin Peralta, Cole never stops trying new things.

READ MORE: How Hollywood Scoring built a scoring stage for the modern movie business

But his latest project is the most ambitious in his career. It’s an album he wrote for the legendary Dutch pop orchestra, Metropole Orkest, and despite it being his most complex and involved work yet, the album is simply entitled nothing.
“I like the concept of nothing. It’s cool, and it makes you think,” Cole says before describing a documentary he recently viewed wherein scientists theorise that eventually, the universe will literally become nothing. “The only light and energy in the universe will be black holes colliding, and then, after that, it’s an era of scattered photons. Then eventually those die out and it’s actually nothing. That’s fucking tight.”
Before that day comes in 20-30 billion years, Cole wants to experiment with his music as much as possible, making him a perfect match for the Metropole Orkest and Jules Buckley.
Buckley is the orchestra conductor on nothing, and he’s also brought pop styles to orchestral forums numerous times in the past. He was the conductor on Starship Syncopation, the joint album between the Metropole Orkest and the prominent Vulf-signed guitarist Cory Wong. Buckley was also the conductor when the legendary DJ and broadcaster, Pete Tong led his Ibiza Classics performance alongside London’s Heritage Orchestra.
So, when Buckley approached Cole to write music for a series of performances with Metropole Orkest, Cole “went hard.”

“I have so many ideas that have built up over my lifetime of things I’ve wanted to write for an orchestra. They all came out, and I tried to write as many ideas that I was inspired to,” Cole says. “You have to write based on volumes of people.”
With volumes of people at his disposal, Cole expanded his compositional style to lengths he had never ventured before. On the album’s opener, Ludovici Cole Est Frigus (which translates to “Louis Cole is cold” in Latin), Cole moves through over 30 different chord changes in less than three minutes of music.
Despite graduating with a degree in jazz studies from the University of Southern California, Cole willfully admits he is not well-versed in traditional music theory. When he was writing this piece, he envisioned the sound he wanted to create, and then, using the pencil tool in Logic Pro, he wrote every chord note by note.
If he was only working with guitar, bass, keys, and drums (as is common in his solo releases), so much aural motion may have sounded convoluted. But with over 50 musicians, including dozens of instruments and even choral singers in his arsenal, he kept the same feeling as different instruments played various melodies over, around, and through each other, creating new chords and keys as they combined and separated.

“I always thought you had to be a genius to write anything complex. But if you have a great process and a great musical vision, you can do anything, which is something I would have loved to have heard more when I was coming up,” Cole says. “I’m doing this thing that’s ‘over my head’ and outside my abilities with the theory and keyboard knowledge that I have. But because I have such a strong musical vision of the end feeling and sound, I just go through these tiny little steps, one little tiny brick at a time, and I’m able to achieve it.”
By relying on his vision rather than traditional music and production theory, Cole sustains his originality. One song, Doesn’t Matter, runs over 11 minutes, the longest piece of music Cole has ever composed. It transitions between several different moods, gradually building into foreboding swells of the full string section, then diminishing into moments when it’s only Cole’s voice gently humming as he’s surrounded by a light wash of reverb.
Another standout from the album is Things Will Fall Apart, which employs funk horns that are so groovy and dialled in that listeners may not realise there’s an orchestra behind Cole if they weren’t told. His drums and voice link together as the lead while the horns pop out of the 1970s funk era.
“It comes from a pure place: ‘I really think this is gonna sound cool, and this is something that I would like to hear myself,’” Cole says of his approach to writing for the orchestra. “This is what I’m interested in. This is a sound combination that I’ve never heard in this way, and I would love to have that exist.”

If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, nothing might have never existed outside the live space. The orchestra didn’t plan to record any of the official performances (that are some of Cole’s favourite performances ever). He actually asked his manager and a few friends to film the gigs with their phones just so he could have a record of it, but one of the performances in 2021 ended up being cancelled due to COVID-19, which allowed Cole to get the orchestra into an official studio.
His next challenge after that was mixing the album. Instead of passing it off to a mix engineer who specialised in mixing orchestras, Cole elected to do it himself, which, with over 50 musicians, was another new experience. Though it might seem like such a large undertaking would be the most difficult post-production process in his career, it made it easier for him because of one key element: human energy.
In the past when he would mix his solo albums, he sometimes felt something was missing from the recording—a nebulous feeling that couldn’t be sufficed with more volume or a special EQ. When he was mixing nothing, he didn’t need anything extra. Having the combined force of dozens of musicians gave him a surplus of authentic musicality to manipulate in line with his vision.
“The sound and the human energy. The tiny little mistakes and the tiny interpretations. The air and the music. All the humans working together. It never needed an extra magical push. This is exactly what it’s supposed to sound like, I just needed to get it there. That made it active and made the mixing very pleasant and doable,” Cole says.

Cole will perform nothing with the Metropole Orkest for a series of dates throughout Europe in November and December, but in the interim, he’s been writing more music for large ensembles. Specifically choral music. He wrote original works for a 40-person choir that performed at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles in August.
Cole’s musical vision transcends any kind of ensemble or sound. Whatever he decides to write is a precise extension of his taste.
“If people actually followed that more, music would be a lot better than it is,” Cole says. “It’s purely what I’m excited about and what I’m excited to hear. That’s the main motivation behind it all. On top of that. It’s fun to have different sounds and different things to try. I would love to try this thing that maybe doesn’t exist.”
At first, everything doesn’t exist. It all comes from nothing. But that’s where Louis Cole and his musical vision come into play.
The post Louis Cole on producing his album, ‘nothing’ appeared first on MusicTech.