New Music Critique: RGBContact: bari@pressherepublicity.com

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Not only are all tracks from RGB's latest A Place for Lovers "radio ready," it begs the question, "How are they not already huge?" The Tel Aviv-based trio (singer-songwriters Roy Bartal, Noi Agam, keyboardist/ producer Alon Kenett) are full-fledged artists, mindful of showing off their whole package--well-branded, with talent to boot.

Bartal and Agam trade off as lead vocalists, often dueting and evoking the push and pull of love, heartbreak, pain and rejoice. "Parties," "Pain Killer," "Meeting at Dawn," "Pizza" and "Green" are standouts. When Bartal sings falsetto, Agam is crooning from the soul and the bass is bumping, RGB is a RBD (real big deal).    The post New Music Critique: RGB first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Bitcoin price push through $68K adds strength to SOL, DOGE, RUNE and BGBBitcoin’s bounce back to $68,000 raises the chance of a rally in SOL, DOGE, RUNE and BGB.

Instagram is lowering video quality for unpopular videosThe popularity of an Instagram video can affect its actual video quality: According to Adam Mosseri (the Meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), videos that are more popular get shown in higher quality, while less popular videos get shown in lower quality. In a video (via The Verge), Mosseri said Instagram tries to show […]
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BNCs For An Old InstrumentBack in the summer our eye was caught by [Jazzy Jane]’s new signal generator, or perhaps we should say her new-to-her signal generator. It’s an Advance E1 from around 1950, and it was particularly interesting from here because it matches the model on the shelf above this bench. She’s back with a new video on the E1, allowing us a further look inside it as she replaces a dead capacitor, gets its audio oscillator working, and upgrades its sockets.
Treating us to a further peek inside the unit, first up is a leaky capacitor. Then a knotty question for old tech enthusiasts, to upgrade or not? The ancient co-ax connectors are out of place on a modern bench, so does originality matter enough to give it a set of BNC sockets? We’d tend to agree; just because we have some adapters for the unit here doesn’t mean it’s convenient. Following on from that is a period variable frequency audio mod which has failed, so out that comes and a little fault-finding is required to get the wiring of the audio transformer.
These instruments are not by any means compact, but they do have the advantage of being exceptionally well-built and above all cheap. We hope readers appreciate videos like the one below the break, and that you’re encouraged not to be scared of diving in to older items like this one to fix them. Meanwhile the first installment is here.

Apple iOS 18’s New Repair Assistant: Easier Parts Pairing Yet With Many LimitationsOver the years, Apple has gone all-in on parts pairing. Virtually every component in an iPhone and iPad has a unique ID that’s kept in a big database over at Apple, which limits replacement parts to only those which have their pairing with the host system officially sanctified by Apple. With iOS 18 there seems to be somewhat of a change in how difficult getting a pairing approved, in the form of Apple’s new Repair Assistant. According to early responses by [iFixit] and in a video by [Hugh Jeffreys] the experience is ‘promising but flawed’.
As noted in the official Apple support page, the Repair Assistant is limited to the iPhone 15+, iPad Pro (M4) and iPad Air (M2), which still leaves many devices unable to make use of this feature. For the lucky few, however, this theoretically means that you can forego having to contact Apple directly to approve new parts. Instead the assistant will boot into its own environment, perform the pairing and calibration and allow you to go on your merry way with (theoretically) all functionality fully accessible.

The bad news here is that parts whose IDs show up as being locked (Activation Lock) are ineligible, which is something you cannot tell when you’re buying replacement parts. During [iFixit]’s testing involving swapping logic boards between two iPhone 15 Pros they found many issues, ranging from sudden reboots during calibration and boot looping. Some of these issues were due to the captive-portal-based WiFi network at [iFixit] HQ, but after eliminating that variable features like Face ID still refused to calibrate among other issues.
Meanwhile [Hugh]’s experiences have been more positive, but the limited nature of this feature, and the issues surrounding used and third-party parts, mean that the practical use of this Repair Assistant will remain limited, with tons of perfectly fine Activation Locked parts scrapped each year and third-party parts requiring pairing hacks to make basic features work, even on Apple’s MacBooks.
IOS 18 also adds battery monitoring for third-party batteries, which is a nice touch, but one cannot help but get the feeling that Apple is being dragged kicking and screaming into the age of easy repairs and replacements with Apple devices.

Featured image: A stack of Activation Locked MacBooks destined for the shredder in refurbisher [John Bumstead]’s workshop.

Viator Monster Channel Is A FREE Distortion Plugin By ViatorDSP
ViatorDSP, which we’ve covered many times here on BPB, has just released a new free plugin called Viator Monster Channel.  ViatorDSP is a one-man project dedicated to creating audio plugins for music producers. Many of them have been released for free, including the fantastic bedroom compressor MkII and graphic EQ. He has also developed some premium [...]
View post: Viator Monster Channel Is A FREE Distortion Plugin By ViatorDSP

Spinal Vibe rotary emulation from Blue Cat Audio With three speaker models each equipped with independent controls, Blue Cat Audio's latest plug-in offers a wider range of rotary speaker effects than much of the competition.

Album Review of "Original 8" by Original 8 (8/10)Beat Farm Music

Producers: Troy Williver, Jaime Lynch and Drew Canulette

“Sail away on the sea of change,” (from “Change”), the whole of “Better Days,” “W.O.M.A.N.” and lead single “Dreamer” make for quite an emotionally raw and inspiring debut from Jaime Lynch-led Original 8. Lynch has a powerful voice, rich and soulful, and begs to be heard live on a stage.

OG8 ain’t your typical bar band, as its additional members include Phil Baker, George Mitchell, and Michael Underwood who have recorded and toured with Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and Linda Ronstadt. The post Album Review of "Original 8" by Original 8 (8/10) first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

OpenAI’s Whisper transcription tool has hallucination issues, researchers saySoftware engineers, developers, and academic researchers have serious concerns about transcriptions from OpenAI’s Whisper, according to a report in the Associated Press. While there’s been no shortage of discussion around generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate — basically, to make stuff up — it’s a bit surprising that this is an issue in transcription, where you’d […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Gain A DMCA ExemptionAn unlikely theatre for an act in the right-to-repair saga came last year in the form of McDonalds restaurants, whose McFlurry ice cream machines are prone to breakdown. The manufacturer had locked them down, and a franchisee with a broken machine had no option but to call them for an expensive repair job. iFixit and Public Knowledge challenged this with a request for a DMCA exemption from the Copyright Office, and now news emerges that this has been granted.
The exemption in question isn’t specific to McDonalds, instead it applies to retail food preparation equipment in general, which includes ice-cream machines. We’re guessing that franchisees won’t be breaking out the screwdrivers either, instead it’s likely to lower significantly the cost of a service contract for them and any other food industry operators hit with the same problem. Meanwhile any hackers who’ve picked up an old machine can now fix it themselves without breaking the law, and maybe the chances of your local Mickey D’s having no McFlurries have gone down.
This story has featured more than once on these pages, so catch up here, and here.

A New Chinese Radio Breaks Cover, is it Worth it?Scanning the firehose of new electronic kits and modules coming from the usual Chinese suppliers can be a rewarding experience, as sometimes among the endless breakout boards comes an item that looks interesting enough to try. As an example there’s a receiver kit being given a quick review by [Tech Minds], offering AM and HF multi-mode, FM broadcast, and air band alongside what appear to be digital streaming features.
Looking at it, though all the RF part is hidden under screening cans we’re guessing it might contain one of the Silicon Labs all-in-one receiver chips, but the whole appears to deliver a useful receiver with a comprehensive interface. The review isn’t quite technical enough so we can’t glean a lot more, but it looks as though it could be useful. We’d be tempted to snag one for review, but since with very few exceptions we pay for the stuff we review, it’s a mite expensive at $50+ for yet another radio.
There’s an ongoing question with all these cheap kits and modules though, first of all where did the design come from and are we freeloading on someone else’s hard work, but then whether or not what you’re getting is a knock-off using defective semiconductors or with bean-counting parts removal degrading performance. We’re guessing more will come out about this radio in due course, and we can all make our own judgement. Meanwhile this one can be found on AliExpress or Banggood, so take a look and see if you’re tempted.

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Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie MusicLast week, our tips and advice for the independent, do-it-yourselfers covered troubles with TikTok, how to succeed in sync, boost tour dates, and more...
The post Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: The new music industry’s last week in reviewLast week in the music industry, TikTok's growing battle with indie musicians and labels, the state of A&R, and more...
The post REWIND: The new music industry’s last week in review appeared first on Hypebot.

Moosica - Discover live music near you Moosica currently cataloguing events taking place in London and lets users explore live music events happening around them, listen to a band's music and buy tickets, all from a single service.