NEST Acoustics on sound design in Serum, the meaning of making music, and more
Expert producer and content creator NEST Acoustics shares insights into his sound design approach in Serum, perspectives on artistry, and more.

Deezer reports Q3 revenues of $153m, confirms subscriber growth momentum in FranceDeezer's AI detection system and personalization features are 'attracting global attention, opening opportunities beyond our core markets,' said CEO Alexis Lanternier
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Sonarworks preview Virtual Monitoring PRO system The latest arrival to the SoundID Reference line-up aims to take things a step further for headphone users, and makes it possible for users to capture any room and have it recreated in their headphones. 

Dystopian Waves Free Wavetable PackExpand your sonic palette with this collection of 50 wavetables in .WAV format. Each wavetable features 256 frames with a frame size of 2048 samples, optimized for smooth playback and rich harmonic content. Designed for compatibility with most modern wavetable synthesizers, this pack allows you to import, edit, and manipulate these wavetables directly in your favorite software. Perfect for sound designers, producers, and musicians seeking unique textures, evolving pads, and complex tones. https://youtu.be/SvkFLJnA1LM Read More

The Crow Hill Company releases Harmonium, the latest addition to the FREE Vaults series
From the Crow Hill Company comes Harmonium, their latest addition to the free Vaults series. The Vaults series from The Crow Hill Company has already delivered some wonderful free instruments in its relatively short existence. Lo-Fi Strings and Bridge Guitar are two great examples from earlier this year. Harmonium is the latest addition, and, like [...]
View post: The Crow Hill Company releases Harmonium, the latest addition to the FREE Vaults series

MMF-US LA Summit 2025: A Must-Attend Event for Artists, Managers and Music ProfessionalsThe Music Managers Forum-US (MMF-US) LA Summit is back, bringing together artist managers, self-managed artists, and music industry professionals for a day of keynotes, panels, presentations, and networking. If you’re looking to connect with leaders shaping the future of music, this event is not to be missed.
The post MMF-US LA Summit 2025: A Must-Attend Event for Artists, Managers and Music Professionals appeared first on Hypebot.

Why no one is reviewing your album or new releaseWhy is no one reviewing your album or new release? Music PR veteran Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR looks at how streaming, new media economics and increased competition have changed how music should be marketed.
The post Why no one is reviewing your album or new release appeared first on Hypebot.

Hybrid music production in 2025: The good, the hard, and the recallMuch of the music that inspires our modern recording workflow comes from earlier eras of sprawling mixing consoles in rooms packed with compressors and tape machines. Live bands would lay down song beds in lively rooms with overdubs and layers to come later. In the modern day, we still have access to all this old equipment, but digital audio workstations (DAWs) give us immense power to easily edit, comp, shift, and adjust our music, as well as tune, quantise, time align, re-amp and re-route.
Plugins are sounding better and better, and it’s common for many producers and engineers to work entirely on laptops. But there’s still something romantic about racks of tube-filled compressors, rows of buttons and potentiometers on a console, all sending and receiving sound to and from a tape machine.
The reality, however, is that an artist I’m working with has every right to request minute changes, thanks to the technology we have available today. I might recall all the analogue equipment with the photos and notes I meticulously took, but it may not sound quite the same, and a quick null test in the digital realm confirms something has changed. Will the band notice? I hope not. It’s their music I’m working on after all.
Harnessing the best of both worlds, analogue and digital, is a tough one to wrangle. Some bands don’t really care how you’re achieving that final mix, as long as you get to the finish line. I struggle to say ‘No’ when they’re asking for revisions or changes to a mix. And why should I? The digital realm has enabled us to save a session, requiring zero recall. The relative ease of nudging that hi-hat they’re unhappy with is tough to argue with.
In my studio, using the Soundcraft 8000. Image: Benjamin Erbacher.
But I enjoy working on analogue stuff. I feel like I have a better overview of my mix, being able to see faders and EQ laid out on a console. The limitation of the workflow forces me to think my way out of problems, while also providing a more uniform sound when everything is running through the same channel strip. It brings me joy, and while I could achieve entirely in-the-box, that’s not always the point.
Having spent a few years working on a small Soundcraft 200B console as a summing mixer with some outboard equipment, I spent more time recalling a mix than on the revisions themselves. Mixing itself was fine; I’d do some cleanup work and balancing in my DAW, then take my time sending audio around, shifting faders and compressing it all before recording it back into my DAW. Revisions, however, became the hurdle, and (understandably) bands expect no changes besides what they’ve asked for when sending mixes back and forth.
Analogue equipment, consoles especially, are very much alive and imperfect. Depending on the temperature, time of day (compared to when they were first powered up) and more, they can deviate sonically by more than you’d think. Even without touching anything, my mixes would shift from day to day.
My solution came as an old Soundcraft Series 8000 console for $800 AUD, a few minutes from home. It needed a little love, some elbow grease and a handful of new lamps for the VU meters, but it was in otherwise working order. A huge jump from the 200B, the 8000 gave me direct outs on every channel, a more detailed EQ, extra auxiliaries and additional insert points. The direct outs were the selling point for me, allowing each of the 24 faders to be recorded back into my DAW.
The Soundcraft 8000 in my studio. Image: Lewis Noke Edwards
What this enabled was a solution to the hybrid workflow I’d been pursuing. While plugin emulations exist, there’s something about the tactility of a real console that works for my mixing brain. I can see each channel before me and make adjustments quickly without toggling menus or scrolling across a screen. My newfound workflow has a little compromise on my end (I don’t use the groups or even master fader on the console), but it makes for a more consistent and seamless experience for my clients; ultimately, the reason I’m doing all this.
The 24 faders are fed by digital sub groups like lead vocal, stereo backing vocals, kick drum, snare, through to rhythm guitars and more. The beauty of this is that I can mix sources per channel with outboard inserted if I like, as well as console EQ. Once balanced and mixed, I print each fader back into my DAW to be summed digitally, so in this sense I’m using the console as 24 pieces of outboard.
The Soundcraft 8000 in my studio. Image: Lewis Noke Edwards
Recall is non-existent, unless the band wants a total do-over, where recall wouldn’t be all that helpful anyway. My patchbay is normalled from converter output to console input, direct output to converter input, so I don’t need to patch besides outboard. Don’t be fooled, though; each of these normalled connections required physical connection, soldering, heat shrinking and a test tone, while also limiting me to the physical hardware I have available; one compressor means one source is compressed! But I can mix to my heart’s content with the confidence that whatever I mix on the day will be printed and committed to digital, with the summing and mix bus processing all being in-the-box.
A client has every right to request changes, and it’s ultimately my choice to work this way — my clients shouldn’t feel compromised because of the archaic nature of analogue recalls. They should just be able to harness the sonic bliss of the op-amps, transformers and circuitry I choose to employ.
In my studio, using the Soundcraft 8000. Image: Benjamin Erbacher.
The post Hybrid music production in 2025: The good, the hard, and the recall appeared first on MusicTech.

Get Softube Transient Shaper for only $10 at AudioDeluxe
Softube’s Transient Shaper is currently available for just $10 at AudioDeluxe. That’s an 89% discount from its usual $89 price. Transient shaping can completely change how a sound sits in your track. The ability to emphasize or tame the attack and sustain of a sound is essential for getting punchy drums and bass. Of course, [...]
View post: Get Softube Transient Shaper for only $10 at AudioDeluxe

FuturBeats releases AI-powered FuturBeats Trap plugin for instant song inspiration
FuturBeats has released FuturBeats Trap, a free AI-assisted VST/AU/Standalone plugin for macOS and Windows that helps producers generate and arrange beats in seconds. The plugin delivers eight loop stems that are musically compatible and ready to drag directly into your DAW or desktop. A built-in feature called EXPAND takes those loops further by automatically generating [...]
View post: FuturBeats releases AI-powered FuturBeats Trap plugin for instant song inspiration

Wise is going to #crypto?

A Strategy is not a Plan

Again Spotify

Get your hands on a synth used on Kraftwerk’s Autobahn – Florian Schneider gear collection to be auctioned next monthThe instruments and equipment that helped Kraftwerk redefine electronic music are set to find new homes. Nearly 500 personal items belonging to the band’s co-founder, Florian Schneider, will be auctioned by Julien’s Auctions next month, offering fans and collectors a rare glimpse into the creative tools behind one of the genre’s most influential acts.
The sale will take place on 19 November at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, and is expected to fetch between $450,000 to $650,000. Among the highlights is Schneider’s EMS Synthi AKS suitcase synthesiser, thought to have been used on Kraftwerk’s landmark 1974 album Autobahn, valued between $15,000 and $20,000.

READ MORE: Behringer scales down its UB-Xa synth (again) with the “travel-ready” UB-Xa Mini

According to notes from the Florian Schneider Estate, this was the first synth acquired by Kraftwerk in around 1972 and is the only EMS Synthi that Florian owned, and was used at Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang studio. Features include three oscillators, a 16×16 pin matrix, 20 pins, ring modulator, envelope filter, reverberation, and more.
Credit: Julien’s Auctions
“It’s a very early synthesizer, in the form of a suitcase, so it’s quite unusual,” says Giles Moon, head of music at Julien’s Auctions. “It’s the first synthesizer they acquired in the early 1970s when Florian decided to stop using classical instruments. He would attach it to his flute and use it to process these amazing sounds.”
That flute – an Orsi G alto Schneider performed with until 1974 – is also up for sale, estimated at $8,000 to $10,000. Meanwhile, a late ‘70s Sennheiser VSM 201 vocoder believed to have been used on The Man-Machine (1978) and Computer World (1981) could fetch between $20,000 to $40,000.
Other lots include Schneider’s collection of over 100 brass and woodwind instruments, a bright yellow acrylic guitar, his custom-painted VW panel van, a stage played Hameg HM 107 tube oscillograph, and his Panasonic Panaracer bicycle featured in Kraftwerk’s Tour de France video. Even his gold-framed green sunglasses and the Polaroid photos of him wearing them are part of the sale.
Schneider’s estate says the auction honours his wish for his instruments and creations to “continue living beyond him”.
“He always believed that they are meant to be played and shared – not left unused or gathering dust in storage,” a spokesperson says.
Kraftwerk’s influence on electronic and pop music remains immeasurable, inspiring artists from David Bowie and New Order to Run-DMC and Coldplay.
Describing the band as “groundbreaking”, Moon says, “They were one of the first bands that used synthesisers and they created music that no one had ever heard of before. It was very unworldly and it moved music forward in a way nobody had ever seen, in a totally different direction that most people probably didn’t think was even possible… It inspired a lot of bands to move in the direction of using synthesized electronic music.”
Stephen Morris of New Order adds, “Autobahn was an album that made us all sit up and say: what’s this? They were doing something different … something completely new – they were consciously rejecting the past. A lot of New Order’s approach was like that.”

Check out the full collection at Julien’s Auctions.
The post Get your hands on a synth used on Kraftwerk’s Autobahn – Florian Schneider gear collection to be auctioned next month appeared first on MusicTech.

Spotify holds songs mashup patent...interesting