CFTC, US soldier accused of illegal Polymarket bet spar over interpretation of prediction marketsA judge stayed the CFTC’s civil case against a soldier who allegedly used nonpublic information for a Polymarket bet, but the regulator is trying to weigh in on the criminal case.

Trump bought SpaceX shares two weeks after blockbuster IPOThe president bought when the stock was in the mid-$150 range. SpaceX finished trading on Monday back at its IPO price of $135.

An Electronic Explanation Of 1960s Fuzz BoxesIt’s likely that even those of us who have never picked up a guitar in our lives will recognize the sound of an electric guitar with a fuzz box effects pedal. The raspy distorted sound has been at the heart of so many very well known recordings. Behind it is a distortion circuit, or as [Bill Jehle’s Mad Scientist Guitar Lab] is here to tell us, eight different circuit topologies.
The result is a fascinating trip through the evolution of rock music through the 1960s, as he examines circuits from simple diode clippers through to frequency doublers and phase shifters. He’s provided a playlist as an accompaniment so you can even have an immediate listen to each sound. It’ll mess up our YouTube recommendations, but worth it for the informative journey.
It’s also a window into a lost period in electronics where all they practically had was the transistor, so each device had to put in the maximum work for a living. Designing circuits like these called for intimate knowledge of the device characteristics, and just how they could be safely exceeded. The video is below the break, and well worth a watch.
If clever transistor music circuits interest you, you’ll love the flawed devices that gave the Roland 808 its sound.

5 things to know about Round Hill’s Suno and Anthropic lawsuits: model weights, extraction tools, and a $75M numberRound Hill says statutory damages could approach or exceed $1 billion in each case, and intends to take both Suno and Anthropic to trial.
Source

Dr. Dre says he is “embracing” AI in music: “It’s a new tool for creativity”Over the last few months, artists like SZA and Jack Antonoff have publicly criticised AI, branding supporters as “disgusting”, “Godless Whores”. However, other artists are keen to see what the future of artificial music has to offer – including Dr. Dre.
In a new interview with the New York Times, Dr. Dre has made his stance on AI known. The producer and legendary rapper has likened the recent anti-AI movement to the initial pushback against synths. “I had a discussion with a few people a few days ago, and they were against AI,” he recalls. “I’m like, ‘OK, you sound like the person that would have been against the drum machine when it came out, or synthesisers.”

READ MORE: Gary Numan thinks AI music hype is short-lived: “It will go full circle and people will want to go back to sharing a human experience rather than just brilliantly copied one”

As he sees it, AI is the same at a drum machine or a synth, simply labelling AI as “a new tool for creativity”. He also notes that the criticism is probably because “some people are afraid of learning new things”, whereas he is “embracing it”.
“I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen with [AI],” he adds. He also notes that he’s toyed with it in the studio “as a tool to see what it would do with what I just did”.
In terms of any fear surrounding AI, Dr. Dre simply believes that anyone afraid of AI is simply not confident in their own ability to create. “I think the only people that see it as a threat are the people who have trouble creating,” he concludes.
It’s a similar stance to his long-time collaborator and business partner, Jimmy Iovine. In the same interview, he says that he sees no downside to AI and labelled himself “very pro-AI” when it comes to music creation.
“I don’t see the downside at all,” he says. “There will be some crappy music. There’s crappy music now. In the studio, when gifted people have AI, they’re going to make better records.”
The producer also dismissed the suggestion that the technology poses a threat to musicians, saying: “I think the only people that see it as a threat are the people who have trouble creating.”
Iovine also shared a prediction of AI’s future back in 2023. Speaking to Consequence Of Sound, he said: “I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but I think AI is going to be massive in songwriting on many levels. One, on a very basic level, if somebody is stuck and you want to experiment and get an idea. Two, is that not everyone, but too many people today are making records for TikTok.”
The post Dr. Dre says he is “embracing” AI in music: “It’s a new tool for creativity” appeared first on MusicTech.

Shane Audio Shane FETA FET compressor. Fast, aggressive, and happiest when you push it — with a blend knob so you can keep the transients you just flattened. CONTROLS: THRESHOLD — how hard it grabs, -48 to +12. ATTACK — .1 to 10. RELEASE — 10 to 1k. RATIO — 1:1 up to 20:1. MAKEUP — bring the level back, ±24 dB. BLEND — parallel compression in one knob, 0 to 100%. SC HPF — keep the lows out of the detector, 10 Hz to 1k. LINKED — tie both channels together, or let them work apart. Backlit gain-reduction VU meter, plus a GR indicator lamp. Watch the ghost above the logo — it gets squashed flat right along with everything else. The harder you compress, the flatter it gets. Read More

Rust Romance releases BigBlockPre LE, a FREE API-style preamp plugin
Rust Romance has released BigBlockPre LE, a free discrete console preamp plugin for macOS and Windows. BigBlockPre LE is inspired by the classic API 312-style signal path, combining an input transformer, a 2520-style discrete op-amp gain stage, and an output transformer. It does not emulate one particular hardware unit. Instead, this is a custom channel [...]
View post: Rust Romance releases BigBlockPre LE, a FREE API-style preamp plugin

SvalaC-Audio offers its LA-2A emulation for FREE for until August 26
SvalaC-Audio is offering Es-A2, its $45 analog-modeled optical compressor plugin for macOS and Windows, as a free download for a very limited time. The Payhip product page currently says the sale ends in two days, so I would claim this one quickly if you’re interested. Es-A2 is the flagship release in SvalaC-Audio’s new Es-Series and [...]
View post: SvalaC-Audio offers its LA-2A emulation for FREE for until August 26

Black Rooster Audio launch PS-VC1 Vocal Chain Channel PS-VC1 Vocal Chain Channel brings together six powerful processing modules, offering an array of tonal-shaping tools that have been fine-tuned for use on vocal tracks. 

Dawesome launches Abyss II synth with sample-to-colour engine (Intro Price)
Developer Dawesome has launched Abyss II, a visual synthesizer for macOS and Windows, with an introductory price of €89 (regularly €149). The developer describes Abyss II as a synth for musicians rather than engineers. Instead of building sounds around pages of technical parameters, you place visual Tone Colors on a Gradient and move between them [...]
View post: Dawesome launches Abyss II synth with sample-to-colour engine (Intro Price)

Get 84% off the SSL Native X-Echo plugin in this limited-time sale at Plugin Boutique
Plugin deals come and go pretty quickly, so we’re always keeping an eye out for the ones that are actually worth your attention. Today’s pick is particularly tempting if your plugin folder could use some vintage tape character.
From now until 31 August, you can grab Solid State Logic’s Native X-Echo for just $15 at Plugin Boutique – a massive 84% saving on its usual price.

READ MORE: The Sony headphones we rated 10/10 are now $78 off

Inspired by early tape delay hardware from the 1960s such as the Echoplex, X-Echo combines the familiar wobble and degradation of tape with SSL’s signature analogue saturation and warmth.
It’s designed to sound good without much tweaking, but there’s plenty to play with once you start digging in. The Wow & Flutter and Saturation controls let you dial in everything from subtle tape movement to much more degraded sounds, while the plugin also models details such as tape hiss, soft clipping and self-oscillation when you push the feedback beyond 100%.
There are four switchable tape heads for adding variation to your delays, and you can sync your delay to note values with a single click. There’s also a Freeze function for creating risers and drops, plus a Kill control for more dramatic effects.
A couple of features make X-Echo particularly useful beyond the usual tape-delay duties. Its built-in de-esser helps tame the sibilance that tape echoes can accentuate; there’s also waveform visualisation so you can see how the tape heads are interacting with your audio.

If Native X-Echo has you in the mood for more delay, there are a few other bargains worth checking out at Plugin Boutique:
Liquid Sky’s Zen Delay Virtual is currently 83% off at $14.99, down from $89, while AIR Music Technology’s Delay Pro is 70% off at $29, offering a range of classic delay sounds. Also down to $29 from $99.99 is AIR’s Tape Double Track, which focuses on tape-style doubling and delay for adding width and movement to your tracks.
Check out the full list of deals at Plugin Boutique.
The post Get 84% off the SSL Native X-Echo plugin in this limited-time sale at Plugin Boutique appeared first on MusicTech.

How Jeff Mills brought his true vision for his 1995 Liquid Room mix to life with Spatial AudioAs techno blares through the 14 QSC loudspeakers in Apple Music’s Los Angeles Dolby Atmos studio, Jeff Mills raises his hands to alert Cliff Norrell, Apple Music’s lead spatial audio engineer, to cut the audio.
They’re currently going over Mills’ March set at New York’s Knockdown Center. The show was a part of Mills’ tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of Live at the Liquid Room – Tokyo (1996), his mixtape that defined live DJ set recordings. Of the over 50 dates of the tour across five continents, this is the recording that will be released on Apple Music in spatial audio.

READ MORE: Meet the producers releasing albums on retro gaming consoles

To that end, Mills isn’t stopping the session to revise anything related to the music itself. He’s doing so because an enthusiastic crowdmember can be heard vocally releasing pure dancefloor joy over the raging soundscape. He wants to hear those shouts as much as possible in the final mix.
“It’s a live recording. It’s not just music. It’s the ambience of the room. The people. The wild animals are a part of it,” Mills says with a sharp smile. He goes on to note that he intended to elicit these audience reactions during the set.
“I was lucky enough to get the response from people at certain times because I’m strategically and tactfully doing things with the music to get that response,” Mills continues. “A lot of the music that I played earlier in the set were actually classics from 1995. The audience has some knowledge about those tracks. The combination of my actions and the response is what we’re working to match up throughout the mix.”
To highlight this specific crowd response, Norrell solos different tracks in the sessions. Each one represents a speaker in the 9.4.1 configuration, which in turn represents where a microphone was placed in the venue. When he gets to the rear right speaker, the shout comes through clear, and he gives that specific track a quick, automated volume boost for the length of the shout.
Image: Press
“It’s important for culture in general to be able to replicate something that happened in the past as close to the original feel of it,” Mills explains. With this entire tour, his goal was to replicate the feel of the Liquid Room mix, which is considered the gold standard of live dance music recordings (Pitchfork heralded it with a perfect 10/10 review). He even brought some of the original vinyl records he played in 1995 (the show was in 1995, and the mix was released in 1996).
“It’s like classical music. Classical musicians try to replicate, as closely as they can, what the composer actually created,” Mills continues. “We are trying to enhance the art form, and the genre, and the culture of dance music by making it possible for people in the future to hear it the way that we heard it.”
To capture a recording accurate enough to achieve that same goal, the Apple Music team placed 14 mics around Knockdown Center’s 20,000 square-foot main hall to capture the audience and ambience.
Four Shure dynamic mics were on the front of the main stage, and two were along the front of the second stage. Dynamic mics were chosen to prevent clipping and capsule damage as a result of the high sound pressure levels from the subs near the stage. They also hung four DPA 2017 shotgun mics from the lighting truss above the crowd, and four Shure KSM137 condenser mics were placed along the walls.
Upon listening, the primary source of audio is the direct stereo feed from the DJ mixer. They opted not to do any upmixing, or rather, sending the DJ feed to different Atmos channels, as the experience of the room was Mills at the front with the music coming from that single point.
Image: Press
“The most robust sound coming from that direction, the source of the sound to the other parts of the room, the acoustics of it, is important in this live recording,” Mills says.
It’s important when mixing spatial in 2026, and it was also important to Mills back in 1995 at the Liquid Room. Despite the spatial format only becoming more accessible in recent years, he wanted to do this exact same thing for the original 1995 set. Other DJ mixes out on physical release at the time were studio mixes. The tracks could be perfectly aligned and curated, which certainly makes for a pleasant listen, but doesn’t capture the culture as it exists.
“I was trying to do this 30 years ago. This is what we were planning for. I had six-to-eight microphones at the Liquid Room. Once we got to the point of speaking to Sony Music at the time, they weren’t convinced of the final format,” Mills explains. “It would have to be on DVD, and this would be the first DVD that was only used for audio. They didn’t believe that people would accept that idea. So, I had to narrow it down to a stereo mix.”
Mills is clearly taking advantage of the technology now. Atmospherically accurate DJ sets are one angle, but he’s also thinking beyond that. Throughout his career, he’s explored a vast number of ambitious live shows.
Two examples are when he performed with the Montpelier Philharmonic Orchestra, and when he set up machines among ruins on the Greek island of Delos alongside Indo-French tabla virtuoso Prabhu Edouard and French keyboardist Jean-Phi Dary.
Mills is thinking about these kinds of shows in spatial as well.
“We hear in 3D. The more that we hear things like this [recording], the distance will narrow between this and what we normally hear with our ears. Then hopefully we will begin to really believe what we hear,” Mills says. “When that happens, it makes it very interesting for musicians like myself to think about making music conceptually and all the things that I can put in your ears that might make you feel and think differently.”
Image: Press
Mills is interested in the idea of perceived transportation—the audio being so immersive and so convincing that listeners truly believe they have travelled to a new environment. He tried to do this in Paris with a show concept called Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. The idea was for attendees to be guided to a second location that they did not know existed when they bought a ticket. That show, unfortunately, did not get the proper permits for two locations.
He’s also working on a show around his upcoming concept album, A Trip To Vega, where he will set up the stage like a laboratory and lead the audience to the star system of Vega. The musicians will be facing the screen as well, like they are looking out of the cockpit of a spaceship, emphasising that the journey is the point of focus. Not them.
Overall, that idea defines Mills’ work with these kinds of performances and recordings. Letting the listeners experience more than his individual contribution gives them a greater understanding of the culture he’s been championing for decades.
“We’re bringing up the crowd in these recordings because they are important to any atmosphere where you have a DJ, an audience, and flashing lights. All this effort goes into making these events, so the listeners need to feel as if they’re actually in that setting,” Mills says. “I wish we had the type of technology that rolled everything together. So not just the sound, but the smell, the lights, the humidity, being shoved by someone who just saw their friend. I can see these things coming.”
The post How Jeff Mills brought his true vision for his 1995 Liquid Room mix to life with Spatial Audio appeared first on MusicTech.

The Sony headphones we rated 10/10 are now $78 off
[Editor’s note: Please note that these deals will only show if you’re visiting from the US. If you’re outside the US, you’ll be shown similar deals.]
A good pair of headphones can make or break a studio session, whether you’re checking a mix, tracking vocals or listening back to your latest production. If yours are starting to sound a little worse for wear, there are some good deals over at Guitar Center right now, with up to 25% off a range of studio and monitor headphones.
First up is Sony’s MDR-MV1, which is currently $339.99, down from $418, saving you nearly 20%. Designed for detailed monitoring, these open-back headphones give you a spacious sound that makes it easier to pick out the finer details in a mix.
Better yet, these are headphones we’ve already put through their paces – and have given a 10/10.

In our review, writer Hollin Jones praised the MDR-MV1’s “startling clarity”, highlighting its impressive separation and detail while still keeping the listening experience musical.
The open-back design does mean they’re better suited to mixing and critical listening than recording, since sound can leak into microphones. But if you want to hear exactly what’s happening in a mix, they’re a strong choice. As Jones put it: “They’re forensic but not in a way that detracts from their musicality.”

READ MORE: Score up to 30% off Teenage Engineering gear – plus more studio hardware deals you can’t miss this week

Beyerdynamic DT 270 Pro – $129.99

If you want something a little more affordable, Beyerdynamic’s DT 270 Pro is now $129.99, down from the original $149.99.
The closed-back design makes them a practical choice for recording and monitoring, while a 5Hz-24kHz frequency response and low 45-ohm impedance mean they can work comfortably with everything from audio interfaces and laptops to mobile devices. With clear highs, defined mids and controlled bass, they’re a solid option for recording, monitoring and everyday production work.
AIAIAI TMA-2 Studio – $149

AIAIAI’s TMA-2 Studio headphones are now $149, saving you $50 off their usual $199 price. The modular TMA-2 platform is built around a compact, minimalist design, making these a good option if you want studio headphones that don’t look like they belong exclusively in the control room.
The post The Sony headphones we rated 10/10 are now $78 off appeared first on MusicTech.

Dr. Fill from Yurt Rock Yurt Rock's latest release is dedicated entirely to creating drum fills, and has been created by capturing real performances, with no AI in sight. 

Untitled With Drums’ Made Flesh album review by Kurt Orzeck