IK Multimedia iLoud Precision 6 MKII review: Take control of your sound in any studio environment€1600 per pair, ikmultimedia.com
A year ago, I reviewed IK Multimedia’s iLoud Micro Monitor Pros and found them to be an excellent solution for working on the move with built-in room correction technology. Now, three years after the original launch, the Italian audio manufacturer has a new iteration of the iLoud Precision 6, the MKII.

READ MORE: HEDD Audio’s Type 05 A-Core monitors are practically perfect

There’s also a brand new 5-inch version and an update to the larger MTM MKII, but I was sent the 6 MKII, which sits in the centre of the lineup. They are designed both for home and professional studios (the calibration features help with room compensation, as we will see), but a little costly for keen amateurs. On the other hand, a pair of quality monitors could be with you for many years, so you can also look at it as an investment.
Each speaker is identical, powered from the mains and has a USB port, though this is for firmware and servicing and does not carry audio. There’s a combo jack / XLR input, manual level control, ARC mic input (a mic is included in the box) and a port for connecting the optional four-button remote. A button section has several options, including low frequency extension, low and high frequency boost and cut, plus a calibration start button. The speakers are also compatible with special mounting brackets you can buy from IK, making them suitable for immersive audio systems, and each speaker comes with a set of four feet to assist with isolation when placed on a flat surface.
Image: Press
This model uses a 6.5-inch, custom-made midwoofer and a 1.5-inch low-distortion, graphene-reinforced dome tweeter, with 150W total RMS power and a rear bass reflex port. Its frequency response is 45 Hz – 30 kHz with the ability to add low-end frequency extension (via a button press) to 37 Hz at -4 dB. Internally, the speaker uses DSP-controlled, 96 kHz processing. The speakers work with IK’s ARC X room correction and calibration system, and you will want to run through this process on the first set-up, or indeed when moving your speakers to a different position or room. It’s one of their main selling points, and though you don’t have to use it, you’d be missing out on a big feature of the product.
IK was kind enough to loan me the four-button remote (€100) to test, and this is really handy for quickly punching between four ARC X speaker emulation presets or custom voicings. You can also assign functions, including ARC on/off, mute and dim to the buttons. One unit daisy-chains to both speakers, and while it’s not strictly essential, I found it made my workflow faster, so it’s worth considering.
You can download the ARC X software for free after registering your hardware; it installs both an app and a plugin. The software can be purchased separately or with a dedicated hardware interface if you’re using third-party speakers, but here it’s included, and the measurement hardware is actually built into the speakers themselves. To that end there’s a mic input on each speaker, and the calibration can be performed using the relevant button on the rear panel. Instructions are provided online to walk you through this process, which is mostly done without requiring much input from you.
Image: Press
Given the imperfect design of many home studios, it’s a particularly useful thing to be able to compensate in software for the myriad things that can colour your sound. Using it in my space, I find it definitely sharpens and tightens up playback when auditioning tracks I’m familiar with. The stereo image becomes more focused, and the boomy bass, which I’m already aware is a problem in the room, is dramatically reduced. It’s well worth performing the calibration in a professional studio, too, of course, though if the space has already been treated, the results might be more subtle.
The ARC X system doesn’t stop at calibration; it’s also an advanced emulator. Once you have run the initial calibration, you are free to make your own fine-tuning changes or to emulate a number of other speakers or environments. If you’re looking to manually set the response, the Device Configuration section contains a range of parameters that let you do this. It’s pretty involved stuff, and if you’re not experienced in acoustics, it might be a bit much for you. The Virtual Monitoring section lets you choose from a bunch of monitor models and types, as well as hi-fi speakers and a generic TV or smartphone model. There’s also a list of Target options that let you select room types, Dolby Atmos and more.
ARC X. Image: Press
Speaker emulation isn’t unique to the iLouds, but it can be incredibly useful. IK’s advanced tech does a great job here, transposing the EQ and response curves of different speaker models onto the hardware to allow you to test your mixes without changing anything physically. And leaving the emulation to one side, these are extremely accurate, well-balanced and neutral monitors. They produce a firm but controlled low end that’s robust, a fast treble response and a high level of detail. These are speakers you can trust for every part of the production process, from tracking to mixing and mastering.
They are a little more expensive than HEDD’s Type 05 A-Core, which we loved, but basically the same price as the Type 05 MK2, which does have a bunch of DSP. Where IK’s model stands out is the integration of the onboard ARC system and bundled measurement mic. The resulting room calibration and also the speaker emulation work brilliantly and are compelling reasons to choose these, adding value to already-fine studio monitors. Whether you dig into the minutiae of fine-tuning the voicing or not, the iLoud Precision 6 MKII should serve you well for many years.

Key features

6.5-inch, custom made mid woofer, 1.5-inch tweeter and rear bass reflex port
Custom designed class D power amps, 150W RMS
DSP controlled system with 96 kHz internal sampling
ARC microphone and input for direct room calibration
ARC X plugin and software for calibration and speaker emulation
45 Hz – 30 kHz frequency response
On-body calibration controls
Bundled isolation feet
Optional remote control
Phase response: coherent, -/+20° max. from 150 Hz up

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AI music generator Suno raises $250M in latest funding roundAI music generation platform Suno has just raised $250 million in a Series C funding round at a $2.45 billion post-money valuation, the company reports.
The funding round – led by Menlo Ventures with participation from NVentures (Nvidia’s venture capital arm), as well as Hallwood Media, Lightspeed and Matrix – will accelerate the development of Suno’s “full-stack music ecosystem, model, workstation, artist tools and community”.

READ MORE: How I turned my DAW into an improv partner while producing my jazz album

The latest funding round follows a series of moves by Suno aimed at “redefining what’s possible in music creation”. In September, the company launches the “first-ever” generative audio workstation, Suno Studio, which pairs professional-grade multi-track editing with AI stem generation.
In the leadup to the launch of Suno Studio, the platform acquired WavTool, the first browser-based DAW. The move saw Suno adopting WavTool’s browser-based functionality, allowing it to repurpose the technology for its Suno Studio DAW.
“We’re seeing the future of music take shape in real time,” says Mikey Shulman, Co-Founder and CEO of Suno. “In just two years, we’ve seen millions of people make their ideas a reality through Suno, from first-time creators to top songwriters and producers integrating the tool into their daily workflows. This funding allows us to keep expanding what’s possible, empowering more artists to experiment, collaborate, and build on their creativity. We’re proud to be at the forefront of this historic moment for music.”
“Suno is the world’s #1 music creation app, making music accessible to everyone. Mikey and the team have built something people genuinely love using and millions of fans are on the platform every day, creating original songs and sharing them with friends,” says Amy Martin, Partner, Menlo Ventures.
You can read more about Suno’s latest funding round in a blog post entitled ‘The Future of Music is Already Here’.
The post AI music generator Suno raises $250M in latest funding round appeared first on MusicTech.

Coinbase to roll out its new ‘DeFi Mullet’ offering in BrazilCoinbase is rolling out its DEX trading platform to Brazil about six weeks after it launched in the US, offering Brazilians over 10,000 tokens to trade without leaving Coinbase’s app.

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Build a Stranger Things Wall You Can Freak Out At In Your Own HomeWhen Stranger Things premiered in 2016, it was a cultural force. Foreign DJs gushed over the lush 80s soundtrack, fashionistas loved the clothing, and the world became obsessed with the idea of using Christmas lights to communicate across material planes. [kyjohnso] has recreated that experience with the technology of today.
If you haven’t watched the show — Joyce Byers is trying to communicate with her son Will, who just so happens to be stuck in another plane of existence called the Upside Down. She screams questions at her living room wall, upon which hangs a series of Christmas lights, marked with the letters A to Z. Will is able to communicate back by causing the lights to flash, one letter at a time.
This build works a little differently. You basically type a message into a terminal on a Raspberry Pi, and it gets sent to a large language model—namely, the Claude API. The response from Claude (or Will Byers, if you’re imagining) is then flashed out on a WS2812B set of LED Christmas lights on the wall. [kyjohnso] added dramatic pauses whenever there’s a space in the output, somewhat replicating the dramatic elements of the show itself. Files are on GitHub for the spooky and curious.
It’s a neat build that would be a hit at any Halloween party. We can’t imagine how much more immersive it would be if paired with a speech-to-text engine so you could actually scream at the thing like a distraught Midwestern parent who has just lost her youngest child. It’s all about committing to the bit; if you build such a thing, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!

Gretsch unveil Abbey Road RS201 Studiomatic Designed specifically for recording, the Abbey Road RS201 Studiomatic directly incorporates some of Abbey Road’s own technology in its signal path, boasting a built-in circuit that’s based on the RS 97 Rumble Filter — a technology designed by the EMI team 1950s that served to remove low-frequency and mechanical vibrations from recordings.

black-sided sun Chromatography'Chromatography' is the presets pack for Cherry Audio Rhodes Chroma software synthesizer. The demo features several instances of Chroma. Other than a master bus limiter (ReaLimit from Cockos Reaper) no external effects are used. https://youtu.be/TBafyAGAnU0 Rhodes Chroma was a seminal instrument from early 1980s developed by ARP shortly before their demise. The design was purchased by CBS Musical Instruments and put into production by their Rhodes Division in 1982 - already as the Rhodes Chroma. A keyboardless version was produced as well, called Chroma Expander. For its time it was an extremely advanced, polyphonic and multitimbral instrument with velocity-sensitive keyboard. It also sported microprocessor at its core, and could be connected to a computer - an interface card was available for Apple IIe along with sequencing software. Only 1400-3000 Chromas and Expanders were built at all, as their production ceased by 1985, and it's safe to assume that far fewer have made it into 2020s. Thankfully, Cherry Audio has reproduced it in software with all the original features, and then some. The first impression is that it has a fairly non-conventional architecture, compared to other VA synths. But it is mostly due to a non-standard naming (like 'sweep' which is in fact 'LFO'), and a wide array of signal routing modes. 'Chromatography' presets are built from scratch or from each other. To load these presets into the synthesizer, unzip the archive contents into Chroma's Presets folder. For Windows 10/11 users it is C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\CherryAudio\Chroma\Presets. ...And have some Chromatic fun. Read More

Spotify acquires song sample and remix database WhoSampledWhoSampled says it will continue operating as a standalone app even as its data is integrated into Spotify
Source

The Best Gig I Ever Saw: Alana Hil Digs the Grateful DeadSoulful, independent artist Alana Hil told us about her Grateful Dead celebration experience...

Alana Hil: My favorite concert experience by far happened at Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead in Chicago — and not just one night, but all three. I did the full run, because in the jam band world, every show is different: no setlist is ever repeated, every moment holds new possibilities. In college, I was pulled into that festival, psychedelic, community-minded realm, and the first time I heard the Dead, I felt something physical in the sound — like I could almost touch it as it poured out of the speaker. Getting to see the surviving members together for a final time was more than nostalgia; it was witnessing a chapter of musical history close in real time.

There’s something spiritual about those shows. The culture surrounding the Grateful Dead goes beyond music — it’s about connection, about collective energy. I joined in fully, letting myself be swept up in the love, the improvisation, the crowd dancing and singing to one another, even those who didn’t know one another. That experience taught me something about freedom: how music can be a kind of home. I ended up living that freedom in real life for years—traveling in vans, living in teepees, other countries, following the music—because those nights revealed to me that belonging doesn’t always look like what people expect.

It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t felt it, but those three nights transformed me. The improvisation, the trust between musicians, and the way the audience completely breathed with the band… I shed many tears. That show wasn’t just the best I’ve ever seen — it was the one that reshaped what I thought a concert could be. “Fare thee well, Fare thee well, I love you more than words can tell. Listen to the river sing sweet songs that rock my soul.”

Alana Hil's Diaries of a Common Woman EP is out now.

Photo by Printz Board

The post The Best Gig I Ever Saw: Alana Hil Digs the Grateful Dead first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Sonixinema releases Piano Evolutions upright piano for Kontakt (Intro Price)
Sonixinema has released Piano Evolutions, a deeply expressive upright piano library for the full version of Kontakt 8.1+. This one immediately grabbed my attention because Sonixinema consistently releases some of the finest free Kontakt libraries on the market (for example, the recent Celestial Voices and Ethereal Pads). So, I knew that this wasn’t just another [...]
View post: Sonixinema releases Piano Evolutions upright piano for Kontakt (Intro Price)

AI music generator Suno raises $250M in latest funding roundAI music generation platform Suno has just raised $250 million in a Series C funding round at a $2.45 billion post-money valuation, the company reports.
The funding round – led by Menlo Ventures with participation from NVentures (Nvidia’s venture capital arm), as well as Hallwood Media, Lightspeed and Matrix – will accelerate the development of Suno’s “full-stack music ecosystem, model, workstation, artist tools and community”.

READ MORE: How I turned my DAW into an improv partner while producing my jazz album

The latest funding round follows a series of moves by Suno aimed at “redefining what’s possible in music creation”. In September, the company launches the “first-ever” generative audio workstation, Suno Studio, which pairs professional-grade multi-track editing with AI stem generation.
In the leadup to the launch of Suno Studio, the platform acquired WavTool, the first browser-based DAW. The move saw Suno adopting WavTool’s browser-based functionality, allowing it to repurpose the technology for its Suno Studio DAW.
“We’re seeing the future of music take shape in real time,” says Mikey Shulman, Co-Founder and CEO of Suno. “In just two years, we’ve seen millions of people make their ideas a reality through Suno, from first-time creators to top songwriters and producers integrating the tool into their daily workflows. This funding allows us to keep expanding what’s possible, empowering more artists to experiment, collaborate, and build on their creativity. We’re proud to be at the forefront of this historic moment for music.”
“Suno is the world’s #1 music creation app, making music accessible to everyone. Mikey and the team have built something people genuinely love using and millions of fans are on the platform every day, creating original songs and sharing them with friends,” says Amy Martin, Partner, Menlo Ventures.
You can read more about Suno’s latest funding round in a blog post entitled ‘The Future of Music is Already Here’.
The post AI music generator Suno raises $250M in latest funding round appeared first on MusicTech.

Spotify Rolls Out New Features to Spotlight More Creators Behind the SongSpotify's new "Expanded Credits," "SongDNA," and "About the Song" features aim to highlight behind-the-scenes creators.
The post Spotify Rolls Out New Features to Spotlight More Creators Behind the Song appeared first on Hypebot.

Comebacks and Reunions: Nostalgia Takes the Stage in 2026The Guess Who is finally reuniting for an all-Canadian tour in 2026, but that's not the only big ticket get-together involving some of our more familiar acts...
The post Comebacks and Reunions: Nostalgia Takes the Stage in 2026 appeared first on Hypebot.

ASM puts the power of its widely renowned Hydrasynth in new Diosynth wind synthesizerAshun Sound Machines (ASM) has launched a new wind synthesizer, and it features a sound engine based on its widely loved Hydrasynth.
The Diosynth is described as a highly expressive wind synth that combines a deep synthesis engine with a sample playback engine, to blend the best of acoustic and electronic sounds. It’s been designed with wind players in mind, featuring mechanical keys that replicate the feel of real sax and wind instruments.

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The Diosynth also has multiple fingering modes, scale/key locking, and octave keys covering over eight octaves to provide a familiar playing experience. Its Hydrasynth-influenced sound engine works in tandem the addition of a sample playback oscillator for creative sound design.
Users can blend realistic acoustic instruments, such as a Harmon-muted trumpet or Peruvian bamboo flute, with Hydrasynth’s wavescan oscillators, all processed through a 16-mode filter for hybrid tones. It can also layer or split two sounds at once, combining four Hydrasynth oscillators and two sample-based voices for highly expressive patches.
ASM has sampled 128 reed, brass, fipple, and string-based sounds for this new launch, including rare instruments such as the contrabass flute, Eb Tubax, and Peruvian llama whistle. It also hosts 384 factory patches and 768 total patch locations.
For more expressive play, Diosynth includes breath and bite sensors, an internal gyro, X/Y joystick, two pressure pads, and three programmable switches. Hear it in action in the video below, featuring composer/producer and M83 member, Joe Berry:

Connectivity for the Diosynth includes a ¼” stereo output and ⅛” headphone jack, both with dedicated volume controls, plus MIDI DIN In/Out, USB MIDI & Audio In/Out, Bluetooth MIDI In/Out, and Bluetooth audio-in for playing along with music.
Shipping for the Diosynth will commence in December. It is priced at $1,349 / £1,249. To find out more, head over to Ashun Sound Machines.
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