Get UnitedPlugins FireMaximizer FREE until October 18
UnitedPlugins is offering FireMaximizer for free until October 18, 2026, as part of a collaboration with the Japanese シユウの作曲・DTM講座 channel. Add the plugin to your cart, then enter the coupon code SiyuFMX100 at checkout to reduce the price to zero. FireMaximizer is currently listed at $137 in the UnitedPlugins store. The collaboration video also covers [...]
View post: Get UnitedPlugins FireMaximizer FREE until October 18

ART Pro Audio reveal the RPC Series Yorkville Sound have announce the upcoming launch of three new RPC rackmount power conditioners from ART Pro Audio.

MRT audio Mrtaudio USB MIDI Breath Controller MRTAUDIO STANDARD · COMPLETE SET. Turn breath into musical control MRTAUDIO Standard converts breath pressure into MIDI control data for shaping dynamics, timbre and articulation in compatible instruments and software. Keep both hands on the instrument while breath becomes part of the performance. One breath, three independent MIDI layers Route one breath input to as many as three independent MIDI destinations. Each layer has its own MIDI target, channel, input/output range, response curve and Attack/Release behavior. Expression, Modulation, Breath, Volume and other compatible MIDI targets. Three onboard presets identified by Green, Amber and Red LEDs. Guided calibration and automatic resting-baseline management. MRTAUDIO Web Configurator in a compatible browser. From studio to stage USB-C provides 5 V power and class-compliant USB MIDI with compatible hosts. For hardware MIDI, use the 3.5 mm TRS MIDI Type A output and the included cable terminating in a male 5-pin DIN connector. Settings are stored in the controller, so the browser does not need to remain open during normal performance. Complete set contents 1 x MRTAUDIO Standard USB MIDI controller unit. 1 x MRTAUDIO Breath Headset headband and sensor body. 1 x flexible air tube with threaded connector. 2 x removable mouthpieces; one primary and one spare. 1 x 3.5 mm TRS MIDI Type A to male 5-pin DIN MIDI cable. 1 x USB Type-C data/power cable. Important: MRTAUDIO is a MIDI controller. It does not generate or record sound and it is not a microphone. A compatible MIDI instrument, software application or host is required. Mobile use may require a suitable adapter, adequate power and a MIDI-compatible app. Read More

Anthropic’s first embedded evaluator is … Accenture?Accenture is about to take on its most high-risk consulting engagement ever.

Assignments: Torben Müller at CelestionBusiness Development Manager

Celestion

Celestion has announced the appointment of Torben Müller to the position of Business Development Manager. Müller’s primary focus will be  identifying, exploring, and developing new opportunities for growth alongside Celestion’s valued customers and partners.

He is also responsible for serving many of Celestion’s international distributors, plus several key OEMs across pro audio and guitar.

“I look forward to being part of a devoted and dedicated team, meeting and working with our great partners and customers, and contributing to strengthening and growing the Celestion brand,” said Müller.

For more, contact john.paice@celestion.com.The post Assignments: Torben Müller at Celestion first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Making a Digital Music Player for Cassette DecksIn the cross-over between the era of tapes into that of MP3s, you’d see quite a few of those special cassette tapes that were actually digital music players inside. Some simply provided a 3.5 mm input, while others were complete MP3 players or Bluetooth receivers that just happened to also output to the magnetic read head of a cassette player. Recently [Jonathan Rowny] decided to make his own version of the latter.
Although getting the actual audio signal into the read head is easy enough – requiring little more than its equivalent being used as a write head on the cassette side – actually interfacing with the player’s mechanisms like auto-stop, reverse and so on requires the use of some gearing that detect motion on what would be the tape spools, as well as transfer the motion from the take-up spool to the other spool so that features like the auto-stop mechanism don’t get triggered.
A lot of inspiration here can be found in e.g. the videos made by [Clint] of [Lazy Game Reviews] who looked at a number of examples – including their internals – over the years, with various levels of functionality. For this particular implementation an ESP32-S3 module is used for the brains, along with a microSD card reader for music and a PCM5102 I2S audio codec to create the analog audio signal.
The gears were printed using an SLA printer and seem to work all right. Unfortunately he didn’t realize the importance of the capstan as the mechanism that actually transports the tape, so its motion was not measured as is done in the better cassette adapters. This will likely be corrected in a future iteration, however.

From Universal suing DistroKid (for the first time) to UMG and Sony suing Suno (again)… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe biggest headlines from the past few days...
Source

Serum 2 vs Vital: Do you need to pay for pro-grade synthesis?Xfer Records released Steve Duda’s Serum plugin 12 years ago. It was an instant classic that went on to become the synth of choice for many producers due to its ease of use, flexibility and complex, upfront sound
Then in 2020, developer Matt Tytel released Vital, a spectral warping wavetable plug-in that shared many design traits with Serum but—most importantly—had a fully functioning free version. It had a level of complexity and polish that you don’t normally see in free software, so it quickly became known as a free alternative to Serum. Although they share many similarities, features such as an additional oscillator and unique modulation options arguably made Vital superior for certain tasks.
But Xfer came through with Serum 2 in 2025, boasting a wealth of new features that took its sound design credentials to a whole new level. There’s no doubt that you get a lot more synth with Serum 2, but at $249, do you really need it all, and is it worth it over the features available in Vital?

Oscillators: Serum 2 vs Vital
To get a better idea of what each synth offers so you can decide which is best for you, we’ll take a look at each section and compare how they stack up, starting with the oscillators.
Serum 2 includes three main wavetable oscillators, plus a sub oscillator and noise oscillator that can be used to load texture layers or transient samples. Vital also has three wavetable oscillators plus a sample oscillator, but no separate sub. Given the often rich nature of wavetables, both synths offer plenty to generate complex-sounding patches. Both also have built-in wavetable editors.
Vital. Image: Press
Serum includes two Warp engines that can be used to dramatically shape your waves, with 32 warp, filter and distortion options alongside FM, PD, AM and Ring Mod that can be fed from any of the other oscillators. Vital can’t compete with those numbers, but it does have 15 spectral morph modes, six wave morph modes, plus FM and Ring Mod options.
Both have flexible unison controls for creating thicker-sounding patches, alongside options to stack and add subtle variations to each voice. When it comes to wavetable synthesis, they’re both very capable synths, and assuming you load the same wavetables, both offer a crisp, high-quality sound, with options for oversampling if your computer can handle it. You might want to consider that Serum 2 comes with 288 wavetables, while the free version of Vital only comes with 25. This is easily expandable with free or paid-for wavetables from the Internet.
In terms of overall flexibility, the gap starts to appear when you consider Serum 2’s four new oscillator types. You can now load multisamples, which gives access to more organic-sounding, multi-layered sample patches. There’s a new dedicated Sample oscillator that can do looping and slicing, a flexible Granular oscillator, and a Spectral oscillator that can do realtime resynthesis. This dramatically opens up the sound design potential, but you may not need these extras if you already have other synths or samplers that fill these roles.
Filters: Serum 2 vs Vital
Both synths have two flexible filters alongside the ability to route the signal from any of the oscillators, and to do parallel or serial routing.
Serum 2 has a ridiculous number of filter modes, including comb, phase, flange, formant, scream, ladder and more. There’s even an option that lets you draw in four variations of complex notches then blend between them using an XY pad. Perfect for creating those highly modulated neuro basslines.
Vital is no slouch either, with 32 filter options, each of which can be morphed into different shapes using a slider. If we were to split hairs, then we’d say the sound of Serum’s filters has a tiny bit more clarity, but both sound fantastic and can be used to dramatically shape the character of the oscillators.

Effects: Serum 2 vs Vital
Both synths do well here as they have a decent collection of the usual effects like distortion, chorus, flange, phase, delay, compression and reverb, all of which can be reordered as you see fit. Vital has nine, whereas Serum 2 has 12, including new convolution reverb and frequency shifter effects.
Vital actually does a little better visually, as some of its effects have extra graphical displays that help show what some of the controls are doing. Serum 2 wins overall, not least because the sound quality is noticeably crisper and more detailed, but also because it lets you split the signal so you can process the lows and highs differently, and it also includes two Bus effects, making it easier to do things like adding some delay to a single oscillator.
Modulation: Serum 2 vs Vital
Modulation is an area where Vital really shines. You can have up to six envelopes and eight LFOs, with very clear and crisp graphics that make things easy to follow. There are also two Random oscillators and a powerful mod remap function.
Serum has a similar setup, albeit with fewer envelopes but more LFOs. The random options built into the LFOs are a little more advanced and include an XY path-tracing feature, and it too has a mod remap function on the modulation matrix page.
Credit: Xfer Records
Vital has a few unique mod features that are lacking in Serum, though. The LFOs have a stereo offset so you can easily have different modulation signals going to the left and right sides. This is great on things like the filter, as it can add some additional width to your sounds. When you drag a mod source over a parameter, you get a preview of the result before committing, which lets you quickly experiment on different controls. There’s also a scale lock on the oscillators so you can create wild, in-key arpeggios and runs by feeding the LFO into the oscillator pitch.
Extras: Serum 2 vs Vital
This covers the fundamentals of each synth, but there are a few other points to mention. Serum also includes a mixer page to help you with balancing each oscillator and understanding the signal flow. It also has a comprehensive arpeggiator that lets you save up to 12 different arp settings on different keys, plus a fantastic MIDI clip launcher that can turn your keyboard into a riff performance machine.
We’ve been comparing Serum 2 to the free version of Vital, but there are also a few other versions available, including Vital Pro for $80, which includes 400+ presets, 150 wavetables, a text-to-wavetable feature, and a few extra skins and perks.
Serum 2 vs Vital: do you need to pay?
Up until the release of Serum 2, the gap between the two synths was much smaller, but with the update, Serum 2 has leapfrogged Vital in nearly all areas. But this is to be expected as it’s an expensive synth developed by a whole team, rather than a one-man product.
With thousands of preset packs available for both synths, there’s no denying their popularity. One thing to note, though: although Vital has had several updates over the years, there’s no guarantee that it will be developed much further, as it is created and maintained by a single dev. (Although technically it’s open source, so who knows where it might go in the future). Compare that with Serum, which has a more robust user base, website and company behind it.
There’s no denying that Serum is the better synth overall, but it’s also expensive and much more complex. Having so many choices can sometimes be a negative when you want to get to a finished sound quickly, so Vital is arguably an easier synth to program (albeit one that still has buckets of depth). If you’re in the market for a one-to-rule-them-all kind of synth, though, then Serum is a worthy investment.
 
The post Serum 2 vs Vital: Do you need to pay for pro-grade synthesis? appeared first on MusicTech.

“It’s so important”: Nick Hakim explains why every producer should learn their DAW’s key commands 
As a producer, you’re going to drastically supercharge your workflow if you spend some time learning the key commands of your chosen DAW. 
It might seem like a boring task to sit down and learn them, but knowing how to navigate the grid, move the playhead, and quickly select crucial tools without manually trying to find them within busy dropdown menus can speed up your creative process by several orders of magnitude.
And kicking off the brand-new season of MusicTech’s My Forever Studio podcast – made in partnership with Audient – producer, songwriter and Anderson Paak and Mac DeMarco collaborator Nick Hakim discusses the importance of learning key commands, and explains how doing so improved his workflow.

READ MORE: My Forever Studio: Nick Hakim has your gear on long-term loan

“I learned Pro Tools when I was in college – I kind of fooled around with many of them to start with to understand them and to see what felt right,” he explains of his early experience with DAWs. “I started using Ableton in 2018. I had a cracked version. Sorry! But I was always like, ‘I wanna learn how to use Ableton.’” 
Hakim explains how a friend who was well-versed in Ableton took the time to show him the programme’s basic key commands.
“He literally sat down with me for an hour and showed me how to set my own key commands, little shortcuts,” he says. “Once he showed me that, and just having somebody show me that, it changed [things].
“To me the boring stuff is the fundamental fun – the stuff that’s so important. Being able to cut and stretch, and how to zoom out. Every DAW is slightly different. When I was first in Ableton I’d be doing Logic key commands, pressing X to go to the mixer [laughs].”
My Forever Studio is back, a series which sees the MusicTech team quiz artists, producers and engineers on their favourite gear, asking them to put together their fantasy Forever Studio using whatever musical items their hearts desire.
While it’s an environment for freedom, there are some strict rules in the Forever Studio. Guests are permitted a limited number of items in their creative space, so they have to choose carefully. There will be nostalgia. There will be anecdotes. There may be gags. But there will be no bundles!
Subscribe to My Forever Studio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and check out all episodes so far via MusicTech.
The post “It’s so important”: Nick Hakim explains why every producer should learn their DAW’s key commands appeared first on MusicTech.

Get a free cinematic synth pad for Splice INSTRUMENT
Download our free cinematic synth pad preset for Splice INSTRUMENT—grab these presets during the drop window and they’re yours to keep forever.

Museum of Synthesizers present the Arturia World Tour On Saturday 26 September 2026, The Museum of Synthesisers will be hosting a full day of hands-on synthesis, sound design and performance at the Standalone Gallery in Dalston, London. 

Two Legs, Five Arms is a FREE generative drum machine for macOS
François Pé has released Two Legs, Five Arms, a free generative drum machine and AU MIDI effect for macOS. We recently featured the developer’s free Euclid3an Arp, which builds polyrhythmic arpeggios without making you program every note manually. Two Legs, Five Arms applies that same playful approach to drum patterns. I absolutely love the GUI [...]
View post: Two Legs, Five Arms is a FREE generative drum machine for macOS

AZPEX Audio releases REGENT FREE clipper with ADAA and parallel processing
AZPEX Audio has released REGENT, a free clipper plugin for macOS and Windows. I still find it fascinating how many free clippers there are. The number is probably well into the hundreds by now. You can cut through the noise with our recently updated free clipper roundup, which features 13 particularly good ones. But still, [...]
View post: AZPEX Audio releases REGENT FREE clipper with ADAA and parallel processing

With an 800 nanometer diamond-coated diaphragm, FiiO’s new FT15 headphones are for the serious audiophileHigh-end audio dealer FiiO has just released a new pair of headphones for the ultimate audiophile. In general, three main audio components dictate the sound quality in a set of cans: driver, diaphragm, and build material. The new FT15 model has the best of the best of all three.
First, the drivers are 101mm across. Most over-ear headphones, including the Apple AirPods Max 2s and the Beyerdynamic DT770s, have between a 40 and 50mm driver. 101mm means double the physical space to move the sound waves.

READ MORE: Roland’s flagship store and first-ever standalone US retail space is opening in New York City this October

Next, these are planar headphones, which means the diaphragm is suspended by magnets. This keeps it flat instead of being shaped by a conical structure, as is the case with most speakers. This lack of external pressure means the sound will resonate equally at all frequencies rather than being warped at the ends by the forced shape.
Credit: FiiO
Plus, the FT15s have a diaphragm that’s a mere 800 nanometers thin. That’s over 1000 times thinner than 1mm and 86.7% thinner than the previous FiiO generation. The nearly invisible material maintains its structural integrity with a diamond coating, so it will move precisely with the sound without breaking.
Finally, the earcups are made from North American FAS-grade black walnut. Not only does this give every pair an original look, as they were all made with different pieces of wood, but the sound is naturally resonant compared to most headphones made out of plastic or metal. There’s a reason most hi-fi speakers are made of wood. Apply that same logic to headphones.
And yet despite all these highly engineered parts, the carbon fibre headband brings the total weight to just 425 grams, which is less than one pound. Not only will the sound be pristine, but the design is light and comfortable.
The FiiO FT15 is priced at £499, €499.99 and $499.99. Learn more at FiiO.
The post With an 800 nanometer diamond-coated diaphragm, FiiO’s new FT15 headphones are for the serious audiophile appeared first on MusicTech.

ReSing Voices Vol 2 from IK Multimedia The latest expansion for IK Multimedia’s AI-powered vocal-modelling software has arrived, delivering a versatile set of new voice models aimed at modern music production tasks.