Fight musique: claire rousay is making — and recording — the most of every momentClaire Rousay likes to get into fights. “If there’s a fight at a bar,” she says, “and you remove yourself from the bar while it’s happening, you’ll probably remember less about that night. But if you sit there and watch it, or get in the fight, you’ll definitely remember it.”

READ MORE: Grimes issues apology following Coachella DJ set – what went wrong?

Rousay’s work is far from fight music. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t violent. Through fiercely emotional field recordings, drone flecked with found sounds and musique concrète spiked with blips and glitches, she elevates small moments to ruinous status.
“That’s the way I work: get really involved and put an emphasis on everything. Get the most I can in the moment.”
Her output is all about these moments. On the 2020 album it was always worth it, Rousay smoothes the rollercoaster textures of life into text-to-speech vocals assembled from messages exchanged over the course of a recently terminated relationship. On 2021’s 17 roles (all mapped out), clanging railway bells and barking dogs give way to a diary entry on self-doubt, loneliness and the afterlife. It’s almost too quiet to hear and too real to bear.
Speaking from her home studio in Los Angeles, Rousay is louder and quicker to laugh but every bit as candid. “You don’t want to get your hopes up for anything,” she says of her new album, sentiment. “But I’ve put the most work into this record of anything I’ve ever made.”
Rousay’s experimental recordings, released through Bandcamp with almost reckless abandon, have attracted high-profile subscribers. When Thrill Jockey founder Bettina Richards reached out to see if she wanted support from a label, the stage was set for her biggest album yet. “[Thrill Jockey] were open to anything,” says Rousay. What they got was her “‘song’ record”.
Image: Zoe Donahoe
Fans of the musician’s more oblique works needn’t worry. sentiment has songs — real songs — but it’s no conventional pop coming-out. Its opener, 4pm, for example, is a spoken-word “letter to the universe, begging for the aching to let up”. It’s written by Rousay but voiced by someone else (Theodore Cale Schafer, one of multiple featured players from the Rousayverse), the first clue to the album’s depth and intertextuality.
From there, mournful strings and synths settle over sentiment like a heavy blanket; spare acoustic guitars rise like flowers erupting through concrete. And Rousay claws at the heartstrings with lines that are by turns soft, sensual and devastating. It’s all seasoned with street sounds, birdsong and snatches of conversation.
Rousay, who grew up an evangelical Christian and played in worship bands before abandoning religion, doesn’t make maudlin music. That would be old-fashioned. Instead, her work, which has been labelled “emo ambient” by fans and critics, feels sad in a thoroughly modern way. It acknowledges the promise and the lie of social media: connections made and connections missed. Her close-mic’d confessionals and themes of guilt, sex and anxiety are complemented by the sounds of iPhone message tones and keyboard clacks, rustling leaves and long showers, all of which contribute to a unique sense of millennial American malaise.
sentiment by claire rousay
Within the melancholy, though, there are always moments of joy, of beauty, of uninhibited expression, of fucking around and finding out.
In 2022, Rousay and Mari Maurice, also known as More Eaze, released their fourth collaborative album, Never Stop Texting Me. Across its 10 electric power ballads, ambient minimalism and hyper-pop maximalism meet midwest emo, trap beats and auto-tune. It works.
“Mari and I made it and we were like, ‘This is the greatest record ever made!’ Then it came out and we looked back on it like, ‘That… that was a bold choice’.” Some critics agreed, calling the album a pastiche, as if its pop proclivities were a put-on (they weren’t) and its humour a defence mechanism to protect against criticism (it wasn’t).
“The way it was critiqued was not what we were expecting,” says Rousay. “We thought the influences would come out in the music, which didn’t happen. There’s a level of humour to it, for sure. Especially lyrically. But I think it’s pretty sincere. And pretty transparent. Talking about just wanting to be as famous as Kali Malone [we’re on that Kali Malone shit], that’s all anybody could want. That’s pretty sincere to me!”
image: Zoe Donahoe
The same sincerity and self-deprecation permeate sentiment. The album was already taking shape during the Never Stop Texting Me sessions. Some of its songs were even recorded then, while others are older still.
“It’s been a really, really long process,” says Rousay. “There’s nine or 10 versions of each of these songs. There’ll be songs that sound like Elliott Smith with panned acoustic guitars and double-tracked vocals or something, and then I’ll have the same song but there’ll be a fuzzed-out drum machine with a huge pad over the whole thing, and vocals that are panned all over the place.”
Break down these sessions, though, and you’ll see that many of them are made up of stock Ableton Live sounds. Rousay is fastidious when it comes to composition but less so when it comes to equipment.
“I’m just as happy running a $90 guitar direct into a Focusrite as I am playing a high-end Telecaster through a Vox and recording it with multiple mics.”
The electric guitar parts on sentiment were recorded using a Fender American Performer Telecaster. “I mostly just use that on everything. I use that recorded right into my interface and plated back through my ADAM A5X monitors and then recorded back with a Shure SM57. And that’s the guitar.”
Rousay’s refreshingly unfussy approach to gear is a reminder that emotional clarity is often best achieved through the simplest techniques. “I’ve always been down to play with whatever’s in front of me,” she says. “I’m just as happy running a $90 guitar direct into a Focusrite as I am playing a high-end Telecaster through a Vox and recording it with multiple mics.”
Still, like any musician, Rousay loves getting new toys. Whether through friend recommendations or brand hook-ups, new gear gracing her desk (or desktop) helps her break habits and shake up her routine. To put that bluntly: Claire loves free shit.
​​Her Tele came courtesy of Fender. She made 40 minutes of music within days of Hologram sending her its Microcosm loop pedal. And after Goodhertz furnished her with new plugins following a rec from friend and collaborator Meg Duffy (AKA Hand Habits), Rousay made them her core compositional tools. “All the Goodhertz plugins are really sick. So now I use them for everything.” That is, until the next new sound comes along.
Image: Mike Boyd
Rousay is a sucker for VST string sounds and a big fan of Felt Instruments’ Blisko cello. She also recommends Spitfire Audio’s free LABS software instruments, especially its LA Atmos field recordings and textures. Can’t afford Native Instruments’ Una Corda? Just use the LABS Soft Piano, she says.
If there’s any sound that’s become synonymous with Rousay’s genre-fluid “emo ambient”, it’s auto-tune. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever paid for or researched,” she says.
The vocals on sentiment are smeared in Waves’ Tune Real-Time. In all its artificial warbling, Rousay’s voice is legion. Its many frequencies echo the desperation and mania of an Instagram comment section: thousands of voices fighting to be heard. But the effect is also a mask — artifice as armour. For a musician so willing to be vulnerable with her listeners, the cloaked voice is the last thing that separates claire rousay the artist from Claire Rousay the person.
The new album draws as much from Jimmy Eat World, Elliott Smith and Broken Social Scene as it does from Brian Eno. But beyond the emo, pop-punk and ambient touchstones, Rousay’s clearest influences are still, well, listen and you’ll hear it: everything else.
Rousay’s field recordings ramped up around lockdown. With the world in stasis, they were a way to recognise that life goes on even while we’re not looking – or listening. “Everything became a bit more interesting,” she says. “When you’re in the same space for a long time, you’re zooming in rather than looking outwards. I kind of zoomed in on my life. There is so much sound happening that I’m not making. The world is still moving even though it feels like it isn’t.”
Image: Zoe Donahoe
Rousay leaves her Zoom H5 recorder running for hours at a time, chronicling everything and nothing. In her kitchen. In Ubers. In hotel rooms around the world. On afternoon walks in the park with her dog, Luna. At restaurants with her friends. Anywhere and everywhere. With so much raw audio on her hands, she’s had to become adept at finding moments of value.
“I’ll drag a file into Ableton to see it visually,” she says. “I’m just looking for activity within the waveforms. Like, something happened here, because the signalling changed. There’s obviously a reason for that. I’m interested in that reason. Something is happening and I need to get it out. I guess that’s important to me.”
Rousay isn’t an archivist. Her compulsive field recording isn’t an exercise in nostalgia stockpiling. She won’t revisit these files in the future. In fact, she’s deleted more gigabytes of recordings than most musicians have ever made. It’s not about being able to access the past from the future. It’s about the present. It’s about getting in the fight. Getting the most in the moment. Not to be all sentimental about it, but these moments matter.
“I don’t expect that I’m going to live for a very long time,” says Claire. “I don’t know where that fear comes from. I don’t even know if it’s necessarily a fear. I think it’s just an intuitive thing. But something about recording and deleting things is maybe tied up in that – how things aren’t permanent but they are important.”
‘sentiment’ is released on Thrill Jockey on April 19
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Win a Korg Wavestate MkII Korg are giving away two Wavestate MkII synthesizers to entrants in the UK.

Your Livestream Strategy Sucks! K-Pop’s lessons on reaching a global audience Haven't had much success with live streaming lately or given up altogether? If you're going to learn from anyone, look at how live-streaming contributed to K-Pop artist's global success.....
The post Your Livestream Strategy Sucks! K-Pop’s lessons on reaching a global audience  appeared first on Hypebot.

Alphabet X’s Bellwether harnesses AI to help predict natural disastersThe world is on fire. Quite literally, much of the time. Predicting such disasters before they get out of hand — or better yet, before they happen — will be key to maintaining a reasonable quality of life for the coming century. It’s a big, global issue. It’s also one Alphabet believes it can help […]
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This Go-Kart Rides on a PalletMany beginner woodworkers, looking to offset the introductory costs of starting a hobby, will source their wood from pallets. Generally they’re easily found and can be low or no cost, but typically require a bit of work before they’re usable in a project. [Garage Avenger] is looking to do something a little outside of the box with his pallet project, though. He’s using raw pallets as a chassis for a four-speed go-kart, partially for the challenge and excitement and also to one-up a Pinterest post.
Almost immediately, though, the other major downside of working with pallets arose which is that they’re generally built out of low-grade pine which is soft and flexible. Flexibility is generally not a good thing to have in a vehicle frame so plenty of the important parts of this build were strengthened with steel tubing including the rear axle, steering mounts, and a few longitudinal supports to strengthen the overall frame. After working out some kinks with ordering a few of the wrong parts, and mounting the steering box backwards, it was time to test out the four-speed engine (and brakes) on the the go-kart, making it nearly ready for the road.
To complete the build, some tidying of wiring and fuel lines was done, along with improving some of the non-critical parts of the build like the bucket seat. Of course, adding pallet spoilers and body kit puts the finishing touches on the build and the go-kart is finally ready to tear up the local go-kart track and the less-inspiring Pinterest projects. [Garage Avenger] is no stranger to strange vehicle builds, either. Although it’s a bit out of season for most of our northern hemisphere readers now, his jet-powered street sled is still worth a view.

Volume.com Announces the 2024 BeachLife Music Festival FreeLivestream in Partnership with Music Gives To St. Jude KidsVolume.com and BeachLife Festival have announced the free livestream for the eagerly awaited 2024 BeachLife Music Festival, slated for May 3-5 in Redondo Beach, California. The free stream will be in partnership with Music Gives to St. Jude Kids. 

This year’s festival boasts a lineup featuring iconic artists such as Sting, Incubus, My Morning Jacket, Dirty Heads, DEVO, Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB, Seal, Local Natives, Fleet Foxes, and many others. For fans unable to attend in person, Volume.com provides a free and exclusive portal to experience BeachLife Music Festival live, offering a unique opportunity to enjoy the performances from anywhere. You can claim a ticket for this free event today to get a reminder and learn more about the Music Gives to St. Jude Kids Partner In Hope program. To discover other recent livestreams or to sign up for upcoming events, visit Volume.com. 

Fans of BeachLife 2024 are encouraged to pair their good vibes with a great cause—St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®. Between incredible BeachLife acts, festival-goers and festival-viewers can become a St. Jude Partner in Hope. Contributions from St. Jude supporters ensure that families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing, or food so they can focus on helping their children live. A Partner in Hope can give today by texting GIVE to 62-62-62 and, in return, will receive a Music Gives to St. Jude Kids t-shirt.

Volume is not just a platform; it's the destination for a thriving livestream ecosystem where artists can flourish and grow their businesses. Volume has been diligently expanding its library, attracting a growing roster of artist-users, podcasters, and venues to join its platform. Select streams are now available for on-demand viewing on Volume, offering audiences diverse performances and discussions. Among these are Andy Frasco’s World Saving Podcast, Chris Shiflett’s Shred with Shifty, with episodes featuring Blues extraordinaire Joe Bonamassa, Brent Mason, John Osborne, and more. Other events that have been featured on Volume include The BMG/BBR CMA Pre-Party featuring Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson, and more; Warren Haynes Christmas Jam featuring Slash, Phil Lesh, Tyler Childers, Gov’t Mule, and others; and various in-studio streams from Lightning 100 featuring artists such as The War And Treaty, Grace Potter, Vera Bloom with BadCulture, The Foxies and a recent secret show with Sheryl Crow.

In the changing world of music, certain venues and festivals remain at the forefront by embracing Volume Livestreams—a modern approach to music broadcasting. Notable pioneers include BeachLife Music Festival, Nashville establishments 3rd & Lindsley, The Basement East,and venues like West Hollywood’s Troubadour, Charlotte’s Neighborhood Theatre, BurlingtonVermont’s Nectar’s, and NYC’s The Bitter End. These locations have adapted to the age to ensure that live music remains vibrant and accessible on a scale. 

For more information, visit www.volume.com.

Compiling and Running Turbo Pascal in the BrowserWhen a friend of [Lawrence Kesteloot] found a stack of 3.5″ floppy disks, they found that it contained Turbo Pascal code which the two of them had worked on back in the Summer of 1989. Amidst reminiscing about the High School days and watching movies on VHS, [Lawrence] sought a way to bring these graphical applications once more back to life. Not finding an easy way to compile Turbo Pascal code on Mac even back in 2013 when he started the project, he ended up writing a Turbo Pascal compiler in JavaScript, as any reasonable person would do in this situation.
SPIDER.PAS in its full glory. (Credit: Lawrence Kesteloot)
As noted by [Lawrence], the compiler doesn’t implement the full Turbo Pascal 5.5 language, but only the subset that was required to compile and run these applications which they had found on the floppy disks. These include ROSE.PAS and SPIDER.PAS along with three others, and can also be found in the GitHub repository. As can be seen in the online version of the compiler, it captures the feel of programming Pascal in 1989 on the command line.
Naturally, the software situation has changed somewhat over the last decade. We’ve recently seen some promising multi-platform Pascal compilers, and of course you could even run Turbo Pascal in DOSBox or similar. That might make this project seem irrelevant, but being able to write and run Pascal applications in more ways and on more platforms is never a bad thing.

Epidemic Sound’s royalty-free music is played 2.5bn times per day on YouTube and TikTok, but company still struggles to turn a profitThe company says there are now 26 million videos on YouTube and TikTok featuring its music
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Universal Music Group generated 51% of its 2023 recorded music revenues in North America… and 8 other things we learned from its new annual reportMBW takes a deep dive through Universal's latest in-depth financial report
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Omnisphere is “one of the most inspiring instruments,” says TouristTourist has commended the “inspiring” presets found on Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere plugin synth, hailing it as a solid “starting point for sounds”.

READ MORE: Mike Dean leaks a glimpse of Moog’s Muse, a forthcoming mystery synth

The British producer and Grammy-winning songwriter – real name William Edward Phillips – hailed Omnisphere in the latest episode of My Forever Studio. It’s a podcast on which artists, producers and musicians dream up a fantasy studio setup, picking a limited number of items.
In this episode, the award-winning plugin (Version 2.8 was launched in 2021) is named by Tourist as a key starting point when starting a new project. He also emphasises his desire to find instruments that “inspire him”.
“It’s one of the most inspiring instruments,” Tourist says of the plugin. “You open it and it’s like, you know, it’s such a good starting point for sounds.”
He also addresses the stigma surrounding the use of presets in music production, emphasising the importance of embracing inspiration in any form. He asserts, “If you find inspiration in a preset, don’t in any way judge yourself for thinking like that. You’re immediately pissing on your own fire of inspiration.”
“It’s so important that that inspiration is what carries you through the rest of the record because there’s nothing wrong with it, you know? That’s me embracing using presets. So much of my music is just Omnisphere presets, but that’s fine.”

At another point in the episode, Tourist discusses the preciousness around collecting treasured gear that doesn’t end up being used by its owners. He says, “Your studio is not a museum. You don’t want to feel intimidated by it. You want to feel like you can revel in its creativity. I’m not like ‘This one here…’ Like a fucking wine cellar.”
“The emotional value of something sometimes is what you create with it. To some extent, these things are tools and the tools allow you to make magic, and the magic is what you need to get from these tools.”
Listen to the episode below:

My Forever Studio invites guests, in the form of producers, musicians, songwriters and studio engineers, to dream up a fantasy studio they’ll make music in forever. This studio can be anywhere in the world, but there is a catch – each guest is only allowed to pick six studio items. Before you ask, no, these cannot be plugin bundles. *sounds the ‘no bundles’ klaxon*
Find all episodes of My Forever Studio via MusicTech.
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Plugin Boutique is offering its “lowest prices ever” on a range of Universal Audio UAD pluginsThere’s an age-old adage: you can never have too many plugins. Okay, that isn’t a thing, but it’s true, right? Until the end of this month (30 April), you can grab a number of killer savings on Universal Audio UAD plugins over at Plugin Boutique.
Universal Audio’s UAD plugins are some of the best in the biz, and you pick up a select number for as little as $29 apiece until the end of the month.

READ MORE: Get Excite Audio’s VISION 4X Lite or Audified’s U78 Saturator totally free with any purchase at Plugin Boutique

Up for grabs for $29 each are a selection of effects – Pure Plate Reverb, Studio D Chorus, Oxide Tape Recorder, Brigade Chorus Pedal, and Waterfall Rotary Speaker – while there are a number of other products with up to 80 percent discount applied, too.
They include the Manley Tube Preamp, which is available for $74 at a 50 percent discount, Verve Analogue Machines for $99 at a 50 percent discount, PolyMAX Synth for $39 at a whopping 80 percent off, Waterfall B3 Organ with a cool 75 percent off, and Ravel Grand Piano for $39, again with a huge 80 percent knocked off its price tag.
Universal Audio UAD plugins usually come with pretty high price tags – reflective of their demand and standing among professional producers – so now’s your chance to grab one or two – or even the whole lot – while saving an awful lot of money.
As we say, these deals are available until 30 April (less than two weeks to go), so act fast if you want to treat your in-the-box studio setup to a cheeky little upgrade.
For more info, head to Plugin Boutique.
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MPG Awards: Discounted balcony tickets The MPG are kindly offering the Sound On Sound community a 40% discount on balcony tickets for the upcoming MPG Awards 2024.

My Forever Studio: Tourist wants antiques, not museum pieces“When I was 13 year old, my dream was a laptop and an audio interface, and nothing else”, says Tourist. Luckily, for the Grammy-winning producer and songwriter, he’s in the right place.
On the 66th episode of My Forever Studio, the podcast presented by MusicTech and Audient, British artist Tourist joins us to dream up his fantasy Forever Studio. Of course, he must adhere to the rules: only six musical items are allowed in his studio, beyond a computer, DAW and audio interface.
In the show, Tourist — real name Will Phillips — tells us about the one app he can’t live without, why he doesn’t agree with “sneery” synthesizers and collecting gear as relics, and the importance of not shying away from presets.

Tourist’s celebrating the upcoming launch of his fifth album, Memory Morning, which he says is “one of those albums that really took shape as I wrote it. I had absolutely no point of reference to start from, and that was equal parts liberating and daunting.”
“Often my music draws from specific life events but this album really lives in and was borne from my imagination. I wanted to write something that felt like it whisked you away, an album that felt like a ‘place’, its own world, somewhere you might find new corners with each listen.  It truly is the first album I’ve written that feels like the sum of all of my influences.”
In the past decade, Tourist’s blend of emotive, melancholy and synth-driven dance music — which he once coined “SDM – sad dance music” — has garnered a devoted fanbase and critical acclaim across the globe. In 2015, he was awarded a Grammy for Song Of The Year for co-writing Sam Smith’s Stay With Me, and has racked up millions of streams on tracks such as Run and We Stayed Up All Night. 

 
In the previous episode of My Forever Studio, Benn Jordan revealed the extremely budget rig he mixed and mastered his early music on, explained why less than half of all synth owners make music, and shared the only Forever Studio item he really couldn’t live without.
The My Forever Studio podcast sees artists, producers and engineers create their dream fantasy Forever Studio, wherever they want in the universe. However, there are strict rules in the Forever Studio. Our guests are permitted a limited number of items in their creative space, so they must 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.com

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Lewitt’s Ray microphone tries to solve an age-old problem with recording vocals£299/$349, lewitt-audio.com
The fundamentals of studio microphone technology have remained relatively static over the years, with few major developments in recent decades — except for the now-common all-in-one USB microphone. Rarely does a manufacturer try to address an issue which is just sort of accepted as an inconvenient part of the recording process But that is what Lewitt has done with its new Ray microphone. So how is it different from other microphones?

READ MORE: AstroLab is one giant leap for Arturia — but will it really take off?

Ray looks like a conventional all-analogue studio condenser mic, connected to your interface by XLR and using phantom power. It ships with a shockmount and a magnetic pop filter that attaches neatly to the body and is small enough not to look unsightly should you be using the mic on camera. The build quality and finish are excellent, and it looks pretty cool too.
Ray’s unique innovation is what the company calls “autofocus for your voice”. Anyone who has used a microphone knows that your voice gets quieter and thinner the further away you are from it, and increasingly loud and boomy as you come up close. The way this has always been managed has been to regulate your physical distance, being careful not to go too close or too far away when speaking or singing. It’s so ingrained that you don’t really think about it – but what if there was another way?
Lewitt has come up with a system it calls AURA which, when activated, is able to dynamically adapt the microphone’s level and tonal qualities based on your distance from it. It all happens inside the mic and though the developers don’t explicitly reveal how, it uses some kind of infrared beam or sensor coupled with DSP to judge distance and then adjust level.
This is activated using a simple button on the mic — otherwise it just operates in regular, non-adjusting mode — and is something of a revelation. You can move back and forth by a couple of feet (obviously not really far because there are practical limits) and the level remains consistent. Producers would normally use some compression to achieve a similar if not identical result, though that can come with the issue of latency and the effect is also printed onto your take. And riding a gain fader during recording is not really practical.

With the dynamic feature on you quickly forget that you are not supposed to be shifting position since the audio level in your headphones doesn’t change – it’s surprisingly easy to get used to. When you get very close to the mic, male voices especially will exhibit more low end but the proximity effect isn’t evident and you do have to get really quite close to experience this anyway.
There’s a second feature that uses the AURA technology and that’s “mute by distance”, the other button on the mic body. Choose one of several pre-set distances and when you move further away the mic will mute itself. Again, you can approximate it using a software or hardware noise gate, but finding the right threshold setting can be fiddly.
The practical uses for this are pretty compelling. For singers it means you can step back between takes or verses, muting the mic and ensuring that bleed, background noise or off-mic chatter are not picked up, saving editing time later. For podcasters, it means you can swing the mic off to one side if it’s on a boom, or physically move back to temporarily mute the mic. This doesn’t mean that you’ll have to do no editing, mixing or processing after recording but it can cut down on the amount of work by letting people mute and unmute themselves in real time.
Whether you use these features or not, Ray delivers a clean and neutral-sounding signal via its one-inch gold-sputtered capsule with a cardioid pickup pattern that rejects sound from behind. There’s a very low self-noise level of 8dB and a sound pressure upper limit of 131 dBSPL so loud performances aren’t a problem. Favoured by engineers and producers working with artists including Justin Bieber and the Rolling Stones, Lewitt’s mics enjoy a good reputation and certainly here it’s well justified.

Is the AURA stuff enough to make Ray stand out in this price bracket? We think so.
It’s a stellar mic to begin with — if it wasn’t, no extra features could make up for that. But these are genuinely useful additions. While both the auto-gain and the auto-mute will be helpful for all users, we’d suggest that the gain will be particularly appreciated by singers, who tend to move to differing extents during a performance and whose vocals can naturally vary in volume. If you want to capture those variations you can of course just turn the gain feature off.
Small variations in volume are less of a problem for streamers or podcasters but many could still make use of the auto gain. For these people, being able to mute yourself while others speak for longer periods by just moving back slightly will also be a really useful thing to be able to do. While these are mostly possible to achieve in a more long-winded and arguably less effective format by using live mixing or plugins, here it’s super simple. Just a couple of button presses on the mic will do it.
The price, while reasonable for a high-performing studio mic, might count out more casual content creators. Otherwise, Ray is an easy recommendation for anyone recording vocals, be it singing, spoken word, podcast or voiceover. Being analogue, it’s going to have to be connected to an interface or mixer with phantom power so perhaps not one for the run-and-gun crowd, but Ray is an innovative solution to a problem so long established in the recording world that we had stopped noticing it was a problem.
Lewitt Ray key features

Cardioid condenser microphone
1-inch gold sputtered capsule
AURA technology for voice autofocus
Mute by distance feature
“Record-ready” sound
Supplied with shock mount and magnetic pop shield
8 dB self-noise
131 dBSPL sound pressure tolerance
Configurable distance mute settings
Works as regular mic with autofocus turned off

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Battalion drum machine from Unfiltered Audio Battalion aims to combine the character of iconic drum synths with the programming flexibility and sampling features offered by modern drum machines.