Austrian Audio Hi-X55 / OC818 offer Until 31 May 2024, those who purchase an OC818 will receive a complimentary pair of Hi‑X55 headphones.

4 tips for making your own drum kits
From layering to labeling, here are four tips to keep in mind if you're interested in making your own drum kits from scratch.

NAMM Foundation Celebrates 25 Years of 'Best Communities for Music Education'The NAMM Foundation celebrates and recognizes over 1,000 school districts and individual schools across 43 states for their support and commitment to music education and their efforts to ensure access to music for all students as part of a well-rounded education.READ MORECelebrate the 2024 Scholarship and Award RecipientsRead MoreJoin the Worldwide Celebration of Music, June 21Learn MoreThree scholarships that offer support to attend The 2025 NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA, are available. They are open to college students exploring careers in music, college faculty creating innovative music curricula, and mid-career music business professionals striving for career advancement. APPLYIMPORTANT DATES & EVENTSApril 15Scholarship Applications OpenApplyJune 21Make Music DayLearn MoreJan. 21-25The 2025 NAMM ShowLearn More

Plasma Cutter on the Cheap ReviewedIf you have a well-equipped shop, it isn’t unusual to have a welder. Stick welders have become a commodity and even some that use shield gas are cheap if you don’t count buying the bottle of gas. But plasma cutters are still a bit pricey. Can you get one from China for under $300? Yes. Do you want one that cheap? [Metal Massacre Fab Shop] answers that question in the video below.
First impressions count, and having plasma misspelled on the unit (plasme) isn’t promising. The instructions were unclear, and some of the fittings didn’t make him happy, so he replaced them with some he had on hand. He also added some pipe tape to stop any leaking.
The first test was a piece of quarter-inch steel at 35 amps. The machine itself is rated to 50 amps. Sparks ensued, and with a little boost in amperage, it made a fair-looking cut. At 50 amps, it was time to try a thicker workpiece. It made the cut, although it wasn’t beautiful. The leaking regulator and the fact that he can’t run the compressor simultaneously as the cutter didn’t help.
From the look of it, for light duty, this would be workable with a little practice and maybe some new fittings. Unsurprisingly, it probably isn’t as capable as a professional unit. Still could be very handy to have.
It is possible to convert a welder into a plasma cutter. A handheld unit like this probably won’t benefit from a Sharpie.

Meta thinks it’s a good idea for students to wear Quest headsets in classMeta continues to field criticism over how it handles younger consumers using its platforms, but the company is also planning new products that will cater to them. On Monday, the company announced in a blog post that later this year it will be launching a new education product for Quest to position its VR headset […]
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3D Printing a Cassette Is Good Retro FunThe cassette is one of the coolest music formats ever, in that you could chuck them about with abandon and they’d usually still work. [Chris Borge] recently decided to see if he could recreate these plastic audio packages himself, with great success.
He kicked off his project by printing some examples of an open source cassette model he found online. The model was nicely accurate to the original Compact Cassette design, but wasn’t exactly optimized for 3D printing. It required a great deal of support material and wasn’t easy to customize.
[Chris] ended up splitting the model into multiple components, which could then be assembled with glue later. He then set about customizing the cassette shells with Minecraft artwork. Details of the artwork are baked into the model at varying heights just 1/10th of the total layer height. This makes it easy to designate which sections should be printed with which filament during his multi-colored print. And yet, because the height difference is below a full layer height, the details all end up on the same layer to avoid any ugly gaps between the sections. From there, it’s a simple matter of transferring over the mechanical parts from an existing cassette tape to make the final thing work.
It’s a neat trick, and the final results are impressive. [Chris] was able to create multicolored cassettes that look great. It’s one of the better uses we’ve seen for a multi-colored printer. This would be an epic way to customize a mixtape for a friend!
We’ve seen some great 3D printed cassettes before, too, like these retro reel-to-reel lookalikes.

SounDevice Digital release Randomachine  SounDevice Digital's latest plug-in has been designed to quickly add variation to repetitive samples by randomising its six built-in effects.

Latin music veteran Gustavo Lopez launches Globalatino Music Partners; acquires majority stake in Cigol MusicLopez was a longtime Universal executive and CEO of Saban Music Latin, which was recently acquired by Virgin Music Group

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Spotify working on remix feature which will allow users to alter speed and pitch of songsIf you’re a regular TikTok user, you’ll know sped-up versions of well-known songs and short-form vertical videos, for some reason, go hand in hand. Perhaps condensing a musical hook into a shorter time frame helps capture people’s attention in that all-important two-or-three-second window.
Whatever the case, sped-up songs seem to work, and thus the demand for features that allow creators to make them is increasing. 

READ MORE: Spotify’s AI Playlist tool now builds playlists with your text prompts

Spotify has identified this, and is reportedly working on tools that will allow users to “speed up, mash up, and otherwise edit” tracks on the platform, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to The Verge, content analysis firm Pex recently found that 38 percent of songs on TikTok had their speed or pitches modified in 2023, compared to 25 percent in 2022, showcasing an increasing demand for tempo and pitch/changing tools.
While such tools could open new avenues for video creators, they could also open a new revenue stream for artists. Audio detection algorithms on TikTok – and YouTube, for example – often fail to accurately identify copyright infringement if the speed or pitch of the source material is manipulated enough. This leads to lost revenue for artists. Spotify’s new tools would, in theory, tie any remixes to their original song, meaning revenue would make its way into the pockets of copyright holders.
It’s unclear how much these new audio manipulation tools will be, and whether they’ll be included in a standard subscription tier or as an optional add-on. The Verge also reports that code snippets for recent Spotify builds for Android indicate a “Music Pro” add-on coming in the future, which would potentially include both these tools and Spotify’s long-awaited HiFi feature for lossless audio.
No launch dates have been confirmed yet, but stay tuned to MusicTech for more updates.
The post Spotify working on remix feature which will allow users to alter speed and pitch of songs appeared first on MusicTech.

Grimes issues apology following Coachella DJ set – what went wrong?Coming face-to-face with technical issues during a DJ set evokes a drowning sensation. At Coachella, it can only be nightmarish. Technical obstacles are exactly what faced Grimes in front of thousands of people at Coachella festival this weekend, as all of her DJ-related nightmares rolled into one, later forcing her to apologise.
According to Coachella-goers, about 20 minutes into Grimes’ 50-minute DJ set, which took place on Saturday 13 April 2024 at 7.10pm on the Sahara stage, many of her songs played at double speed. This was a result of Rekordbox incorrectly analysing her tracks, identifying, say, a 128bpm song as 256 bpm.

READ MORE: “What do they do up there? Twiddle filter knobs and clap”: Deadmau5 says most DJs play pre-recorded sets at major festivals

Grimes stopped the set multiple times, letting out shrieks of frustration into the microphone, and explaining the issue to fans. See footage below:

Grimes had some technical difficulties at her Coachella set pic.twitter.com/vecHcokAbn
— Rave Moments (@Rave_Moments) April 14, 2024

“This is a difficult thing to explain,” she’s seen telling the crowd in separate footage. “We’re having a major technical error where all the song tempos are at double speed. I’ve not practiced the math and I’m not fast at math.”
Grimes is also seen in another video, saying, “All my tracks are twice as fast… Just don’t blame me, it’s not my fault. Well it’s partially my fault, but it’s not entirely my fault.”

Grimes dealt with technical difficulties throughout her set at Coachella on Saturday night, restarting songs and complaining about problematic track files
"All my tracks are twice as fast.. Just don't blame me, it's not my fault. Well it's partially my fault, but it's not… pic.twitter.com/fSLjvhQsjF
— SFGATE (@SFGate) April 14, 2024

The next day, on 14 April, in a since-deleted post to X, the EDM artist apologised to her fans, blaming herself for not noticing the incorrect tempos beforehand and admitting she “had a bad feeling beforehand”.
“To save time this was one of the first times I’ve outsourced essential things like rekordbox bpm’s and letting someone else organise the tracks on the SD card etc,” Grimes, as reported by Mixmag, wrote.
“I want to apologise for the technical issues with the show tonight. I wanted to come back really strong and usually I always handle every aspect of my show myself.
“I had a bad feeling beforehand not having run everything through the CDJs myself and tho I flagged it I wasn’t insistent,” she said.
“I will personally organise all the files next week. I will not let such a thing happen again. I’ve spent months on this show, making music and visuals, and admittedly am not in the best mood at the moment. But, yeah – next week will be flawless, everything will run through my hand.”
All of this drama, of course, has set the EDM community into a frenzy. EDM producer and DJ What So Not, started a thread on X on Sunday, writing that he “feels so bad for her”, making the point that there was no one on hand to help the situation, asking “It’s such a simple thing to fix/solve. Where’s her team at?”

The grimes @coachella DJ set discussion board:
— WHAT SO NOT (@WhatSoNot) April 14, 2024

Another commenter writes, “I can’t tell what’s going on. Is it her?… or actual technical issues? Regardless, I am in physical pain watching.”
“Sounds like rekordbox formatting is out so you just have to mix manually by ear”, responds What So Not. ““Mix manually by ear” meaning…. “Mix””, chimes in turntablist, A-Trak.
Grimes is set to DJ again at Coachella Weekend Two, which takes place between 19 and 21 April. Tickets are still available on the Coachella website.
The post Grimes issues apology following Coachella DJ set – what went wrong? appeared first on MusicTech.

Spotify, Apple, Roblox, Meta make Dirty Dozen sexual exploitation listThe National Center on Sexual Exploitation has named Spotify, Apple, Roblox, Meta, Reddit, and Dischord to its annual Dirty Dozen list of mainstream contributors of sexual exploitation.....
The post Spotify, Apple, Roblox, Meta make Dirty Dozen sexual exploitation list appeared first on Hypebot.

4 most annoying things music PR people doPublic relations (PR) is a very necessary role in the music industry, but there are rights and wrongs to the role that could prevent a lot of frustration all around......
The post 4 most annoying things music PR people do appeared first on Hypebot.

QUICK HITS: New IFPI CEO • WCM + EA • Believe + Kidding Aside • King Street Sounds is back!IFPI, the recording industry's worldwide trade group, has named Victoria Oakley its new CEO. Oakley will join IFPI in June from Portland, the global strategic communications and advocacy consultancy, where she is currently CEO.....
The post QUICK HITS: New IFPI CEO • WCM + EA • Believe + Kidding Aside • King Street Sounds is back! appeared first on Hypebot.

On… DistroKid, Trefuego, modified audio, and the potential for a new ‘Napster Nightmare’Should distributors bear any responsibility for the spread of copyright-infringing modified tracks?
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Icon unveil Harrison 32Ci interface The 32Ci has been developed with the aim of bringing the sound of Harrisons renowned 32C console to the home studio.