Peppermint Creeps at the Whisky A Go GoDespite premature reports of its demise, there's still plenty of fun to be had on the Sunset Strip. Those that long for the heady and decadent days of glam, glitter, sleaze and hair can find all of those things on a regular basis at the Whisky A Go Go, as well as the nearby Rainbow and Viper Room.

On Friday, March 15, it was the turn of the Peppermint Creeps to wow the Whisky faithful. Before that, the last of the many opening bands, San Diego's Foxy Roxx, successfully warmed up the baying throng. A glorious mass of shocking pink, latex and stars, this party rock troupe had some shining moments in the '90s, an antidote for some to grunge and plaid.

Songs such as "Who Killed MTV" ampex up the celebratory atmosphere in this most historic of venues and, by the time they exited the stage, the crowd was pumped.

Headliners the Peppermint Creeps took to the stage to the sound of an apocalyptic yet completely indecipherable voice telling us something dark and deep about the future. No matter, the intent was the important thing and the atmosphere was appropriately built.

"In a world of one-hit-wonders, Peppermint Creeps stand the test of time," reads their online bio. "Where most bands only last as long as they feel relevant, Peppermint Creeps march on as the 'hardest promoting band on the planet' doing it for the fans before anything else. Whether people care or not, Peppermint Creeps spread their message regardless of what critics and skeptics think."

All of those ingredients made for a heady brew at the Whisky. Like a cyberpunk take on Mad Max, the Creeps make a statement out of black and luminous pink and green. They look like mimes at a rave, and they make it work.

The songs are crushingly brilliant -- a potent blend of power-pop, glam rock and trash punk. Covers of songs by Hanoi Rocks ("Boulevard of Broken Dreams"), the Vapors ("Turning Japanese") and Ramones (the closing "Beat on the Brat" and "Blitzkrieg Bop," plus the punked-up theme to Spider-Man that the Ramones recorded), betray their influences, though those same bands are pretty clearly present in the Creeps sound.

This was the first time in a while that a band from the glam-esque world has invoked a circle pit at the Whisky, and that's to be admired. Besides those covers, highlights included "Lesbian," "Fuck Off and Die," and "Pop Culture." All of them feature sugary-sweet, infectious melodies, super-cynical lyrics and anthemic choruses, and that all made for a great Friday night.

SpaceX doc leaks, TikTok ban gains steam, and Grok to go open-sourceHey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days. This week, TechCrunch viewed leaked documents out of SpaceX showing some questionable practices related to employee stock options. X CEO Elon Musk announced that he would open source Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot meant to […]
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A Nine-Year-Old’s Z80 Drawing ProgramFull disclosure: [Óscar] isn’t nine now, but he was in 1988 when he wrote LOCS, a drawing program in Z80 assembly modeled after Logo. You can see a demo of the system in the video below. You might wonder why you’d want to study a three-decade-old program written for a CPU by a nine-year-old almost five decades ago. Well, honestly, we aren’t sure either. But it did get us thinking.
Kids today are computer savvy and have hardware that would seem to be alien tech in 1988. How many of them could duplicate this feat? Now, how many could do it in assembly language?
LOCS had a few simple commands and was sort of a stripped-down scripting language. The BORRA command clears the screen. TORTUGA centers the turtle. PT (pone tortuga) moves the turtle to any spot on the screen. Then SM, AM, DM, and IM move the turtle up, down, right, and left. Probably helps if you speak a little Spanish.
The program fits on three pages of handwritten code. When was the last time you wrote code on paper? [Óscar] revisits the program to run it on an MSX. The original program was under 500 bytes but adding the code for MSX balloons it to 589 bytes. Gotta love assembly language.
You could argue that LOCS isn’t a language because it doesn’t have variables, expressions, or looping. [Óscar] retorts that HTML doesn’t have those things either, and yet some call it a language. Honestly, if a 9-year-old can create this, we think they can call it anything they want to!
By 1990, he’d graduated to full-blown games. If turtle graphics are too abstract for you, try a Big Trak.

A Simple Seismometer You Can Build YourselfIf you’re a child, there are certain things you’re taught even though they’re probably not directly relevant to your life. We teach young kids all about dinosaurs, and we teach older kids all about how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. We also teach kids about natural phenomena like earthquakes, and the equipment used to measure them. Namely, seismometers. You might like to satisfy your own child-like curiosity by building one of your own, like [mircemk] did.
Output from the build showing tremors in the Earth.
The build starts with a sensitive geophone of [mircemk’s] own design. That’s basically a microphone but it’s for picking up vibrations in the ground, not in the air. However, a geophone is not enough. You need to be able to pick up the signals from the geophone and then plot them if you want a seismometer.
First, the signals from the geophone must be amplified, which is achieved with a small circuit based around the LM358 op-amp. From there, the signal is sent to an Arduino where the output is captured via the analog-to-digital converter. This passes the signal to an attached PC which plots the results using a piece of software called NERdaq, which was developed for schools that built their own slinky-based seismometers.
[mircemk] reports that this setup has served as a reliable tool for visualizing earthquake activity for over 6 years. Though, it bears noting, it’s not calibrated so don’t expect to get science grade results out of it. Regardless, though, it’s a super cool way to understand more about what is going on with the geology around us. Video after the break.

Getting It Done – The week in D.I.Y & Indie Music: Living Wage bill, release tips, finding a manager and moreLast week, our tips and advice for the independent, do-it-yourselfers out there covered how to promote a music video, how to find a manager and much more…
The post Getting It Done – The week in D.I.Y & Indie Music: Living Wage bill, release tips, finding a manager and more appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND – New music industry’s week in review: SXSW protests, Spotify adds video, TikTok under fire & MoreIt was a busy week by any definition, and the music industry was no exception. Spotify added music videos, TikTok angered a congressman into unanimity, Instagram trumped TikTok for the first time, and more......
The post REWIND – New music industry’s week in review: SXSW protests, Spotify adds video, TikTok under fire & More appeared first on Hypebot.

FAC launch Punchlab AUv3 plug-in FAC Punchlab is an all-in-one processing solution that comes loaded with nine modules and boasts a user-friendly GUI with comprehensive metering and feedback.

'Five Days of Broadway' Theater Training at Segerstrom CenterWhile all Five Days of Broadway spots are officially filled, scholarship spots are available for both Middle (ages 11–13) and High School (ages 14–19) students and applications are now open! These scholarships are not audition based and are designated to families requiring financial assistance. Each scholarship covers all or a portion of the enrollment fee, and applications must be completed by Friday, May 3.For more information and to apply, click below!Learn moreWant to put your name on the waitlist for Five Days of Broadway?Sign up by filling out the registration form here.

Gumroad no longer allows most NSFW art, leaving its adult creators panickedGumroad, an e-commerce company for creators, updated its rules to more strictly limit NSFW content, citing restrictions from payment processors like Stripe and PayPal. For creators who sell adult art, like explicit comic books or lewd cosplay photos, these sudden policy changes can be detrimental, resulting in an unforeseen loss of income. “I’m concerned on […]
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Why the Euphonia is AlphaTheta and Rupert Neve Designs’ dream collaborationAlphaTheta and Rupert Neve Designs both seem certain that the Euphonia rotary mixer is the nicest-sounding DJ mixer on the market right now. It does sound incredible — you’d hope as much for $3,800 — thanks to a combination of analogue and digital circuitry, custom-made transformers from Rupert Neve Designs and high-end components by AlphaTheta.
The Euphonia’s striking design is immediately inviting, flaunts some seriously intriguing features and is the brand’s move into a “new generation” of rotary DJ mixing. It’s already got the DJ industry talking — some DJs are gushing over it, others are less convinced, and the rest are just still perplexed by Pioneer DJ becoming AlphaTheta.
But as it moves on from its Pioneer DJ legacy, AlphaTheta is making a bold debut.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Sadly, my time with the Euphonia was too short to conduct an in-depth review. But it was just long enough to become desperately reluctant to hand the mixer back over to AlphaTheta. It’s deeply fun to use and really does have a unique character of being vintage yet modern. That feeling, of course, was intentional.
“It’s the first hybrid digital-analogue DJ mixer and we wanted the design to reflect that,” says AlphaTheta product manager Rob Anderson, calling in from Ibiza several days ahead of the Euphonia’s launch. “So sure, it looks kind of old-school, it’s got old-school elements to it but, at the same time, it’s futuristic. It’s like nostalgia meets futurism.”
READ MORE: AlphaTheta Euphonia rotary DJ mixer is a digital/analogue hybrid with Rupert Neve Designs components
Compared to its competitors, such as the MasterSounds Valve Mk2 and Union Audio’s Orbit.6, the Euphonia has a distinctly different approach to the retro-future appeal of rotary mixers. For one, the display in the top right has AlphaTheta’s novel take on traditional VU meters. The Mix Level Meter shows a needle per channel, offering a glance at all levels simultaneously, while a Spectrum Analyzer provides information on the spectral output of the music. The other obvious difference is the digital side, with 32-bit AD/DA converters and 96kHz sampling rate, and the built-in effects unit that boasts reverb, delay, tape echo, tape reverb, shimmer, and a high-pass filter.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Paying homage to classic kit while innovating resonates profoundly with Rupert Neve Designs. Its trophy piece is The 5088, a stunning mixing console that deadmau5 assures “will never go out of style”. Chris Dauray, the director of brand and creative at Rupert Neve Designs tells me: “It’s the culmination of Rupert [Neve]’s entire design career as far as consoles go; it’s what he was always working to achieve for his entire life.”
When speaking with Dauray and Luke Smith, product manager at RND, we’re warmed by the sheer passion with which they talk about continuing the late Rupert Neve’s legacy. But lending a hand in building DJ gear is fairly unfamiliar territory for the high-end audio brand — was this partnership right for Neve?
“With AlphaTheta’s reputation, there was never a concern there,” says Smith on the collaboration. “We knew that it was right in line with our ethos and it was a nice marriage of what we’re good at and what AlphaTheta’s good at.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
For AlphaTheta, getting RND on board for the Euphonia was a no-brainer. “It makes more sense for us to include a Rupert Neve circuit instead of developing our own analogue transformer — which we could have done but it just wouldn’t be as good,” says Anderson. “We wanted the Rupert Neve circuit. It just made so much sense so we went the extra mile to make sure that could happen.”
So, practically, what’s the impact of custom-made Rupert Neve transformers in the Euphonia?
“I was just blown away,” Anderson recalls of when he first heard the Euphonia with the RND transformers. “I’m not just saying this — we took the prototype to loads of venues across Europe. We spent a week in Berlin and then a week in Ibiza; we went to Sisyphos, Berghain, Kater Blau, Amnesia, DC10, Akasha, Club Chinois, HAAi… All the venues that have got unbelievable sound systems and highly skilled, super knowledgeable engineers and we compared it with the other rotaries and against our own models — the V10, the DJM-A9 — and it was just really reassuring.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“As soon as we switched to the Euphonia, you see the engineer’s reaction and how impressed they are. Sound is subjective, right? But this is definitely the best-sounding mixer we’ve ever produced. It’s a bold statement but I think it’s the best-sounding mixer ever made. It sounds crazy good. But of course, that’s subjective.”
It’s no surprise that Anderson thinks so highly of the Euphonia, given his involvement in its creation. However, his 13-year tenure at Pioneer DJ and AlphaTheta and previous work as a music production educator means he’s seen a few audio products in his time, so perhaps the team really has created something remarkable.
Smith and Dauray go deeper into the theory of why the Euphonia’s sound is so pleasing: “We’re very careful about the type of harmonics that are being enhanced by [RND] transformers. It’s second-order and third-order harmonics. From a musical perspective, that means an octave and an octave and a fifth. Now, when you add that to a chord or an audio source, this makes it sound bigger, deeper more layered and more textured. And, in some ways, this is like the difference between a sine wave and a complex wave — it’s that harmonic content. This is where the emotion lives, in those harmonics.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“And when you’re enhancing octaves, and octaves-and-a-fifths on top of the signal, you could theoretically draw a line between the emotional response of the listener and the enhancement of these harmonics. There’s there’s a visceral reaction to it. They respond to that harmonic saturation. So this is why we do it…The end goal is that enhancement that makes people feel something.”
But where will be the main places that music lovers can go to hear the sound of the Euphonia and feel the difference? It’s not affordable enough for most DJs to keep in their home studios, its workflow isn’t suited to enough DJs to be a staple in clubs and venues, and it’s far too heavyweight for commercial DJs to be taking around to shows with them. The market for the Euphonia is immensely niche.
Anderson disagrees, however. After working with over 100 artists while making the Euphonia, he found that DJs of various styles enjoyed performing with the mixer. “The target user in mind was largely the house heads but it can work for more than just that. And while showing it to artists, we found that some will come in with the mindset that they don’t like a rotary mixer. When they start performing on it, they notice how expressive it is and they really like it. So I think it’s going to have a wider demographic appeal than who we just intended to when we were originally working on it.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Your best bet at hearing the Euphonia, for now at least, is likely at your local hi-fi bars, which have seen a boom in recent years. Think of London’s Spiritland, Los Angeles’ Gold Line, Miami’s Dante’s Hi-fi and Tokyo’s Forestlimit. Here, old funk and disco records are rife, with precise mixing required for smooth transitions between tracks.
For this style of mixing, AlphaTheta designed the Euphonia with weighted knobs. A higher load is applied when you turn a knob slowly for delicate fine-tuning and a lower load is applied when you turn a knob quickly to drastically change volume. In addition, the 3Band Master Isolator and channel isolators — more precise than a standard EQ — sport a cutoff frequency and slope that’s designed specifically to highlight the kick, melody, and rhythm bands in a natural but sharp manner.
Hold on, though. DJs of this style and in the hi-fi bar niche are already well-catered for — MasterSounds, Union Audio and Ecler are established manufacturers of rotary mixers and are beloved by their cult following. Why is a major brand like AlphaTheta shouldering its way into a smaller market?
“Because the current options are limited,” says Anderson. “And they’re hard to source, there’s a long lead time on a lot of the boutique models and the aftermarket support can be questionable. So aside from in lockdown, where there was every manufacturer under the sun had problems with providing stock. We don’t have that problem. We can develop these at mass. They’re not hand-built so we can develop these for the industry as and when they need them, meaning they’ll end up in loads of venues and they’ll get used more.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
The Euphonia might give some the impression that AlphaTheta is trying to quell the independent mixer manufacturers. But it’s more about exposing DJs and music listeners to more top-standard audio quality and mixing. Hopefully, the reverse is true — that the Euphonia will actually boost sales of the independent brands.
“It’s never a bad thing to expose more people to proper hi-fi,” Dauray says. “It’s something that we are exposed to in the studio world a bit more than most. But once you’ve heard it, you have a new benchmark for what things can sound like and I would love to see more of that. Most people don’t have an opportunity to hear that and it’s a very illuminating experience, you know. When you hear proper hi-fi systems for the first time, you’re then always questing for that forever.”
“Subconsciously, the audience responds positively or differently to [hi-fi audio],” adds Smith. “I mean, the Euphonia does go hand-in-hand with these hi-fi bars — called jazz kissas in Japan. And I’m fascinated with the idea. And the volume is, for my older ears, now, at a reasonable level, to have conversations. And it’s analogue from the record to the turntable to the stylus to the mixer, and the amplifier to the speakers. There’s a reason they’re being designed that way. There’s no doubt that people respond to it, viscerally and emotionally. So it’s hopeful for the future of what we do. You know, there’s a reason vinyl record sales are up. There’s a reason this jazz kissa thing, which originated in Japan, is spreading out over the world. And there’s a reason we’re still in business.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Despite some talk online about the Euphonia being a step backwards in the past, its appeal could be more forward-thinking than first assumed. Regardless of how it’s perceived, AlphaTheta is continuing to look to the future.
“We’re not going to be lazy. We’re going to strive for innovation. That’s kind of our fundamental purpose — to keep innovating and provide solutions to problems DJs don’t even know they have and to incentivise and stimulate the DJ industry and DJ culture.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTechWhy the Euphonia is a smart move by AlphaTheta and Rupert Neve Designs
The Euphonia is a beautifully built DJ mixer with outstanding technology and innovative features that you can’t help but admire when you get your hands on it. But it’s not for everyone. It won’t be an industry-standard mixer in venues. It’s not accessible to most DJs. It is, however, a smart move by AlphaTheta and, in part, Rupert Neve Designs. We may well start seeing more of a desire for the highest-quality sound in venues and bars; boutique manufacturers might gain popularity; we could start seeing more hi-fi venues open up, bringing more work opportunities for DJs.
And, perhaps most notably, because of the Euphonia launch, myriad DJs are talking about AlphaTheta right now — not Pioneer DJ.
The post Why the Euphonia is AlphaTheta and Rupert Neve Designs’ dream collaboration appeared first on MusicTech.

What is a patchbay (and how does it work)?
Let's explore what a patchbay is, its most common configurations, and why you might want to consider incorporating one into your workflow.

Folding Solar Panel is UnderpoweredIf you hang out on certain kinds of sites, you can find huge-capacity USB drives and high-power yet tiny solar panels, all at shockingly low prices. Of course, the USB drives just think they are huge, and the solar panels don’t deliver the kind of power they claim. That seems to be the case with [Big Clive’s] latest folding solar panel purchase. The nice thing about the Internet is you can satisfy your urge to tear things open to see what’s inside of them vicariously instead of having to buy a lot of junk yourself. Thanks [Clive]!
The picture on the website didn’t match the actual product, which was the first sign, of course. The panel’s output in full sun was around 2.5 watts instead of the claimed 10 watts. He’s also seen sellers claim they are between 20 and 80-watt panels. But the interesting bits are when [Clive] decides to rip the panel into pieces and analyze the controller board.

The tiny circuit board uses a buck regulator chip to feed 5V to the attached USB port. There are hardly any other components: a Schottky diode, an inductor, two capacitors, an LED, and the LED’s resistor.
Maybe those little panels would work for a Game Boy. We’ve seen some simple buck regulators before, but this one may be the most minimal.

Lindell Audio announces LiNTEC Vintage Program Equalizer as take on studio classic with vintage workflow for making modern soundsBoutique recording equipment maker Lindell Audio is proud to introduce its LiNTEC Vintage Program Equalizer — enabling its take on a much-lauded studio classic with vintage workflow for making modern sounds, breaking with tradition by choosing a solid-state design over a tube-driven one — as of March 7…

By bringing a much-lauded studio classic — conceivably the most renowned studio EQ ever known — home to smaller studio setups and larger recording studios alike, anyone can now get hands-on with classic Pultec-style workflow when sculpting their tracks, thanks to Lindell Audio’s timely LiNTEC introduction. Indeed, it is billed as being a Vintage Program Equalizer, as emphasised by the on point wording boldly blazoned below the VU (Volume Unit) meter dominating its beautiful blue front panel that, in turn, emphasises Lindell Audio’s Scandinavian heritage, courtesy of subtle front panel positioning of an adapted Swedish flag motif. Attractive as it is to look at, alluding — albeit applying a ‘modern’ minimalist Scandi touch — to the time-honoured aesthetics of the Sixties-vintage, prohibitively-expensive Program Equalizer from which it draws its inspiration, it is what it sounds like — making its musical mark by bringing air and space to vocals and stringed instruments, beefing up the low-end of kick drums, or adding a touch of warmth and weight to an entire bus — that clearly counts. It is fair to say, though, that anyone running their tracks through a LiNTEC will wonder how they got by with using software EQs for so long!

LiNTEC’s lean, old-school design offers a shared (five-step switched 20, 30, 60, 100, and 150 Hz) LOW FREQ (frequency) selection control for the associated BOOST and ATTEN (attenuation), alongside independent (11-step switched 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, and 16 kHz) HIGH FREQ and (five-step switched 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 kHz) ATTEN selections with a shared BANDWIDTH control. As a result, users can dial in the precise amount of tone-sculpting necessary to serve their track with no risk of muddying up the midrange. Moreover, LiNTEC’s stepped pots ensure easy recall and stereo matching when used in a stereo pair, while its filters are based on classic EQP-1A filters, complimented by Lindell Audio’s own new gain structure.

Speaking of choices, Lindell Audio broke with tradition by choosing a solid-state design over a tube-driven one. On record as professing its love for tubes as much as the next manufacturer, solid-state offered myriad benefits for LiNTEC that could not be had with tubes, such as a faster transient response with a smooth, creamy, and punchy character; lower noise than tube-based EQs; better unit-to-unit matching for stereo pairing — matched by hand to within 1⁄4 dB of each other; and, obviously, no tubes to wear out and replace.

Turning to the op-amp applied to the LiNTEC design, it is the same proven OPA-171 — Lindell Audio’s take on the classic vintage Melcor 1731 op-amp — used in its 7X-500VIN ‘Vintage Edition’ 500-Series compressor and 77X-500 500-Series stereo compressor. Custom-designed transformers that are also central to making the LiNTEC Vintage Program Equalizer what it is have been created specifically for Lindell Audio.

And, yes, Lindell Audio’s LiNTEC is perfectly capable of pulling off the so-called Pultec low-end trick that has been used to fatten bass lines and kick drums on innumerable recordings; simply choose the desired LOW FREQ setting — try starting at 100 Hz, then simultaneously turn up both the associated BOOST and ATTEN controls to taste. As a historical side note, it is interesting to note here that original Pultec documentation asserted — admittedly rather bullishly, “Do not attempt to boost and attenuate simultaneously on the low frequencies.” Is it any wonder, then, that eager-to-know-why engineers did just that! The result of this simultaneous boost/cut operation is a low-end boost below the selected frequency, with a cut slightly above the selected frequency; in turn, this results in a satisfying-sounding thump and body that does not risk muddying the midrange — a not-so-secret trick of engineers and producers ever since those eager-to-know-why engineers first tried ignoring what they were told! Try doing that ‘for real’ with software EQs.

Electronics evidently has a lot to answer for, and by bringing the much-lauded studio classic home to smaller studio setups and bigger studios alike, anyone can now get hands-on with classic Pultec-style workflow when sculpting their tracks for a lot less than the price of other classic hardware EQs, thanks to Lindell Audio’s LiNTEC.

Last, but by no means least, the LiNTEC Vintage Program Equalizer is also useful for adding a touch of warmth and harmonic content to program material — even with its EQ set flat! 

As a RAD Distribution company, Lindell Audio’s LiNTEC Vintage Program Equalizer is expected to ship in late-March/early-April 2024 with an MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) of $399.00 USD — RAD Distribution is also the exclusive North American distributor

For Lindell Audio products (https://raddist.com/en/brands/lindell-audio) — and an SSP (Standalone Selling Price) of €532.00 EUR — including 19% VAT (Value Added Tax) — in the EU (European Union).

From Universal’s TikTok takedowns to Deezer’s 26m deleted tracks… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…
Source

Glow Plug Turned Metal-Capable 3D Printer HotendAt this point, most readers will be familiar with fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers, and how a plastic filament is pushed through a heater and deposited as liquid through a nozzle. Most of us also know that there are a huge variety of materials that can be FDM printed, but there’s one which perhaps evades us: you can’t load a spool of metal wire into your printer and print in metal, or at least you can’t yet. It’s something [Rotoforge] is working on, with a project to make a hot end that can melt metal. Their starting point is a ceramic diesel engine glow plug, from which they expect 1300 C (2372 F).
The video below the break deals with the process of converting the glow plug, which mostly means stripping off the metal parts which make it a glow plug, and then delicately EDM drilling a hole through its ceramic tip. The video is well worth a watch for the in-depth examination of how they evolved the means to do this.
Sadly they aren’t at the point of printing metal with this thing, but we think the current progress is impressive enough to have a good chance of working. Definitely one to watch.
Previous metal 3D printers we’ve featured have often used a MIG welder.

Thanks [theFinn] for the tip!