Elysia announce xpector headphone amp Housed in their compact qube enclosures, Elysia's new dual-channel headphone amp provides users with a compact high-quality monitoring solution.

Richie Hawtin is proving why DJs must embrace technology: “It’s about going beyond just putting two records together”“It’s important to remember that we’re performers and people want to be entertained,” Richie Hawtin allows as we discuss the stagecraft of modern DJing. “But, I think there’s a trend these days to over-entertain and try to get as much attention as possible.”

READ MORE: Beetlecrab Tempera: “As soon as we placed our hand on the grid and played a chord, we knew immediately, ‘Okay, this is it’”

At a time when all-you-can-eat spectacle has come to define mainstage DJ shows, there is something quietly rebellious about DEX EFX XOX, the new concert series Hawtin debuted at this years’ Movement Festival Detroit and Sónar Barcelona. Like a mad scientist measuring the pulse of his latest creation, Hawtin’s attention remained locked to the equipment spread out before him. No hyping up the crowd, no clapping and jumping up and down, just a focused sonic exploration that grabbed concertgoers by the eardrums and didn’t let go. This was shoegaze techno. Serious, seductive, intoxicating stuff.
“I’ve sunken back into my nerdy era,” Hawtin admits with a laugh when asked about the performances. “Right now, I just want to continue delving even deeper into the art of DJing; to focus on the sound and give people an evolving, heartening version of what DJing is.”
A sage of electronic music, Hawtin has been at the forefront of minimalist techno for over three decades. His Plastikman and F.U.S.E aliases have become bywords for Detroit’s hugely influential second wave, he was a founder of Beatport, and he helped lead the transition to digital DJing through early investments in Serato’s predecessor, Final Scratch. In recent years, he’s routinely graced the stages of the biggest and most prestigious electronic music festivals in the world.
Richie Hawtin. Image: Oriol Reverter for MusicTech
Given all that, you might be wondering just how much “deeper into the art of DJing” Hawtin could possibly go. The answer, it seems, is a lot.
Hawtin’s setup for DEX EFX XOX is a masterclass in music technology, employing Traktor, Bitwig, Hawtin’s own MODEL 1 mixer, two A&H Xone K2 MIDI controllers, a Novation Launchpad, and a bunch of “custom scripts” that allow on-the-fly control over a suite of Roland software emulations, including the TR-808, TR-909, and the SH-101.
“It’s about going beyond what you can do just putting two records on top of each other,” Hawtin says of the new setup. “It’s about going beyond the normal decks, or CDJ, or computer, and having other bells, whistles, gizmos, and toys to modify and tweak out the records.”
Impressive as all that may sound, Hawtin quickly adds that, in the near future, he’ll go even further. “This show was built upon two new controllers from a company in Argentina called Yaeltex [a custom MIDI controller maker], which, because of outside forces, never actually got integrated into the setup. So, it’s all a bit hodge-podge right now but will be fleshed out with these new controllers on the next shows.”
Image: Oriol Reverter for MusicTech
One addition we can expect to hear in future shows is the use of stem separation – something Hawtin has previously avoided. “My shows are all pretty spontaneous,” he says “I’ve been reluctant to use any stem separation because it all has to be done beforehand. But real-time, high-quality stem separation is coming very shortly, and I’m excited because that will allow for even more fluid mixing.
“We have a script that allows me to take the key of whatever song is playing over to Bitwig,” he continues. “Over to some transposition maps, and then to bring in other melodies which are in key. Once the stem separation is working, it will be very easy to get the melody from a stem, rearrange the notes and bring that back in – that’s where this show is going.”
Fans will recognise the DEX EFX XOX name as a riff on Hawtin’s seminal Decks, EFX & 909 shows—and accompanying compilation albums—from the late 90s and early 2000s. Even back then, Hawtin was bringing new levels of improvisation, musicality, and technological complexity to the DJ booth. Something that was not always appreciated by the venues of the time.
“Those performances were a way to tell people that I was doing something new,” recalls Hawtin. “We used to get in fights with club owners on those original tours because they just didn’t understand or accept that we needed them to come to the club early so we could plug everything in and do a sound check.”
Image: Oriol Reverter for MusicTech
Club owners may no longer grumble at DJs arriving with additional gear, but, some 30 years on, Hawtin’s dedication to live performance still feels strangely iconoclastic. Hardware and software is more powerful, diverse, and affordable than ever – yet pre-recorded DJ sets are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. For many, the attraction of live concerts have shifted away from virtuoso music performances toward immersive audio visual spectacle.
DEX EFX XOX makes a strong counterargument. Not only does the show place its emphasis firmly on real, live performance but it makes a concerted effort to strip back the visual components to leave something that will feel familiar to veteran clubbers.
“This show looks back in order to look forward,” states Hawtin. “It’s about remembering where this culture came from. Lighting was always part of the DJ experience, but it wasn’t something that you directly looked at – it was something you were inside of even when you closed your eyes. I’m trying to do something on a main stage that brings us back into that hypnotic state.”
That isn’t to say that Hawtin neglects the visual side of his live shows — he just wants to reset and rebalance the dynamic. “I’m always trying to create and control new audiovisual experiences,” he emphasises. “Every club setup is like an art installation. Now that DJing has taken an incredible step up, it should be comfortable on a main stage, but it’s very easy to lose yourself in all the possibilities of a large show and end up creating something more for the eyes than for the ears.”
Lighting was always part of the DJ experience, but it wasn’t something that you directly looked at – it was something you were inside of even when you closed your eyes. I’m trying to do something on a main stage that brings us back into that hypnotic state.
Many artists might be tempted to settle into a routine when it comes to their live shows, to stick with something that just works. What’s remarkable about Hawtin’s career, dating back to the late 80s, is his drive to continually refine or remake his concert setup, often from tour to tour.
“It’s a lot of work,” he readily admits. “There’s like three or four shows I’m currently working on, full of crazy ideas and they probably won’t all come through to the finish line, but I’m always trying to keep that creative spark alive, keep myself interested, and make sure I’m having fun up there.”
Belief in the power of tinkering is something Hawtin learned young, around a family dinner table cluttered with deconstructed electronics equipment as often as food. His father, who worked in robotics, was not only a source of DIY inspiration – he was there to help out when Hawtin decided to put his spin on DJ mixers.
You might know Hawtin’s MODEL 1 as a highly tactile analogue mixer used by the likes of Carl Cox and Four Tet, but its earliest iteration was actually an attempt to bring MIDI functionality into the DJ booth. “I wanted MIDI control for my late-90s Dex, EFX & 909 shows,” Hawtin recalls.
Image: Oriol Reverter for MusicTech
“Luckily, I had what all my friends in Detroit called my ‘secret weapon’ – my dad. He bought some early MIDI brains, put them inside an Allen & Heath Xone:62 Mixer, and we had pretty much one of the first MIDI DJ mixers.
“That collaboration,” he continues. “And then later conversations with my dad, Andy Rigby Jones, and Allen & Heath, helped develop the Allen & Heath Xone:92 and then eventually the MODEL 1. Funnily enough, the only difference is that when we get to the MODEL 1 there’s no MIDI control, there’s none of the things that we actually innovated back then, because by that time there were MIDI controllers everywhere.”
Few musicians have enjoyed such a long and close love affair with technology as Hawtin. Over the years, he’s been involved with any number of innovations – from experiments with AI music to musical games in the Metaverse. However, as he talks, the focus always returns to human creativity. He’s not a technophile but a pragmatist; always looking for the tools that will support and elevate the act of music-making.
“What really interests me is how we connect to these machines physically,” he says emphatically. “How do we transfer our movements, our emotions, our unique characteristics into the tech? If we don’t have good ways to make that happen then we’re going to end up with a bunch of DJs and producers who all sound the same, and that would be extremely boring.”
I’m curious – does Hawtin think new tools like real-time stem separation might push more DJs to focus on live sound manipulation in the booth?
He pauses for a moment.
“Yes and no.”
“On one level, I see that the scene has exploded with the TikTok DJ generation who maybe think that DJing is just two CDJs and a mixer, but I’m starting to see some of the DJs who’ve been around longer really jumping into these hybrid setups. Once tech like stem separation is inside the CDJ, people will get a bit more creative — but will we see a whole generation of DJs working on their own unique setup? I’m not sure that that’s going to happen.”
Image: Oriol Reverter for MusicTech
Not one to beat up on techno’s fresh faces, Hawtin clarifies immediately: “I don’t want to sound like I’m slagging off the new-school DJs. Really, the production etiquette and technique of young, modern producers is fucking mind blowing. The music they’re making crosses and combines genres more than ever before — there used to be the house lane, the techno lane, the minimal lane. Now, it’s all going back into the melting pot and that’s where a lot of the energy and excitement is coming from.”
His point, however, stands. Why is it that veterans like Hawtin and Carl Cox are leading the push for live innovation and not EDM’s newest entrants? “Part of it is just the convenience of jumping on a plane with a USB stick and jamming out some great tunes,” he muses. “I would have been excited if I could have done that 30 years ago, instead of dragging around three 50kg cases and a friend to help me.”
Hawtin has spent a lot of time thinking about the next generation of electronic musicians. In the 2010s — as EDM was snowballing into a global juggernaut — he offered a series of masterclasses on US campuses, grounding students in the history and culture of techno. Since then, he’s established a PhD scholarship in electronic music at the University of Huddersfield, and collaborated with Erica Synths on the Bullfrog; a series of analog synthesisers designed specifically for the classroom.
The latest entrant in the Bullfrog lineup, Bullfrog Drums, is due to arrive by the end of the year and will focus on teaching the fundamentals of drum programming and sampling. “All the experience I’ve had jamming on 909s for the last 30 years went into this,” he says of the new instrument. “Having fun is a big part of the Bullfrog line— if you’re having fun then you’re going to learn.
Image: Oriol Reverter for MusicTech
While he isn’t able to drop too many details regarding the new instrument, Hawtin says it’ll be a small unit that balances features against simplicity: “It has some limited capabilities because we wanted to make it easy. But, with the CVs on the back, and the ability to hook it up to the Bullfrog or any other device, it’s going to make it a great little touring instrument.”
After spending a lifetime immersed in electronic music Hawtin confesses that it gets harder and harder to be surprised by what he hears. “To be part of that first or second wave of modern techno and electronic music… that moment will never happen again,” he says thoughtfully. “Every day, we were hearing sounds and records that we’d never heard before.”
Does that mean that electronic music has run out of road? Far from it. If anything, Hawtin seems more determined than ever to keep his music moving, and to bring the rest of the scene with him.
“What pushes me along is a belief that electronic music always needs to reinvent and experiment in itself. Electronic music is a language; it has this energy that touches people all over the world. That is what makes our music scene so beautiful and powerful.”
The post Richie Hawtin is proving why DJs must embrace technology: “It’s about going beyond just putting two records together” appeared first on MusicTech.

Bitcoin price falls to 2-month low, but derivatives markets reflect traders’ interestBitcoin price is pinned below $60,000, but derivatives and stablecoin data show traders remain optimistic.

Mini 3D-Printed Press Is Sure To Make An ImpressionMaking stamps out of potatoes that have been cut in half is always a fun activity with the kids. But if you’ve got a 3D printer, you could really step up your printing game by building a mini relief printing press.
To create the gear bed/rack, [Kevr102] used a Fusion 360 add-in called GF Gear Generator. At first this was the most finicky part of the process, but then it was time to design the roller gears. However, [Kevr102] got through it with some clever thinking and a little bit of good, old-fashioned eyeballing.
Per [Kevr102], this press is aimed at the younger generation of printers in that the roller mechanism is spring-loaded to avoid pinched fingers. [Kevr102] 3D-printed some of the printing tablets, which is a cool idea. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that well for some styles of text, but most things came out looking great. You could always use a regular linocut linoleum tile, too.
This isn’t the first 3D-printed printing press to grace these pages. Here’s one that works like a giant rubber stamp.

Utopia Music acquired Lyric Financial in 2021. Lyric’s sellers are still trying to get full payment for the saleAn arbitration panel has ordered Utopia to pay $1.86 million to Lyric Financial's former owners
Source

Sony Music’s mystery Queen catalog co-investor is Apollo, say sourcesNews comes after Apollo teamed with Concord in failed $1.5 billion bid for Hipgnosis Songs Fund
Source

A Cute Sentry Scans Your Net for ScullduggeryAs long as we get to make our own network security tools, why not make them look cute? Netgotchi may not be much more than an ESP8266 running network scans and offering up a honeypot service, but it smiles while sits on your desk and we think that’s swell.
Taking inspiration from a recent series of red-team devices that make hacking adorable, most obviously pwnagotchi (and arguably Flipper), Netgotchi lives on the light side of the Force. Right now, it enumerates the devices on your network and can alert you when anything sketchy joins in. We can totally imagine customizing this to include other network security or health checks, and extending the available facial expressions accordingly.
You might not always be thinking about your network, and if you’re like us, that’s probably just fine. But we love standalone displays that show one thing in an easily digestable manner, and this fits the bill, with a smile.

Steinberg release free X-Stream soft synth Described as a spectral synthesizer, X-Stream is capable of transforming samples into a wide variety of sounds through a combination of stretching, looping and other innovative manipulation techniques. 

Spain’s exposure to climate change helps Madrid-based VC Seaya close €300M climate tech fundAccording to a recent Dealroom report on the Spanish tech ecosystem, the combined enterprise value of Spanish startups surpassed €100 billion in 2023. In the latest confirmation of this upward trend, Madrid-based VC fund Seaya has closed Seaya Andromeda, an “Article 9” €300 million climate tech fund based out of Madrid. Article 9 refers to the EU’s Sustainable […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Who is the Glastonbury Dua Lipa busker? Check out more from celeb serenader Liam CSo, we’ve all seen that video of Dua Lipa being sung to at Glastonbury Festival last weekend, but who is the busker featured in the video, and which other celebs did he manage to track down at Worthy Farm?
The ukulele-wielder in question is Liam C, and he’s previously shared videos online of him singing for the likes of Stormzy, Dappy and more. He currently has over 60,000 followers on Instagram, where he shares many of his busking clips.

READ MORE: Watch Fred Again..’s surprise ambient set at Glastonbury’s Strummerville stage

If you somehow managed to miss the viral Dua Lipa clip, you can watch it below. The video has been met with some mixed reactions online, with some alluding that the Houdini singer felt a tad awkward about the whole encounter. Funnily enough, Liam was actually not supposed to be in the area where he sang to Lipa, and was later removed by security.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam C (@liamcmusic_)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam C (@liamcmusic_)

Liam, now in his early 20s, previously said in an interview with HoboJack at age 18 that he plays both the ukulele and a bit of guitar, but often opts for the uke as “you see a lot more singer-songwriter-rappers with a guitar”, and he wants to be unique.
Elsewhere in the interview, he outlined his dream of “jamming to 97,000 seats at Wembley stadium in five years”. Check out more of his busking videos below, including some shot at this year’s Glasto fest:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam C (@liamcmusic_)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam C (@liamcmusic_)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam C (@liamcmusic_)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam C (@liamcmusic_)

2024’s Glastonbury Festival kicked off Wednesday 26 June last week, and wrapped up on Sunday 30 June. It hosted sets from the likes of Jungle, SZA, Justice, Nia Archives, Disclosure and a whole load more. Fred again… also hosted a surprise set at its Strummerville Stage following a huge performance on its second largest stage last year, the Other Stage.
The festival is due to take a year off following 2025’s event in order to allow the land to rest.
The post Who is the Glastonbury Dua Lipa busker? Check out more from celeb serenader Liam C appeared first on MusicTech.

The Art of Sound at DC9 in Washington, D.C.Melina Afzal runs sound at DC9 in Washington, D.C., and she told us all about it...

How long have you been running sound? How did you get into it?

I was at the right place at the right time. There was a venue called the Palace Wonders. It hosted vaudeville/circus/burlesque shows. One day in a conversation, the owner asked if I wanted to run sound. I told her I knew nothing about sound. Her response was, 'You DJ, the board is the same as a mixer.' In that same conversation, the manager of the venue next door, the Red and Black--where I did DJ--asked if I wanted to run sound for the live music shows. It all started with running a couple of microphones and cues at the Palace of Wonders. Mixing bands is what I fell in love with. I picked up the Yamaha Sound reinforcement book and ran with it from there. A year later the two venues merged to a larger cap room and bigger artists--I got to build and expand on my skills before moving over to DC9. I am grateful, these two women opened the door for me.

BTW, it was a 24-channel Allen & Heath analog board. Thinking of it as a DJ mixer helped ease the anxiety of ‘what do all those knobs do?’

How did you get hooked up with DC9?

I first interned at DC9. When our sister venue closed, I transitioned over.

Any particular highlights? Which bands have been the best to work with?

So many highlights, a few to mention. First, I enjoy going to work. I am lucky to work with new-to- up and coming bands, to well-known artists who are working on new lesser-known projects. And we have an amazing local music scene here. Another highlight is, I like the production and process of working in sound, i.e. getting bands set up, making sure their monitors are right, sound checking, or dialing in vocals.* Working in a smaller room allows me to interact directly with artists. I get to build a rapport which goes a long way on both sides.  As a bonus, I work at the best venue in D.C. with hilarious co-workers. 

* Side note here. I used to struggle with getting vocals above instruments. The feedback was horrible. I came across an article [I can’t recall who wrote it] discussing sound-checking vocals first as a more practical approach. Since then, no feedback and perfect vocals. 

Many touring and local bands over the years stand out as being the best to work with. Narrowing it down to this year, Gruff Rhys and Billy Allen and the Pollies are two artists I enjoyed working with. A notable act, Captured by Robots. It was my first day interning at DC9.

How would you describe the acoustics/layout at DC9?

The building is a 124-year-old brick-row building. Our show floor is 230 cap room. It has a corner stage with carpeting on the stage walls. The ceiling is wood with rafters – which absorb the sound nicely. The rest of the room is drywall. It is a small warm room and yet mighty in sound.  

What gear do you use?

We have a M32 digital console, 4x JBL PRX 615M powered flown mains (15” + 1.5” Horn; 2 x VOID Sub Woofer cabs: 2 x18” per box powered by Tactical Audio TA2500 Power Amp; 4 x Electro-Voice EKX-15” 2-WAY Powered speaker wedge (15” + 1.5” Horn). Powered by Powersoft K 10 series amp. I use Sony MDr- 7506 headphone. 

For more information, visit dc9.club.The post The Art of Sound at DC9 in Washington, D.C. first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Image Line FL Studio 2024 now available Image Line have announced a major update for FL Studio as well as introducing plug-ins and virtual instruments to their FL Cloud service.

YouTube reportedly offering “lump sums of cash” to major labels for AI music licensing dealYouTube has reportedly been flashing its cash to the “big three” major labels in hopes of rolling out AI music licensing deals with them.
This isn’t YouTube’s first venture into AI though, as it formerly launched AI tool Dream Track last year. The feature allowed users to create music using AI voice emulations of famous artists, but just 10 signed up for the test phase. Those involved included John Legend, Charlie Puth, and Charli XCX.

READ MORE: Will RIAA’s lawsuit against Udio and Suno really be the win we’re hoping for?

It seems YouTube’s next AI move looks to be a little more robust. The platform, which is owned by Google, has been in talks with Sony, Warner and Universal to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, according to several sources who have been in contact with The Financial Times.
The FT reports that these proposals are being met with scepticism: “The industry is wrestling with this. Technically the companies have the copyrights, but we have to think through how to play it,” an executive ‘at a large music company’ tells the outlet. “We don’t want to be seen as a Luddite.”
YouTube comments, “We’re not looking to expand Dream Track but are in conversations with labels about other experiments.” Sources say this could involve YouTube’s Shorts platform, but talks are ongoing. If a deal was to go ahead, the sources say the licence would apply to a select group of artists, and it would be up to the labels to encourage those artists to participate in new AI projects.
In other AI news, TuneCore has newly rolled out its very own mastering service which utilises AI technology to produce “professional-quality tracks” for artists on a budget.
TuneCore Mastering’s AI was not trained on any copyrighted material, in line with its “four pillars for responsible AI engagement”: consent, control, compensation, and transparency. It’s available for all TuneCore artists on a pay-per-use model for $5 per track.
The post YouTube reportedly offering “lump sums of cash” to major labels for AI music licensing deal appeared first on MusicTech.

Martin Garrix, Peggy Gou and Four Tet among 300 artists announced for 2024 Amsterdam Dance EventAmsterdam Dance Event (ADE) organisers have unveiled the first wave of artists to appear at this year’s conference, with big names including Martin Garrix, Peggy Gou and Four Tet all set to appear.
The event – which will take place 16-20 October this year – will also see appearances from Boys Noize, Tiësto, Bonobo, Jamie Jones, Skream, Rebekah, Jeff Mills, Carlita, Marco Carola and Marcel Dettman.

READ MORE: TuneCore launches pay-per-use AI-powered mastering service to help artists on a tight budget

Amsterdam Dance Event is one of the biggest dates in the calendar for EDM culture, with over 1,000 events scheduled to take place across Amsterdam, Netherlands during the weekend. These will include performances and DJ sets, as well as panel discussions surrounding dance music.
Last year’s ADE saw performances from the likes of deadmau5, Grandmaster Flash, The Blessed Madonna, Carl Cox, Armin Van Buuren and loads more.
ADE also plays host to important discussions about everything from the current state of dance music culture to production tips.
Credit: Stephen-vb Fotografie
During last year’s event, producer Afrojack spoke about why budding producers shouldn’t strive for perfection but instead embrace their mistakes.
“I am where I am today also because of the missteps,” he said. “I believe that any misstep is always a lesson. So it’s always good.
“Like, for example, I didn’t put my name on [David Guetta’s] Titanium or I got muscled out of the [Chris Brown’s] Look At Me Now production credits or Beyonce’s Run The World because of my lack of experience, but having that experience taught me how to deal with these types of things, and also taught me what type of person I want to be, because I know the different ways there are to go about business.”
2023’s ADE also saw German DJ Claptone’s first ever live interview.
More information about 2024’s Amsterdam Dance Event will be released in due course, so make sure you stay tuned to MusicTech or visit Amsterdam Dance Event’s website to stay in the loop.
The post Martin Garrix, Peggy Gou and Four Tet among 300 artists announced for 2024 Amsterdam Dance Event appeared first on MusicTech.

Soundtheory Kraftur: Top-quality saturation and clipping from the makers of Gullfoss$99 ($69 introductory price until 1st September), soundtheory.com
Soundtheory’s Gullfoss plugin was released in 2018 and has become a staple in many studios, thanks to how it dynamically balances and unmasks audio with ease. Although we’ve seen similar plugins from other developers (most notably Soothe), it was extremely innovative at the time of release.

READ MORE: Review: Oeksound Soothe2

Six years later, Soundtheory is finally releasing its second plugin. Kraftur is a multiband saturator and clipper, but is it as groundbreaking as Gullfoss?

What does Kraftur do?
Kraftur makes your audio sound fuller and louder, letting you tame transient peaks while retaining dynamic punch. Its natural home is across the mix bus to subtly boost and enhance your masters, but it can also be used when mixing individual instruments to add presence or thickness.
Kraftur works through a combination of single- and multi-band saturation, which you can seamlessly blend with the dry signal via a unique wet/dry triangle on the user interface. There’s also a separate soft clipper to further shape wayward peaks.
Kraftur’s user interface is immediately striking. Its pleasing balance of muted greys and colourful visual feedback is complemented by orange, cyan, and yellow elements for its three bands. A high dynamic range (HDR) can be enabled to make the graphics pop, and a motion blur on the triangular blend control gives us some 80s VHS nostalgia. It’s just a shame that the plugin window is a little large and currently isn’t resizable.
Kraftur main GUI
How do you use Kraftur?
Think of Kraftur as two parallel saturation modules (single- and multi-band) followed by a clipper.
The saturation modules share a main Drive control that pushes into both processors, plus Knee and Offset controls to adjust the transfer curve and target just the peaks, or the quieter parts and the whole body of the sound. The multi-band saturator then adds further controls to adjust crossover frequencies, solo each of the three bands, and also independently change the thresholds (labelled as Low, Mid and High Shift).
Single-band saturation might be useful when you want to add a touch of aggression, where low-end peaks lead to harmonic distortion across the whole spectrum. This helps glue a track together as it feels like the whole mix is responding as one.
However, if you want to reduce the intermodulation distortion effect, then you can get cleaner results by using multi-band and having the low-end just distort itself. The Shift sliders can help further, set to drive the low-end less than the mids and tops, if that’s what you’re going for. Or you can use the triangular blend control to mix both styles alongside the dry signal for the best of both worlds.
A tasty-sounding clipper sits at the end of the chain. And we mean the end. The dry signal component from the triangle blend will be clipped, and even the final Gain control is placed pre-clipper. Although this affords an extra control to drive the clipper harder, it would have been more useful to have a final output knob or slider to be used for global volume matching. Thankfully, a Match button is effective for re-balancing the output in real time as you change other parameters. This make it easier to gauge just how much you’re crushing your audio.
Kraftur clipper plugin
How to read Kraftur’s visual feedback
Kraftur’s visual feedback is especially helpful when tweaking settings.
There are input and output meters for the single-band and three multi-band signals, plus a visually brighter section for when you drive the signal harder. These are combined with the large main window that features a transfer curve and input and output histograms.
It’s an unusual way of presenting the information, but once you wrap your head around it, you can quickly refine the threshold and knee settings to hit just the peaks of the signal. Unfortunately though, the lack of gain reduction metering for the clipper makes it tricky to judge how hard you’re chopping into the peaks.
Kraftur multi-band saturator
How does Kraftur perform?
We put Kraftur to the test on a range of audio, including full mixes and individual instrument parts.
Coming up with compelling-sounding results is a breeze, and can easily be blended to taste. Drum transients are tamed, the body of sounds is thickened, and you can do some serious peak reduction without drastically changing the audio.
We test it alongside a few similar tools, and find the distortion has a slightly more ‘grabby’, faintly gated sound that wraps around hits to bolster the transients but without over-thickening the tails. This all results in a subtly tighter sound than the competitors.
The clipper is clean up to a point, but then it saturates slightly sooner with bass-heavy material, albeit with a pleasing, analogue-like behaviour. Even when set to full, there’s still a touch of softness to the knee curve, so the option for a completely hard knee might have been useful, alongside separate knee settings for each band.
Oversampling is on by default with no option to switch it off, yet somehow the plugin runs with zero latency, which is seriously impressive.
Kraftur uses mixed-phase filters that exhibit a mostly linear phase response, but it means you can’t use Kraftur for parallel processing on a bus without getting a phasey sound. CPU usage is moderate, so (depending on your system) you wouldn’t want to use lots of instances, but you could get away with a few.
Kraftur triangle blend
Do you really need another clipper?
On the surface, Kraftur looks fairly versatile, with its two saturators and clipper in a single plugin. However, when you compare it with FabFilter’s Saturn 2 (also a multi-band saturator, but with 28 distortion styles), or Kazrog’s KClip3, then you realise that Kraftur is a little more limited in terms of harmonic variation.
Thankfully, at $99 it’s priced competitively for a mastering-grade plugin (especially if you make use of the $69 introductory price), and it performs well at transparent volume thickening.
Early users have noted Soundtheory’s relatively unusual licence and transfer policies, where the licence is valid only for 25 years, rather than perpetual ownership. Countering this, the brand says its policies aid in ensuring longevity of its plugins, without asking users to pay for updates. As an example, says a representative on Gearspace, Gullfoss is currently at version 1.11.5, despite the brand releasing updates that “could have easily rebadged as Gullfoss 2”. For most users, the licensing and transfer arrangements won’t be an issue.
Do you need Kratfur? Well, there are plenty of decent clippers and saturators already out there, so you may already have one or two that you’re happy with. However, if you’re mixing or mastering genres that benefit from being pushed a little louder, then it’s always useful to have multiple options, as certain tools will work better with particular flavours of music than others.
When it suits the source material, Kraftur is an excellent plugin that helps you to get cleaner and louder tracks, so we’d happily add it as an option in our tool kit.

Key features

3-band multi-band saturator and clipper plugin
VST, VST3, AU, AAX Native (requires iLok account)
Add clarity, punch or warmth to any material
Blend between single-band, multi-band and dry signals
Separate threshold controls for each band
Reduced aliasing and intermodulation distortion due to unique oversampling method
Flexible control of the distortion curve
Match mode for auto volume compensation
VisionTone colour rendering pipeline based on human perception

The post Soundtheory Kraftur: Top-quality saturation and clipping from the makers of Gullfoss appeared first on MusicTech.