TikTok’s clock is ticking…TikTok's countdown to sell has been set, leaving everyone wondering... what now? Chris Castle has thoughts.....
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IGS Audio announce 825EQ mastering equaliser The latest addition to IGS Audio’s product range offers their take on the EAR 825Q, a valve-based five-band stereo equaliser aimed primarily at mastering duties.

Bicep’s Coachella 2024 AVDJ set had a lot to live up toBicep’s live set at Coachella 2017 was one of legend. The Yuma tent is mostly a space for DJ sets, but they brought the human element into the space with their live, hardware-forward performance.
READ MORE: Coachella 2024’s best immersive performances, from the subtle to the stunning
It was a unique and epic experience, so when they announced a closing set at Coachella 2024 it came with high expectations. This time around, the British duo weren’t playing a live set; they put on a new kind of performance with an exclusive Chroma AVDJ set. So exclusive, in fact, that photographers and videographers weren’t allowed to capture any content from the performance.
Live sets are traditionally renditions of the artist’s original music, and for the last several years Bicep has helmed live sets all over the world. From international tours that took them through the US, to festivals like Glastonbury and their last appearance at Coachella in 2017, they used a vast array of hardware like the Akai MPC 2000XL, Roland SH-101, and Mode Machines ADX-1 to rework tracks like Rola, Glue, and Eliza into elevated and enhanced versions of their former selves.

But like many artists before them, Bicep likes to switch it up from time to time. Except, instead of reverting to a standard DJ set, they injected a fresh dose of originality through a series of specially designed visuals. The stuttering graphics resembled a forward-moving journey through Matrix-style code, layered over the multicoloured static of a TV that appeared desperate to produce a moving picture for its eager viewers.
When they played their live set at Coachella in 2017, they were in the Yuma tent, Coachella’s enclosed dance music stage. It’s basically a nightclub. In that environment, they used their array of tech to create transitions that emphasised suspense and emotion. They opened space and implemented dynamics like a conductor leading an orchestra. Every knob and button in front of them was its own instrument, waiting until the perfect time to strike and contribute to a musical experience greater than the individual whole.
This time, Bicep selected tracks that allowed them to interpret these musical ideas, delivering a variety of drumbeats that are more complex to mix than metronomic kicks. They played breaks, electro, techno, and dubstep, and linked these disparate sounds with elements no one expected, such as vocals that exist outside standard versions of their tracks.
Overarchingly, they used their visuals to accentuate their creative flow. During transitions, the lights remained a single colour and a solitary image of their triple-armed flex logo floated on the screen behind them.
As they switched from the deep and grimy hits of Swing King by Cesco & Hamdi, Clara La San’s voice faded in right before the jittering synth slices of Opal. The two melodic ideas floated next to each other, slowly connecting into a singular form, and when the union materialised, the Chroma visuals erupted out of the screens.
It was the last set of the last night so the crowd was dancing with some restraint, but when the flashing pictures came up, everyone stopped moving for at least a second to take it all in.
No one could tell if Bicep were playing a DJ set or a live set. But everyone adored what they were seeing and hearing.
Read more music technology features. 
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Charlotte De Witte at Coachella 2024: Building techno’s new templeBefore Charlotte De Witte’s set this year, techno didn’t have an obvious home at Coachella.
For decades, the Sahara tent was one established space for techno, with artists like Kevin Saunderson and Richie Hawtin playing there as far back as 1999. In the 2010s, Martin Garrix and Dillon Francis took over Sahara with their giant forms of dance music. Consequently, artists in the house and techno realm started playing the Yuma tent, Coachella’s onsite nightclub.
Since then, Yuma has hosted myriad major players in techno — from Drumcode boss Adam Beyer to uptempo queen Amelie Lens and the underground mysticism of Nicole Moudaber. But now, techno is out of the underground, and artists dealing techno beats can be found on almost every stage.
Charlotte De Witte, Coachella 2024. Image: Getty
Last year, when Calvin Harris closed the main stage Saturday night with his Returning to the Desert set, he played UMEK’s stomping techno track, Collision Wall. Also in 2023, house mavens Fisher and Chris Lake drew an enormous crowd to the Outdoor stage where they peppered a house set with ample dashes of techno.
Plenty of non-techno DJs, such as John Summit, Dom Dolla, and Grimes, played a few techno tracks during their turns at Sahara this year.
You can hear techno everywhere at Coachella. But where is the best place for it? Charlotte De Witte answered that question with her Overdrive set during Weekend 2: the Mojave tent.
What makes Mojave special for Charlotte’s thundering beats is its outdoor setting. Ravers can still enjoy the festival feel, but its curved metallic megastructure creates a massive industrial aesthetic. And because it’s a standard stage that hosts all different types of artists, the production is completely customisable. The artist has free rein over how they will present their set which they (likely) curated especially for Coachella.

Charlotte curated her set especially for Coachella, pushing every element of Mojave to its limit — in the best way.
There were five rotating rectangular towers behind her as she DJ’d. They could switch from pure LED screens on one side to the other side where constructions of lights and lasers shifted and swerved like motorcycles going around a high-speed race track (which is the imagery she intended to evoke with her Overdrive EP).
The feel remained consistently heavy with Overdrive energy, but with 75 minutes (one of the longer sets at Coachella) she also took the crowd through a series of different moods. Some required icy white lasers that were extra visible under the structure of the Mojave. Others were pure acid and the squelching 303 lines overlapped with equally distraught red flashes.
Whatever Charlotte decided to do, standing in the Mojave, she was in the exact right place for an authentic techno experience.
Read more music technology features. 
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Coachella 2024’s best immersive performances, from the subtle to the stunningCoachella has been home to artist performances that will live throughout history.
Daft Punk’s Pyramid in 2006; Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s performance with a Tupac hologram in 2012; Beyoncé’s marching band of students from Historic Black Colleges and Universities in 2018.
These sets stand out among the California festival’s countless legendary performances as immersive audiovisual experiences.
Coachella is among the most revered music festivals on the planet. And it’s outshined other events because the artists who perform at Coachella are accustomed to matching their musical mastery with a visual spectacle.
For over two decades, artists have brought their A-game, musically and visually, to Coachella. 2024 didn’t have a Daft Punk, Beyoncé or Dr Dre & Snoop Dogg moment, but a few acts still stood out amongst the lineup. Here are the best sets we saw from the ground.
Khruangbin

When one listens to the lofi, heavily instrumental sounds of Khruangbin — the band comprising bassist/vocalist Laura Lee, guitarist/vocalist Mark Speer, and drummer DJ Johnson — it may seem unlikely for their minimalist sound to fill a large stage.
Khruangbin is a band that supports studying and sleeping as much as dancing. But when they took the Outdoor stage at Coachella (the second largest at the event), their relaxed approach provided a comprehensive sensory experience.
Speer’s guitar was precise and rhythmic, but not overpowering. Lee did not play a single bass solo, but rather she extended her basslines to match the movement of the music. Johnson’s drums were dry and tight. He laid down beats in between the other instruments, holding everything together as if the other two members were floating in water and he was a life jacket.
To match this musical grace, their stage setup took cues from their 2024 album artwork, A LA SALA. The artwork presents a window — onstage, there were three windows, each one representing a band member. It’s like we got a glimpse into who they are as human beings as well as musicians. Khruangbin is about playing the music, not flexing their talent.
Instead of taking centre stage under the spotlight, Lee and Speer slowly slunk around. Step by step. Their movements aligned like their playing. Not identical, but perfectly in time. They played together through the basic parts and the complex parts. Johnson was, of course, stationary as he tapped the beats, but he was angled evenly between the audience and the rest of the band. Keeping an eye on both.
It was an exercise in humility. There were no lasers or flashing lights. Instead, Khruangbin invited everyone to chill with them.
Kenya Grace

So often when an electronic artist is performing, the audience asks “What are they doing up there?” They see the artist in question standing behind a table, presumably with a cockpit of machinery.
Kenya Grace, the South African-born, British-raised, singer, producer, and groovebox expert, dispelled this illusion. She showed the audience exactly what she did on stage.
If she wasn’t singing live and interacting with the crowd, she was tapping her Native Instruments Maschine, creating the beats in the moment while also inserting impressive improvisation. Her tactile skill became a core part of the performance.
Young Fathers
Young Fathers, Coachella 2024. Image: Getty
Young Fathers had very little traditional production, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t put on a hell of a show.
The Scottish alternative hip-hop group gathered six musicians who were all intensely engaged with one another.
Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole, and ‘G’ Hastings are the longstanding members of the group. They didn’t have a series of pre-determined graphics behind them. Instead, they leaned on each other, literally. Howling their vocals in an intimate embrace, they were hugging, kissing, dancing, and demonstrating the connection music can create between human beings.
Eric Prydz X Anyma
One of the most exciting additions to Coachella this year was the new stage, Quasar.
For the first, time Coachella had a dedicated home for DJs playing extended sets of up to five hours. The visuals matched these epic journeys, no more so than for the progressive, melodic masters Eric Prydz and Anyma.

To complement the long sets, the stage, which was largely constructed of LED walls, created a skyscape that matched that of real life. If the sun was still high (as it was when Prydz and Anyma started their set at 5PM), the screen reflected a clear blue sky. If the sun was setting, the screen matched the pink and orange hues against the surrounding Santa Rosa mountains.
Eric Prydz and Anyma are known for bringing their bespoke visual identity to their performances. Anyma features his unmistakable automaton and Prydz morphs his visage depending on which project he’s visiting (either the progressive sounds of Pryda, Cirez D techno, or a dance music amalgam of his own name).
During their turn at Quasar, each artist had their visual turn on the massive LED screens. Sometimes Prydz sent cubic matter flying against the sky. Then Anyma summoned cryogenic chambers where a series of automatons laid dormant.
It was a beautiful gesture of compromise. Neither of the main-stage-worthy acts needed to dominate the display. They shared their aesthetic, just like they shared tracks for five hours.
Clown Core

When the anonymous clown-masked duo known as Clown Core took the stage at Sonora tent (with a massive line waiting to get inside), they projected a tongue-in-cheek video series of people reviewing their music.
Some reviewers said they were disgusted by their forceful mix of jazz and metal. Some were completely oblivious to how they mixed these two seemingly opposite genres together. Some wished they would make a grand return.
Well, anyone who wished for a grand return was completely satisfied by their Coachella set. One second they’d be playing lounge beats. The next they’d shift to raucous, distorted, free jazz where the sense of rhythm was only apparent to them.
To match the unpredictability of the music, the visuals went from reworkings of the clowns themselves, to flashes of medical debauchery, to direct instructions to the crowd. The final words to hit the screen were: “THANK YOU FOR YOUR MONEY. PLEASE LEAVE.”
No one wanted to. But we did.
Read more music technology features. 
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NoirSonance Releases EQ6 Pro (50 FREE Copies Inside + Discounts)
NoirSonance releases EQ6 Pro (€19.99), a versatile EQ and dynamic processor for macOS and Windows. The developer kindly offers 50 free licenses to 50 lucky BPB readers and exclusive coupon codes. EQ6 Pro from NoirSonance is the professional-grade big brother of the EQ6B and EQ6W plugins, both of which are free to download. The new EQ6 [...]
View post: NoirSonance Releases EQ6 Pro (50 FREE Copies Inside + Discounts)

Elektron unveil Digitakt II The Digitakt II offers a more modular approach to sound creation as well as packing in more sampler tracks, an enhanced sequencer and more. 

Get The UAD Essentials Edition Bundle For $49 (84% OFF)
Plugin Boutique has the UAD Essentials Edition bundle of 11 great plugins from Universal Audio going for only $49, this deal only lasts until April 30 so if it interests you, check it out before the deal ends! The plugins in the UAD Essentials Edition bundle are available for Windows (VST3 and AAX) and Mac [...]
View post: Get The UAD Essentials Edition Bundle For $49 (84% OFF)

IK Multimedia’s iRig Stream Mic Pro is a hassle-free solution for all recording artists€169.99, ikmultimedia.com
A clear trend in audio gear in the 2020s is consumers wanting equipment that’s more compact and powerful. IK Multimedia has been one company leading the way in all-in-one recording devices, with its iRig and Stream families of audio interfaces and mics delivering portable performance across desktop, iOS and, more unusually, Android platforms. It pairs these with its formidable line-up of audio processing apps and plugins to cater to a wide range of musicians and creators, regardless of whether you’re a podcaster, guitarist or DJ.

READ MORE: Is EastWest’s Fantasy Orchestra the one sample library to rule them all?

The company’s latest creation, the iRig Stream Mic Pro, is a multi-functional microphone that also serves as an audio interface, among other things. Creators who are looking for a simple, fuss-free setup for light recording duties, such as a singer-songwriter setup or a podcast, will want to check this out.
The iRig Stream Mic Pro can be mounted on its desk stand or on a mic boom via the included thread adapter and it powers from your device, also allowing pass-through charging to iOS if you add the optional power supply. It’s class-compliant across your Mac, PC, iPhone or iPad — requiring no drivers — so it just becomes available as an audio I/O device when connected. To facilitate extra bandwidth it has a mini-DIN connector and comes with two cables: one Lightning and one USB-C.
You’ll find the body robust, with no real moving parts except for the central jog wheel to control all its functions. Before getting to that though, you may want to connect headphones to the 3.5 mm jack on the bottom edge, which allows direct monitoring of your voice or playing, and possibly also a second 3.5 mm stereo input to the Aux jack, which might host a keyboard, mixer or drum machine via a compatible cable.
Stream Mic Pro setup
Happily, the mic can function as a simple stereo device, sending the output from both its capsules or that output plus the two additional channels to your recording device. Or, in multichannel mode, it can send all four channels separately — more useful for DAW recording where you’ll probably want to keep the various channels apart for editing and mixing.
The stereo option is useful for sending a pre-mixed signal for example to a streaming app, like Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. Then there’s IK’s Loopback feature, which lets you add background music from your device into the signal stream or even route the mic signal to a separate app for adding EQ, reverb or other processing, all in real-time. If this sounds complex, don’t worry — in practice, it’s simple enough for all users to pick up quickly.
In fact, IK has done a stellar job of keeping the iRig Stream Mic workable. The jog wheel controls multiple functions and its ring of lights adapts to show you various different levels. So you get mic, streaming and headphone levels, monitor mix, plus buttons for mic mute and activating an adjustable high-pass filter (handy for removing noise at higher levels). The icons and lights help everything make sense.
The other trick the mic has up its sleeve is switchable polar patterns. Controlled again via the main knob, it’s possible to select between four different patterns, starting with the regular cardioid front pickup used mainly for vocals, voiceovers or instruments. Then there’s an omnidirectional pattern, handy for multi-person podcasts, field recording or conference calls, and a bi-directional (figure-8) pattern that’s handy for two-person interviews, picking up from front and back equally. Finally comes a left/right stereo pattern, useful again for music, instruments and ambient recordings.
Stream Mic Pro
The capsules are dual 0.55-inch gold sputtered electrets with a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz, which is pretty standard for a mic of this type, as is the maximum SPL of 115 dB. The electronics inside convert analogue to digital (and back) at 24-bit, and can operate at up to 96 kHz — impressive in such a portable, bus-powered unit even if many users may never stray further than 48 kHz.
Recording quality is excellent across a range of uses. For podcasting or voiceovers, placed on a desk you’ll be driving the input a little harder but the filter can take off any small amount of noise that may result. Recording acoustic guitar close-up, the results are warm and crystal clear. It’s the extra polar patterns that really make this a versatile mic though, especially the figure-8 which we found so useful for across-the-table interview recording. Other features like loopback and splitting all four channels separately for DAW recording also help to round out what is an abundantly capable, portable piece of kit.
IK’s companion app is a bonus, with downloads available upon registering your hardware. In this case, it’s iRig Recorder 3 LE for mobile, MixBox CS for iPad and the entry-level SE edition of MixBox for desktops, which are suites of effects you can use for the aforementioned voice or instrument processing prior to recording.
Note also that there’s a simpler version available — the Stream Mic USB, priced at £100. The key difference is it has only a single cardioid polar pattern and is a stereo rather than a 4-channel interface, with a standard USB onboard rather than the mini-DIN. As such, it’s arguably better suited to people who only need a more conventional mic to record a voice or instrument without the expanded features of the Pro.
It’s called the Stream Mic but streaming is only one of its many talents. In truth, it’s just as adept at regular voice or instrument recording and thanks to its switchable polar patterns, all manner of interview or ambient and field recording too. All this in crisp and clean high quality, and should you need it, a clever loopback facility to add another virtual signal to the four channels already available.
The Stream Mic Pro is a serious all-rounder for your podcast or music studio that’ll make your life easier.
Stream Mic Pro in use
Key features

1 in, 4 out audio interface
2 capsules
4 polar patterns
24-bit, 96 kHz recording
Direct monitoring
Stereo aux input
Bus power over USB or Lightning
Integrated desk stand
Suite of apps included
Switchable high-pass filter

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New Toys: Eventide H3000 Factory Mk II and Band Delays Mk II SoftwareYou would be hard-pressed to find many companies with a more accomplished history of making superior audio products than Eventide. Founded in 1971, Eventide is a true pioneer in the audio field and the inventor of the Harmonizer, which was first released commercially as the model 910 in 1975. The H910 was the world’s first commercially available digital audio effects device; it combined pitch change with delay and feedback. The Harmonizer is a staple of most producers, engineers and artists to this day. Eventide has never stopped making increasingly powerful versions. Although it was released in 1987, the H3000 is still hailed as an indispensable tool for modern mixing. New this month, Eventide releases updates to two plug-in versions of H3000 algorithms for you DAW.

Billed as "The Holy Grail of Multi-FX," the H3000 Factory II plug-in is meticulously modeled after the original hardware. Distinct pitch-shifting, delay, filtering, and modulation are the core of the sounds available. I find there is a depth, size, clarity and openness to the H3000 plug-in that surpasses other products that attempt to do the same effects. With over 500 carefully crafted presets tailored for both music production and sound design, the H3000 Factory Mk II offers an endless suite of effects to infuse your next record with unparalleled creativity.

Ported from the legendary H3000 Harmonizer® studio processor, the H3000 Band Delays Mk II plug-in is a creative powerhouse for delays, filtering, stereo-widening, and dynamic rhythmic effects. With eight delay bands each featuring unique controls for level, panning, filter type, frequency, and Q, the H3000 Band Delays Mk II brings the flexibility and iconic sound of the original hardware algorithm to your DAW with a click of a button.

What's new in the latest string of updates in the H3000 plug-ins include: a resizable user interface, blending the classic look of the original H3000 Harmonizer® hardware; improved usability, with an expandable expert view and a smooth patching workflow; brand new modelling of the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter sections from the original H3000, capturing the original sound of the hardware unit; a brand-new preset library, with recreations of presets from the original H3000; and filter recreations, modeling the resonance and self-oscillation behavior of the hardware.

The H3000 Factory Mk II sells for $199 ($99 crossgrade); H3000 Band Delays Mk II is $149 ($69 crossgrade); and together bundled, costs $248.

eventideaudio.com

Humanoid robots are learning to fall wellThe savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement. As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community’s heart strings when it announced that the […]
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You Can Run BASIC On an Old HP 4592 Protocol AnalyzerWhat do you do when you find an ancient piece of test gear and want to have fun? Well, you can always try getting BASIC running on it, and that’s precisely what [David Kuder] did.
The HP4952A Protocol Analyzer actually looks a lot like an old computer, even if it was never meant for general-purpose use. The heart of the machine is a Zilog Z80 CPU, though, so it shares a lot in common with microcomputers of its era.
Among other hacks, [David] worked to get Microsoft Basic-80 running on the machine. Initially, he was only able to get it up and running on the display, with no way to read the keyboard, disk, or access the serial port. Eventually, by diving into the nitty-gritty of the machine, he was able to at least get the keyboard working along with some basic BASIC programs. Usable memory is just 8KB, but you can do a fair bit with that when you’ve only got a 32×16 display for output anyway!
It’s a neat hack and one that was extendable to the HP4957A as well. We’ve seen similar machines on these pages before, too! If you’ve got your own neat retro hacks on the boil, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!
[Thanks to Christopher Zell for the tip!]

Sam Altman’s OpenAI reportedly in partnership talks with his other firm, WorldcoinThe potential partnership comes amid increased regulatory scrutiny for both companies.

Corral Some Zippy Blue Flames Into 3D Printed Troughs[Steve Mould] came across an interesting little phenomenon of blue flames zipping around a circular track. This led to diving down a bit of a rabbit hole about excitable mediums, ultimately leading him to optimize the shapes and come up with some pretty wild variations which he shows off in a video (also embedded below.)
After figuring out that the moving flame depended on combustion of fuel vapor in an environment that didn’t allow for the whole surface to stay lit at once, [Steve] tried to optimize the design of 3d-printed channels and raceways to encourage this effect, and he came up with some pretty novel ones. The 3D models are here if you’d like to try them for yourself (we especially like the “figure eight” and “rays” models.)
The video is an excellent show & tell of everything [Steve] dove into, complete with plenty of demonstrations of harnessing this effect to create some nifty running flames. Check it out in the video below, and if unintuitive physical effects are your thing, don’t miss [Steve]’s peeling apart of the turntable paradox.

Sixth Sample’s Spoton is a Free Vocal Tuning Plugin
Sixth Sample released Spoton, a free vocal tuning plugin for Windows and macOS. We already covered the best free autotune plugins, and Spoton could be the latest addition to the list. The 64-bit exclusive release is available for the following formats: Windows (AU, VST3 or AAX) and macOS (VST3 or AAX). The developer Sixth Sample describes [...]
View post: Sixth Sample’s Spoton is a Free Vocal Tuning Plugin