Behringer announces that its VCS3 replica is ready for beta testingBehringer has shared that its replica of the EMS VCS3 synthesiser is currently entering its beta testing phase before manufacturing commences.
The brand had previously shared that “mechanical challenges” within the pin matrix caused a slight delay in its production.

READ MORE: Moog CEO “reached out to Uli Behringer” to try and sell company, Behringer claims

Writing on Facebook, the budget gear brand shared: “We’d like to give you some exciting updates about our VCS3. In our previous update we shared our mechanical challenges with the pin matrix, which have now been resolved. We’re very pleased to report that it has passed a stringent 100,000 lifecycle test.
“We’re now shipping units to our beta testers for final testing and comparison with the original synthesiser. Once passed, we will start manufacturing. We know this synth has taken much longer than we thought, but we’re sure the wait is worth it. Thanks for all your patience and support.”

We’d like to give you some exciting update about our VCS3. In our previous update we shared our mechanical challenges…
Posted by Behringer on Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Original versions of the EMS VCS3, which launched in 1969, are retailing online for over £20,000. The classic synth was one of the first portable commercially available synthesisers, and its small wooden case (as opposed to a large cabinet, typically used to house other popular synths at that time) made it much easier to move around.
Last year (2022), Behringer unveiled its AKS Mini Soul synth – a compact, scaled-down version of the EMS VCS3. At the time of posting, Behringer said that this mini offering came with the “exact same” oscillators, filters and other inner workings as the classic synth.
However, the VCS3’s famous 16×16 pin modulation matrix was missing from the mini synth, presumably due to size restrictions. This should now be present in the larger, full-scale replica. The final version of the AKS Mini was unveiled in January of 2023, and it was given a price of $99.
Details on pricing are yet to be revealed the Behringer VCS3. In the meantime, you can view all of its latest products via Behringer.
The post Behringer announces that its VCS3 replica is ready for beta testing appeared first on MusicTech.

Riot Games’ Brooke Rascoff: “Technology broke down the barrier to entry to music and democratised distribution – I think AI will do the same”On Day One of Digilogue Days 2023, a music and tech conference focused on bringing together music workers and artists looking to build their careers, a panel of executives from across various entertainment industries met to discuss the intersection of music with sports, fashion, and gaming.
Brian Desrosiers (Bashment Management/SossHouse Records), Brooke Rascoff (Riot Games), Gabrielle Gomes (Dinner Service NY), Jonna Valente (Gotham FC), and Shauna Alexander (SOUND x VISION) discussed how artists, agencies, and companies were connecting to serve their mutual interests in expanding their audiences through collaborations that help them tell their stories with different media.

READ MORE: Digilogue Days 2023 Highlights: Day One of the music tech conference

Rascoff, Riot Games’ Global Music Marketing & Streaming Lead, compared her company’s strategy to Marvel, if it had a music division.
“It’s not just a gaming company, it’s a massive media company,” she explained. “It’s taking IP from a very, very successful game, and characters that people are already in love with and want to see more of a story from, and then scaling that and truly intersecting that with music. Esports, is on the scale of a Super Bowl.”
One of Riot’s more innovative strategies at the intersection of music and tech has been its virtual K-pop girl group K/DA. While virtual artists aren’t necessarily new – Google Hatsune Miku or the disastrous launch of FN Meka, if you’re curious – Riot has managed to leverage the insanely popular characters from its game League of Legends to start a virtual group with a built-in fanbase, named Heartsteel.
Image: Respective Collective
“Obviously we’ve worked with real artists and writers and producers to create the music behind it,” Rascoff admitted. “But those are already beloved characters that are the face of this brand.”
It’s the same model the company used to create its wildly popular animated series Arcane, which draws its narrative from the backstories of some of its most popular champions. And everything down to the soundtrack they created for the show is rooted in the characters that already have their own stories – and crucially, their own fans.
When asked about the future of AI in music and gaming, Rascoff drew parallels to how the evolution of technology has already changed how we make, share, and listen to music.
“I think the most glaring thing is [technology] broke down the barrier to entry and democratised distribution, and I think that will be the same here,” she said.
“And I think companies like BandLab and Splice, which has been around for a long time, allowing people to be their own creators, and I think about fashion and different content industries and how that intersects with music, being able to learn a lot from how music has evolved and adopted technology. And I know we look, at Riot, for a lot of ways to jump on new technologies and allow our players to feel like they’re in the game.”
Learn more about Digilogue Days.
The post Riot Games’ Brooke Rascoff: “Technology broke down the barrier to entry to music and democratised distribution – I think AI will do the same” appeared first on MusicTech.

“Both the beauty and the problem with hardware instruments is that you’re locking in those settings”: Producer Tycho on software vs hardware in recordingProducer and composer Tycho has weighed in on the software vs hardware debate when it comes to recording.
The artist – whose real name is Scott Hansen – has been releasing music since the early 2000s, and has shared how when he was first starting out, “everything was digital,” but overtime, hardware synths like the iconic Korg MS-20 allowed him to experience the other side of the coin.

READ MORE: Tycho: “If there’s a software equivalent of a tool or an instrument, I’m going to use that instead of the hardware, no matter what”

Tycho recently spoke with us at MusicTech for a special feature on the Korg MS-20 and MS-20 Mini surrounding the 45th and 35th anniversaries of each, respectively.
“I first came into contact with the MS-20 without knowing it, through Daft Punk’s track Da Funk,” he shares with us. “That sound resonated with me. I’d never even touched a musical instrument when I heard that song. I’m sure I’ve heard it in a bunch of other places as well, but hearing that, I was like, ‘Man. That’s a really cool sound’.

“When I started making music, everything was digital, everything was ‘virtual analogue’. I had Access Virus, the Novation Nova series, and all that stuff. I just thought that’s what a synthesiser was: massive polyphony, reverb built in… all that. So I just didn’t understand what the point of a monophonic synth was.”
One day, a friend of his gave him an MS-20. As it was his first experience with a hard synth, he “didn’t connect with it at first.”: “Over the years, I just kept messing with it and started really finding all its cool quirks, particularly the filters, and the resonance.”
Later in the feature, he explained that despite the magic of the Korg icon, soft synths remain his prime choice: “Software has just come so far,” he says. “Both the beauty and the problem with [recording] hardware instruments is that you’re locking in a performance, locking in those settings. I’ve been trying to make the album I’ve been working on lately a lot more dynamic in terms of automation: filters opening up or certain sounds changing over time. So whenever possible, I’ve been using software.
“UA makes this amazing Minimoog emulation, Arturia makes one of the MS-20. So there are these counterparts that I feel are just as good as the hardware, and I feel the same when I play them. And that’s really all that matters. The MS-20 is a pretty complex instrument, so it’s amazing to be able to go back and be like: ‘Oh, what if I’d done this? Or what if I’d patched this differently? What if the filter opened a little bit more here? So in that sense, it’s been amazing to be able to work with those software counterparts.”
View the latest projects from Tycho via his official website.
The post “Both the beauty and the problem with hardware instruments is that you’re locking in those settings”: Producer Tycho on software vs hardware in recording appeared first on MusicTech.

Digilogue Days 2023 Highlights: Day One of the music tech conferenceDigilogue Days is a new two-day music and tech conference held in Brooklyn, NY, by the organisation The Digilogue. In name, it’s a space created to connect music industry workers, artists, and those who aspire to be. In practice, it’s an entrepreneurial academy for people looking to build their own businesses in the music industry, and a captive audience for the companies that want to sell them services to facilitate that goal.
READ MORE: 
The show floor hosted booths from Warner Music U, ONErpm, SoundCloud, the Orchard, Too Lost, Epidemic Sound, EVEN, Symphonic, Indie Flow, United Masters, and Creator SPC, along with useful services like resume reviews with industry professionals, photographers shooting headshots and artist photos, and one-on-one sessions with mentors to help guide budding artists.
The air of ambition
The vibe on the floor was overwhelmingly optimistic; young people floated from booth to booth, grateful to have direct access to people from the Digital Streaming Platforms (DSPs), distribution services, and licensing agencies that can prove crucial to making a living from music. The hustle and ‘grindset’ was out in full force – one attendee had an LED backpack strapped to his back with a QR code promoting his social media marketing business.
Image: Respective Collective
Rising with Tidal
Industria typically serves as a photo studio, with large rooms bathed in natural light, and the main stage that hosted the keynotes, panels and deep dive workshops were typically packed to the brim. On day one, the stage played host to a keynote with Robin Johnson (Indie Creator Society) and Jason Kpana (artist and relations, Tidal), who discussed Kpana’s rise through the music industry, Tidal Rising’s first artist summit at their new HQ in Union Square, how artists are using the tools on Tidal’s Dashboard to help create a sustainable business from their music, and how the DSP’s new ‘Live’ feature is driving users to “favorite” more new music than ever.
Artistpreneurs
A panel on “Artistpreneurship” featured Brianna DeMay (Taste Creators), Jake Posner (The Culture Theory), Mag Rodriguez (EVEN), Piff Marti (Stay Dangerous Productions), and ladidai (LADIDAI PRODUCTIONS). They discussed how artists can organically build fanbases, and how the film model of a theatrical release to streaming could work in the music business.
A mental health panel featuring Andre Mullen (The Paradigm Shift/We Are Paradigm LLC), Jessica McDevitt (More or Less (with Jess)), Marni Wandner (Marni Wandner Coaching), Mike Heyliger (Detoxicity Podcast), Mike Epstein (GoodTalk) discussed ways for artists to take care of themselves while taking care of business (“Keep receipts” and “Remembering ‘No’ is a full sentence,” for starters).
Image: Respective Collective
Creative workshops
In the middle of the day, BandLab’s Kevin Breuner led a workshop on their cloud-based Digital Audio Workstation, with a focus on the Splitter tool –which automatically splits songs into stems – and Forking tracks, which involves building off of an existing track. Breuner shared a song he had created himself, and worked with the audience to “fork” it into something new.
Another panel on marketing with content creation featured Blair Miller (Chaos Creators Entertainment), Damien Ritter (Too Lost), Jacorey Barkley (ContraBrand Agency/No Labels Necessary), Tolu Ayeni (Meta/Instagram), and Drew de Leon (the Digilogue), and discussed ways for to use live broadcasts to organically develop a fanbase, as well as starting the “content waterfall” that sees content trickle down from the lives, repurposed into Reels and then Stories.
Image: Respective Collective
Ayeni pointed out how getting onto new platforms – like Meta’s new service Threads – early allows creators’ content to be “super-served” to the smaller audience of early adopters, and sets them up to grow along with the platform.
Going live
Discussing innovation in the “Live Experience,” Lauren Youngblood (The Elle Word), Michael Schneider (Veeps), and Nick Maiale (jump.global), and VELI (Veli Brand) admitted that during the resurgence of live music after the pandemic lockdown, artist have turned to old-school tactics like meet-and-greets, which emphasize intimacy and closing the gap created by the months-long absensce of live shows. And as touring has become even more expensive, smaller artists are tools both tried-and-true (loop pedals) and next-generation (Kemper Profiler) to be more efficient.
Artistpreneurship // Image: Respective Collective
The final panel of the day explored the intersection of music with sports, fashion, and gaming, featuring Brian Desrosiers (Bashment Management/Sosshouse Records), Brooke Rascoff (Riot Games), Gabrielle Gomes (Dinner Service NY), Jonna Valente (Gotham FC), and Shauna Alexander (SOUND x VISION). They discussed various ways in which they helped artists tell their stories through collaborations with fashion brands, sports teams, and video games; Rascoff also discussed the ways that Riot games uses music to help expand the stories of pre-existing characters from their games, even going so far as to create a virtual pop girl group (K/DA) from League of Legends characters.
The post Digilogue Days 2023 Highlights: Day One of the music tech conference appeared first on MusicTech.

HEDD Audio’s HEDDphone TWO offers improved sound comfort in a more compact package£1,749, hedd.audio
As you may have guessed from the name, the HEDDphone TWO is the second ear-worn monitoring system from Berlin based manufacturers HEDD. It’s been three years in the making and is a major improvement over what was already an extremely accomplished headphone monitor.

READ MORE: Austrian Audio’s MiCreator achieves no-nonsense stereo recording in a pocket-sized package

The original HEDDphone – which is still available – attracted much critical acclaim for its superb sound, yet its enormous proportions left many wishing for similar sound quality with reduced size and weight. That wish has been realised with the release of the TWO.
The company’s tag-line for the HEDDphone TWO is “Lighter, better, faster, stronger” and that’s exactly what it is. There’s no minor tweaking of an existing design, however. Rather, it’s a ground-up reworking that addresses all the criticism of the original model, while also improving on sound quality.
HEDDphone TWO
Apart from the shallower earcups, the most obvious change visually is the new headband assembly, designed to accommodate every head size. It’s an ingenious design incorporating HEDD’s smart strap system, which replaces the earlier model’s basic clamp arrangement. Now, you get an eminently adjustable mechanism that allows you to precisely tailor fit, not only in terms of height and width, but also curvature and clamping pressure.
Despite being 25% lighter than the original, the TWO is still a large circumaural (over-ear) design, aimed squarely at the pro-audio market, so it won’t double as a headset you can use while jogging or using public transport, as there is considerable sound leakage from the transducers. This also means that in a recording studio environment, they’re better used for mixing and monitoring rather than tracking, where bleed from the cans might spill into nearby microphones.
As a mixing tool though, the TWO’s performance is nothing short of superb. Like its predecessor, the new model features HEDD’s Air Motion Transformer drivers, however these too have been completely redesigned, according to the company, to improve sound quality.
HEDDphone TWO
These drivers perform differently from conventional dynamic types, which use a piston-like motion to move air with a 1:1 ratio. Instead, AMTs have a folded diaphragm that squeezes air in and sucks it out, like an accordion and at a ratio of 4:1; this makes them four times faster than other transducers.
The full-range AMT is a result of HEDD’s proprietary VVT (Variable Velocity Transform) technology, which allows the AMT principle to be used as a full-range headphone speaker by way of variable diaphragm geometry. Instead of the diaphragm’s folds being equal, as they are in regular AMT tweeters, the folds are irregular, allowing full-range frequency response in a more compact design. Be aware though, that when adjusting the headphones, the drivers emit a crackling sound. This is quite normal and does not harm them in any way.
While AMTs comprehensively outperform ordinary dynamic drivers in the treble region – hence their popularity as tweeters in modern studio monitors – they are not renowned for delivering deep bass. Within HEDD’s designs though, they possess ample low-end quantity, within reason, but more importantly, astonishingly accurate low-end quality.
HEDDphone TWO being assembled. Image: Felix Zimmermann
Vast comfort improvement
Comfort wise, the HEDDphone TWO is a vast improvement on the earlier design, being lighter with excellent weight distribution. With the straps slackened it’s easy to adjust the carbon-fibre HEDDband and earcups to fit as snugly as you wish, then once fastened the ‘phones will remain set to your personalised requirements. The cloth-covered head pad is lovely and soft, without the bulkiness of the older model.
Faux leather covers the memory foam earpads, so they are vegan-friendly and again, the reduced size makes for a less claustrophobic listening experience. High-quality audio cables attach to each earcup, with the option of either standard jack connection or a balanced mini XLR. And the set comes housed in a smart and sturdy hard case.
Sound wise, the TWO has a more laid-back character than many professional monitoring headphones, which sometimes come across as overly forward in the midrange. This isn’t to say it lacks midband clarity though, rather that it doesn’t force information onto the listener in a shouty way. One reason for this is that unlike the lean nature of some ‘phones, the TWO has a decidedly warm character with a full and lush low-end. It never comes across as bloated however, as the ultra-fast response of the AMT drivers ensures that bass notes are impactful without appearing slow or soggy. Bass guitars, for example, are presented with superb accuracy, with no artificial mid-bass bump to mislead you. Transient attack and the heart of each note is presented in perfect proportion, while the tail of each note decays convincingly.

In the midrange, where most of the audio action takes place, the TWO does a brilliant job in keeping sounds distinct and well placed within the stereo picture. The soundstage itself isn’t as cavernous as some though; even hard-panned instruments remain head bound rather than creating the illusion of a panoramic soundscape. In many ways this improves focus, allowing you to hear filigree detail without the distraction of a larger-than-life presentation.
While we wouldn’t go as far as saying the mid-frequencies are scooped, emphasis is placed in the upper treble region, which can add a touch of sparkle that you might not hear on other monitoring systems. It’s a pleasant balance that rewards lengthy listening sessions without fatigue and has the added advantage of making ambient cues, such as reverb and echo repeats, easy to hear and work with.
HEDDphone TWO is a wonderful, if pricey, personal monitoring system. Unlike the majority of headphones, especially more budget-friendly ones, it richly deserves its description as an ‘ear speaker’. Criticism of the original, mammoth model has been addressed and improvements made to every aspect of the design. If you desire full-range sound, with an unforced yet trustworthy timbre alongside ultimate adjustability to fit your head, then look no further.
Once you are used to this style of headphone monitoring, it can make more ruthless, brutally honest designs an uncomfortable listen. The HEDDphone TWO is diligently designed for comfort in every sense.
Key features

Newly designed AMT drivers
Smart-strap HEDDband
PU leather covered earpads
Jack or mini-XLR connection
Sturdy moulded carrying case

The post HEDD Audio’s HEDDphone TWO offers improved sound comfort in a more compact package appeared first on MusicTech.

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Producer: Matias Téllez (except “Whatever’s Inconvenient”) 

Feisty, expressive, and original, CMAT navigates between dramatic ballads and sassy anthems as she recounts a toxic love and ensuing trauma and gradual acceptance. Country, indie rock, and ‘80s / ‘90s pop elements form a unique blend with strong vocals and decoration woven above a rich instrumental sound. CMAT brings quirky, dark-humored storytelling to the realities of being human and the evolution of overcoming challenges, wrapped inside a gorgeous musical delivery that effortlessly bends the ear. – Andrea Beenham

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Pro-crypto lawmaker stays interim US House Speaker as frontrunner loses first round of votingOhio Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican Party's nominee for Speaker, won the support of 200 of his colleagues in an Oct. 17 vote — below the 217 needed to hold the position.

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BMI to raise cut it takes from songwriters and publishers 50%BMI plans to raise the margin it retains from royalties collected from 10% to 15% or more, according to the PRO’s Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Report. In August, BMI said. Continue reading
The post BMI to raise cut it takes from songwriters and publishers 50% appeared first on Hypebot.

Superfans and supine fans: the music industry is getting its priorities the wrong way aroundThe following op-ed comes from long-time music industry journalist Eamonn Forde
Source

BMI will pay songwriters and publishers a smaller portion of its revenues as a for-profit company – while upping its own margin from 10% to 15% of collections. Will its members tolerate this change?New revelations from Michael O'Neill shows that BMI is planning to increase its retained revenues by a third
Source

IK Multimedia Amplitube SVX 2 Is FREE Until October 31st
IK Multimedia offers the Amplitube SVX 2 ($99.99 value) bass amplification software as a FREE download until October 31st. It requires the Amplitube 5 software (the free CS version is also supported). I feel we’ve covered our fair share of guitar-oriented amp sims since I started writing for the Bedroom Producers Blog. That makes sense. [...]
View post: IK Multimedia Amplitube SVX 2 Is FREE Until October 31st

5 new things you can do in Bitwig Studio 5
Here's a brief overview of five new additions to Bitwig Studio 5, and how you can use them in your next production.