Toontrack release Modern Pop Piano EKX Modern Pop Piano EKX captures the sound of a Grotrian-Steinweg upright, and includes a collection of sounds that have been resampled through an array of outboard processors. 

Final debuts the DX6000 in all-new headphones seriesFinal Audio has unveiled the DX6000, the first entry in its all-new DX headphones series.
Crafted “entirely from the ground up”, the brand’s latest open-back headphones employ proprietary driver technology to deliver a speaker-like listening experience that’s both highly transparent and emotionally expressive.

READ MORE: Audeze’s LCD-S20 headphones are the most affordable in its LCD series – and pack in its ground-breaking SLAM technology

To start, at the heart of the DX6000 is a newly developed large-diameter dynamic driver featuring an ultra-lightweight magnesium dome diaphragm. Magnesium, chosen for its rigidity and neutral acoustic properties, allows the DX6000 to achieve “remarkably low distortion and a fast transient response”, says Final.
As for the diaphragm, it is housed within a monolithic injection-moulded structure using a proprietary adhesive-free silicone foam surround. This unique construction removes unnecessary weight and delivers perfect piston motion, resulting in a dynamic soundstage with natural spatial separation, rich lows, and detailed reproduction across the frequency range.
To complement the diaphragm design, engineers developed a free-air wired aluminium coil, made with trace element doping for enhanced conductivity. By eliminating traditional bonding points and soldering connections, signal purity is maintained and reverse resonance is dramatically reduced.
Image: Final
In addition, the DX6000’s internal acoustic networks features a crossover-less design, mimicking the linearity of a well-designed speaker, offering accurate high-frequency response without harshness. The headphones’ fully open housing structure, where the front and rear enclosures are seamlessly connected, meanwhile, results in a deep, uncoloured bass with remarkable presence.
Each DX6000 is also manufactured and manually acoustically matched at Final’s dedicated production line in Japan, ensuring exceptional quality control. Despite its complex engineering, the headphones remain light on the head, weighing just 363g (excluding cable). The open-back architecture and thoughtful weight distribution also make them ideal for long sessions.
Included is a 3-meter OFC balanced XLR cable, designed for high-resolution, low-noise signal delivery in reference listening setups.
Priced at $1,999/£1,899/€1,999, the Final DX6000 will be available to purchase from 28 April 2025 at selected retailers.
Learn more at Final Audio.
The post Final debuts the DX6000 in all-new headphones series appeared first on MusicTech.

AEA launch the AEA 1029 compressor AEA are well-known for their ribbons mics and preamps, and now their product range includes a high-quality stereo VCA compressor.

Shure’s MV7i USB mic might be your go-to audio interface for mobile recording$349 / £329, shure.com
Shure’s MV family of USB microphones continues to expand with the addition of the MV7i, sharing much of the technology of the MV7+ but adding a second input with plenty of gain to essentially turn the mic into a standalone audio interface.
The idea is that you can add a second microphone or source via the combination XLR and jack input with phantom power and use it as a single or dual channel interface down a single connection, removing the need for additional cabling. That potentially makes it the perfect mobile solution for podcast or other simpler audio tracking uses like a singer/guitarist. But how well does it work in practice?

READ MORE: IK Multimedia’s iRig Stream Mic Pro is a hassle-free solution for all recording artists

The mic is sturdy with a high-quality metal case and comes on a yoke mount with screws on either side to enable it to be angled or fixed securely. You don’t get a stand for it, but the mount has a thread that can be attached either to a desk or a boom stand, depending on how you plan to use it. A foam pop shield is included, as is a USB-C cable of reasonable length, which both powers the mic and carries audio signals.
No drivers are required but you will need to download the MOTIV Mix app for macOS, PC or iOS, as this is the way you control the different settings inside the mic. There are no on-body controls except for the colour LED touch strip, which can be tapped to mute or unmute the signal. On the rear of the body are the USB-C port, the combo XLR/jack input and a 3.5 mm headphone output for monitoring.
The first thing the MOTIV Mix app will ask you to do is set up the routing for recording, the way the mic outputs audio. The first option is Mixdown, where inputs 1 and 2 are summed as a mono stream, say for live streaming. Then there’s Multitrack, which separates inputs 1 and 2 as individual mono streams, and finally Stereo which keeps input 2 as stereo while sending input 1 to both left and right, perhaps for recording voiceover over stereo content.
Image: Press
In terms of hardware, the mic has a directional, cardioid polar pattern and a dynamic transducer and a frequency response of 50 Hz to 16 kHz – not the widest range going, but sufficient for voice recording. Anyone wanting to capture every nuance of an acoustic guitar, for example, may want to connect a more sensitive mic to the other input – but we’ll get to that. The unit’s analogue-to-digital converter runs at up to 24-bit/48kHz and a slightly lower 16-bit/44.1kHz for iOS devices.
The onboard digital signal processing (DSP) powers a bunch of useful recording effects and tools that help you to capture respectable recordings in the kinds of less-than-perfect environments you may find yourself working in while on the move. All of these are configurable in the app. First up is Auto Level Mode with SmartGate, which monitors signal and auto-adjusts gain based on distance, volume and room dynamics. It can also prevent overlapping dialogue when two inputs are in use. It’s effective in real-world use, and though you will set levels manually in the app, the auto features help to mitigate variations in volume and potential movement during recording. The company’s Voice Isolation Technology helps the system separate out voices from other noise.
Denoiser is another process that can run in real-time, identifying and reducing persistent ambient noise like air conditioning, and a digital popper stopper can be activated in addition to the physical windshield. Then there are three types of variable digital reverb which tend towards sounding swampy so would need to be used sparingly, and an effects strip with tone, gain, EQ, compression and a limiter. All these are also available for the combo input channel and will be applied when a signal is detected from that input. There are broad presets for speech, singing or instruments, and global setups can be stored in the app too for easy switching between different uses.
SmartGate feature in the MOTIV Mix app. Image: MusicTech
This is a lot of processing inside such a small unit and, until now, would usually have required a larger housing — even compact audio interfaces with this much DSP don’t manage to also incorporate a full microphone. The MV7i can also supply 48v phantom power and +60dB of gain to its physical input and doesn’t get noticeably warm while doing so.
Monitoring is zero-latency with optional reverb applied both to the recording and foldback, and in tests, the recordings captured are excellent. The ability to add processing to the sound onboard – EQ, compression, limiting and a degree of gating – rather than in a DAW — cuts the chances of latency appearing. Plus, it means your sound is pre-processed by the time it hits the hard drive or is streamed online. Of course, you can omit these if you want to add effects post-recording, but there is an option to have a ‘comfort’ reverb in headphones, but not record it. Adding a second source via the combo input is simple, with the streams appearing to your DAW based on how you’ve set up the routing.
The MOTIV Mix app is capable of recording a high-quality stereo file from several inputs, including your computer (though at a fixed setting), which is fine for podcasting or recording live material, though for more flexible mixing, you’d capture separate streams in a DAW or similar package.
Image: Press
Shure suggests that this is a unique device, but it’s not dissimilar to IK’s iRig Stream Mic Pro (around £149) in some respects, which also has a high-quality USB-powered mic (with switchable polar pattern) and operates as a more limited audio interface than the MV7i. It lacks the DSP and internal effects as well as the powered combo input, so it’s more restricted, but it does have more on-body controls if that’s something you prefer.
The MV7i is a dependable and well-built mic that performs to a high standard and will suit streamers, podcasters and those needing to record a couple of sources without carrying lots of gear. The DSP features like auto gain and denoiser are genuinely useful, while the directionality of the mic means it excels at the task of voice pickup.
If your needs are more modest, the MV7+ at around £269 offers many of the same features just without the second input. The MV7i is arguably a little on the pricey side but there’s really nothing around that does what it does quite this well.

Key features

USB-C mic with up to 24-bit, 48 kHz recording
Second combo mix/line/instrument input
MOTIV Mix desktop and iOS software
Onboard effects and DSP
Zero-latency monitoring
Auto gain, denoiser and pop stopper
LED touch panel for muting and level feedback (with a Split option to reveal a
meter for each input)
3.5 mm headphone output
Phantom power to XLR
Flexible routing modes

The post Shure’s MV7i USB mic might be your go-to audio interface for mobile recording appeared first on MusicTech.

Palantir exec defends company’s immigration surveillance workOne of the founders of startup accelerator Y Combinator offered unsparing criticism this weekend of the controversial data analytics company Palantir, leading a company executive to offer an extensive defense of Palantir’s work. The back-and-forth came after federal filings showed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s […]

milliForth-6502, a Forth for the 6502 CPUForth is popular on small computers because it is simple to implement, yet quite powerful. But what happens when you really need to shrink it? Well, if your target is the 6502, there’s milliForth-6502.
This is a port of milliForth, which is a fork of sectorforth. The sectorforth project set the standard, implementing a Forth so small it could fit in a 512-byte boot sector. The milliForth project took sectorforth and made it even smaller, weighing in at only 336 bytes. However, both milliForth and sectorforth are for the x86 architecture. With milliForth-6502, [Alvaro G. S. Barcellos] wanted to see how small he could make a 6502 implementation.

So how big is the milliForth-6502 binary? Our tests indicate: 1,110 bytes. It won’t quite fit in a boot sector, but it’s pretty small!
Most of the code for milliForth-6502 is assembly code in sector-6502.s. This code is compiled using tools from the cc65 project. To run the code lib6502 is used for 6502 emulation.
Emulation is all well and good as far as it goes, especially for development and testing, but we’d love to see this code running on a real 6502. Even better would be a 6502 built from scratch! If you get this code running we’d love to hear how it went!

OCTO8R Xpression 2Second "Xpression" presets pack is dedicated to expose the sonic character of DS Audio Thorn. 55 Presets include: Arps - 9. Basses - 10. Leads - 10. Pads - 10. Plucks - 11. Seq - 5. MOST of presets are "morphable" by Modwheel and are marked by "MW" in the name. Demo: https://youtu.be/N9h-J-f2wcg Read More

Release details
Release title:
How High
Main artist name:
Plexine
Release date:
11th Apr, 2025
https://publme.lnk.to/HowHigh
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #experimental #hiphop

Congress has questions about 23andMe bankruptcy3The leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said they are investigating how 23andMe’s bankruptcy might affect customers’ data. Representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis, and Gary Palmer (all Republicans) sent a letter Thursday to the genetic testing company’s interim CEO Joe Selsavage asking a number of questions about how 23andMe will handle customer […]

They Hacked a Nuclear Power Plant! Whoops! Don’t Make a Sound!What do you do with an unused nuclear reactor project? In Washington, one of them was hacked to remove sound, all in the name of science.
In 1977, a little way outside of Seattle, Washington Nuclear Projects 3 and 5 (WNP-3 and WNP-5) were started as part of Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, pronounced “whoops”). They ran over budget, and in the 80s they were mothballed even though WNP-3 was nearly complete.

In 2010 when [Ron] and [Bonnie Sauro] were starting their new acoustical lab, NWAA Labs, they thought they wanted to build in a mountain, but what they found was an auxiliary reactor building. The structure was attached to a defunct nuclear power facility. With concrete and rebar walls five feet thick, it was the ideal site for their acoustical experiments and tests.
There are strict facility requirements from standards bodies such as American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for acoustical labs which help ensure that different labs achieve comparable results. For example, you need stable temperature, humidity, and reverberation. The temperature within the facility is a stable 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius) regardless of the temperature outside.
Companies use acoustical labs to inform their designs and ensure that they meet acoustic standards or requirements, particularly those related to noise emissions. Over the last fifteen years, NWAA Labs has tested carpet samples, noise-cancelling headphones, sound-dampening construction materials, noisy washing machines, and even an airplane’s crew cabin!
If there was any question about whether [Ron Sauro] qualifies as a hacker, this quote removes all doubt: “I’m a carpenter, a plumber, a welder, I can fix a car,” he says. “Anything that needs to be done, I can do. Because I have to.”
Maybe we should send a wearable cone of silence to [Ron] for a complete test. If you’ve ever hacked a nuclear power plant, do let us know in the comments!

Independent Musician News: Touring, Merch. Samples & ViewsLast week, our tips, strategies and independent musician news covered the cost of touring, how to create band merch, copyright protocol for covers, view counts, Spotify royalties and more...
The post Independent Musician News: Touring, Merch. Samples & Views appeared first on Hypebot.

Music Business News Last Week: Spotify, AI, Tickets & TrumpA busy week by any definition, music business news last week was no exception, with a debate over Spotify's 1000 stream royalty rule, a 10% ticket resale cap, AI comments hurting social media, and more...
The post Music Business News Last Week: Spotify, AI, Tickets & Trump appeared first on Hypebot.

GSi Genuine Sounds Vol. II - Gemini EditionGenuine Sounds is a collection of fine sampled instruments based on a very efficient and unique proprietary sound engine made by GSi and called WLF - Wavetable Linear Format. The WLF Engine grants the highest performance with the lowest memory usage and CPU load possible, resulting in high polyphony even on less capable devices. All sounds included in the Genuine Sounds collections are professionally sampled using proprietary software and hardware machines. Genuine Sounds Volume Second is the second edition of this GSi product. This volume offers the whole sample library from the GSi Gemini, a hardware sound module that has been in production between 2015 and 2024. Main features: Powered by WLF Engine - Highly efficient DFD Streaming (Direct-from-disk). User selectable Streaming Buffer size. Disk Pre-Caching option to increase disk streaming performance. Polyphony up to 1024 stereo voices. Internal 32-bit processing with native 32-bit sampled material. Stereo 4-band semi-parametric equalizer. Four effect slots. FX1 features: Mono/Stereo Tremolo, Auto-Panner, Ring-Modulator, Wha-Wha (Pedal, LFO, Dynamic), Limiter. FX2 features: Stereo Chorus, Stereo Phaser 4 or 6 stages, Flanger, Digital Delay, Analog Delay. FX3 features amplifier simulations: TWIN, JCM, AC, RJC, BASS. FX4 features digital reverb with 9 variations. Each sample-set can have up to 8 dedicated parameters. All parameters can be Midi-controlled with user-defined MIDI Map and MIDI Learn feature. Sound Bank Manager with direct download and ability to delete unused sample-sets. Program Manager with unlimited number of Programs and freely assignable MIDI P.C. numbers. Import/Export of single Programs and entire Banks. Import/Export of user-defined MIDI Maps. User defined Velocity Curves. Session Recorder: silently records everything is played in a session and can export to MIDI File. Built-in MIDI Monitor: logs every incoming MIDI message. Resizable UI (only Desktop versions). Available as Standalone and Plugin for Windows, Mac OS and iOS (iPad only). Embedded user's manual. Read More

IK Multimedia expand TONEX Factory Content With the release of TONEX Factory Content v2, users of all of the IK Multimedia's TONEX hardware and software products will gain access to up to 150 new Premium Tone Models and presets. 

A new kids’ show will come with a crypto wallet when it debuts this fallA new animated kids’ series expected to premiere this year won’t be headed for a TV network. Or a streaming service. Instead, the founders of production studio We Ghosted Media plan to launch on a decentralized web platform that uses blockchain technology. And yes, a crypto wallet will be involved.  We Ghosted Media — founded by […]