How To Turn Casual Listeners into SuperfansMost artists focus on superfans, but real growth starts with your casual listeners. Fan engagement expert Dan Goldberg reveals how to turn casual listeners into superfans using strategies the music industry often ignores.
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NP A67 from KIT Plugins Following on from their recent news of a new partnership with Norman Petty Studios, KIT Plugins have revealed the first plug-in to sport the iconic facilities name.

SoundThread UI for CDP – Aphex Twin’s favorite tool just got a free modular GUI
Developer Jonathan Higgins has released SoundThread, a free cross-platform node-based UI for the Composers Desktop Project (CDP), one of the most powerful (and previously most intimidating) free sound design toolkits around. CDP has been a hidden weapon for experimental sound design since the 1980s, famously used by artists like Aphex Twin. The problem is, though, [...]
View post: SoundThread UI for CDP – Aphex Twin’s favorite tool just got a free modular GUI

Wunderkammer’s new WoO.1 is retro-styled sampler and looper that packs big ideas into its small frameIf Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 sparked a cult following for its compact creativity, the Wunderkammer WoO.1 looks ready to charm a new generation of portable music makers. Small enough to carry anywhere, this battery-powered sampler packs looping, sampling, and a handful of playful extras into a wonderfully versatile package.

READ MORE: “The computer case you can’t buy… ‘cause it’s free”: A Teenage Engineering freebie? The Computer-2 is here

The WoO.1 (pronounced “woo one”) marks Wunderkammer’s first instrument, and it’s what the brand calls a “portable inspiration machine”. Featuring a slim, rectangular frame and bold, retro-inspired controls, it offers an approachable workflow without sacrificing features.
At its core, the WoO.1 is a looper and sampler. Users can capture sounds directly using the built-in mic or import samples via USB, tweak them using the front-panel controls, and play them back on the button keyboard. Loops can be layered without limit, saved as Grooves, and chained into longer arrangements, with simple resampling to shift pitch or tempo. Effects include low-, high-, and band-pass filters, as well as a pitch shifter.

Beyond looping and sampling, the WoO.1 also offers five other operational modes: Music Composition (which lets you connect up to 16 Grooves); Finger Drums via its scissor-switch keys; Keyboard with 140 built-in instruments and 14 preloaded grooves; a Music Game mode for play-alongs; and MIDI mode for use as a controller.
The device also comes with 161 built-in sounds, an arpeggiator, and enough versatility to make it feel like a complete miniature studio in your hands. Additional features include a headphone jack, USB-C for charging and MIDI, a built-in speaker, and a rather impressive 50-hour battery life when you’re using headphones (or five hours with the speaker engaged).
If all this has got your gear senses tingling, Wunderkammer is currently taking preorders on its site with a $3 deposit that locks in 35% off the eventual retail price – a saving of $150 – and grants access to a VIP community as well as an “extra mystery gift”. The WoO.1 also makes its official debut on Kickstarter later today.
Check out a demo of the WoO.1 below.

Learn more at the Wunderkammer site or visit Kickstarter to stay updated on the WoO.1’s release.
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“If people want to climb the mountain, I guess you use the tools you can to get up there”: Mac DeMarco’s real feelings on musicians using AI in their workAI may be creeping into every corner of the music industry, but don’t expect Mac DeMarco to be outsourcing his songwriting to a machine anytime soon.
The Canadian singer-songwriter speaks in a new interview with The Independent, where he discusses the making of his upcoming album Guitar and why, for him, the human element in music will always outweigh any technological shortcut.

READ MORE: “To me musical instruments are the best user interfaces that have ever been invented”: Why the founding father of virtual reality isn’t convinced by AI music generators

“We’re in a funny zone right now where AI is coming in and getting good at things, fast,” he says. “Things start feeling paint-by-numbers sometimes. When you have AI bands coming around, and people listening to music without even realising it’s AI-generated, we’re in a weird place.”
And the 35-year-old isn’t exaggerating – earlier this year, a fictional band called The Velvet Sundown made headlines after racking up hundreds of thousands of monthly Spotify listeners just weeks after forming. Its music was later revealed to be entirely AI-generated (using Suno), including the band members, promotional images, and backstory.
For DeMarco, the trend strikes at the heart of what makes music meaningful. Watching younger musicians skip the grind of touring is already painful enough but the idea that some might not even want to write their own material? That crosses a line.
“I hear about people using AI to even write lyrics a lot nowadays, which is a bit like… give me a fucking break,” he says. “I think it’s about intention. If people want to climb the mountain, I guess you use the tools you can to get up there. I don’t know what you’re gonna find when you get up there, but hopefully you’re happy.”
That belief also informs his own creative process. DeMarco’s upcoming album Guitar, out 22 August, was completed in just a couple of weeks and is made entirely of unpolished “demo recordings”.
“There’s a satisfaction I have with this kind of thing, because of how pure and real it feels to me,” he says of the record. “It’s supremely of me. The most important part of art is the human element, I think. Be it good or bad, that’s what I want to hear.”
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Sonible smart:reverb 2 has shown me the future of reverb mixing£109 (intro price £79), sonible.com
Sonible’s smart:reverb was one of the first innovative and intelligent reverb processors that can tailor its sound to your material. In version 2, Sonible has given it a complete redesign, tearing up the reverb rule book in the process. smart:reverb 2 reworks the controls you use for dialling in your sound, and how you set up reverbs across a whole mix. With the new Group mode, you can now mix and control multiple plugin instances from a single window. It’s a bold approach that offers a new solution for anyone who struggles with adding depth to the mix.

READ MORE: FL Studio 2025, as reviewed by a Logic Pro user: “Fun and frustrating”

It can be all too easy to get excited about new reverb plugins, build up a large collection of them, and end up with choice paralysis. I’m guilty of this, too; I’m often fearful of trying new reverbs and deviating from my tried and tested settings at the risk of upsetting my mix.
With an intuitive interface that invites you to dial in the perfect sound stage to fit your track, smart:reverb 2 could finally be the reverb plugin to consistently rely on.

How does smart:reverb 2 work?
smart:reverb 2 doesn’t come with any presets. Instead, it offers quick and intuitive controls for dialling in the exact sound you want. And, unlike many traditional reverbs, it’s designed to be placed directly on a track, as opposed to a bus send (although you do have the option of setting it to 100% wet and using it that way).
The first thing you do is choose one of the 22 profiles covering drums, guitars, vocals, keys and more, which is an increase from the previous version. You then hit the Learn button and the plugin listens to your audio to create a tailored reverb tail that enhances the sound without masking important details. There’s then a Source Adaption amount at the bottom of the window that can adjust its influence. At 0% you get the raw reverb tail, and at 200% you get any potentially clashing frequencies carved out from the tail to increase the overall clarity.
If you’re worried about AI taking over and making decisions for you then fear not. The Learn function doesn’t actually set the reverb parameters, it just adapts the reverb tail to match your source material.
Main GUI. Image: Press
How do you control smart:reverb 2?
The next step is to adjust the reverb itself. Sonible has done away with controls for pre-delay, mix amount and early reflections, and instead presents a single Distance control that changes these things under the hood.
As you increase the Distance, the sound gets pushed further away from the front to the back, including a Distance Filter that increases the perception of depth by rolling off top-end frequencies at a distance or introducing a subtle proximity effect. It’s simple, intuitive and ultra-effective at moving a sound deeper into the sound stage. It could be useful for creating extra variation between verses and choruses, or as a cool special effect for an outro where it sounds like a singer is walking away into the distance. Of course these types of effects are possible with any reverb, but carefully balancing and automating several parameters at once can prove tricky to get right.
However, smart:reverb 2 would be more flexible if it did have a pre-delay control for those times when you might want a specific gap to fit the timing of a track.
Group Mode 1. Image: Press
How does smart:reverb 2 sound?
Alongside this, you have controls for Size, Width, a tonal Color control, and a dial called Clarity.
Clarity ducks the reverb when the source is present to help maintain intelligibility and definition. Below this is the large Reverb Matrix, where you use an X/Y pad to smoothly blend between Room, Hall, Plate and Spring styles. I’m happy to report that the algorithms have been massively improved compared to smart:reverb, with smooth and glossy tails and a more realistic sense of depth. This was always a criticism of the original, so it’s an extremely welcome upgrade.
A Reverb Display visualises how the reverb’s energy decays in real time. This helps to give a better understanding of the frequency spread and what the Source Adaption is doing, and it updates as you make adjustments to the other controls. There’s also an option to mono the reverb at lower frequencies, a useful Auto gain feature, and four reverb modes. You’ll probably spend most of your time in Normal mode, but you also have the option of Reverse, Infinite and Bounce modes that can be used for more creative effects and drone-like sounds.
These relatively minimal controls can get great results, but if you want to tweak further, then a Manual Override button opens up extra options. It splits the tail into three adjustable bands and lets you increase or decrease the energy in each to give the output a different tonal flavour. You can also pull a slider across that cuts off the tail early, set in either seconds or beats, for instant and easy gated drum effects.
Group Mode 2. Image: Press
What makes smart:reverb 2 different?
Perhaps the biggest innovation here though, is Group Mode. Like Sonible’s smart:EQ 4, it allows you to group multiple instances of the plugin and have them interact with one another. Once you have several instances loaded on your tracks, you can create a new group and add up to seven members.
If you want more, then you’ll have to create separate groups, but to be honest, having seven reverb plugins is probably a reasonable limit when it comes to processing power.
All the instances can then be controlled and edited simultaneously from a single window. You can adjust the Distance amounts for each while listening to the mix, which is an incredibly fluid, fast and natural way to set reverb amounts without having to jump around your DAW.
But the real party trick is that smart:reverb 2 lets you highlight all instances in a Group, and then hit Learn to intelligently optimise how the reverbs interact. It’s essentially doing the Source Adaptation but with a knowledge of how all the tails combine, so frequencies in one tail might be carved out to make space for another. It’s a unique function that helps reduce masking between tails and keep everything sounding clearer. Don’t expect miracles, but on the tracks I try it on, it definitely helps reduce clutter. And when you’re squeezing for that last 5% of polish, then every bit of mix real-estate that you can tidy is worthwhile.
Profiles list. Image: Press
Do I need another reverb?
Since it was released, I’ve been using the first smart:reverb exclusively to help my vocals sit in the mix. I didn’t especially love the sound, but there was something magical (and fast) about how it could add a subtle sense of invisible space. This new version improves on the sonic quality and is also much more inviting to be used across multiple mix elements. The only extra things I’d like to see are a simple output EQ, a dedicated pre-delay control, and the ability to pan the reverb signal, but these are all minor.
It’s not a reverb with buckets of character, and if you’re looking for a sound design tool, then there are other options out there (like Valhalla’s SuperMassive, ModeAudio Airspace, or the new UVI Bloom). But when it comes to creating depth, and adding polish and glue, it just works. The thoughtful plugin design encourages you to mix intuitively and use your ears, which can only be a positive thing.
I think I’ve finally found the plugin that lets me overcome my fear of reverb.

Key features

Content aware reverb plugin (AU, AAX, VST and VST3)
Shape the engine to your audio using AI with 22 instrument profiles
Built to be placed on individual tracks
Innovative Group Mode lets you control multiple instances from one window
Use Group Learn to unmask and clean up multiple reverbs at once
Intuitive Distance control lets you set the track depth
Reverb matrix for blending between Room, Hall, Spring and Plate
Additional controls for Size, Width, Color & Clarity
4 playback modes: Normal, Reverse, Infinite & Bounce
Mono below and Auto gain functions
Manual Override lets you edit the tonal balance and create gated effects
Machine or iLok authorisation

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Colin Hay Discusses Men at Work, His Solo Career, and the Music Biz [Part One]Colin Hay spoke to AllMusic shortly after the release of his latest solo release, Man @ Work: Volume 2, which like its successful predecessor, contains "re-imagined favorites from across Hay's rich catalog, including Men at Work classics, solo album highlights, and new material."

Discover the top 6 Pro Tools stock plugins
Unlock the power of Pro Tools stock plugins; learn how to use these built-in tools for mixing, mastering, and producing high-quality tracks.

SEC pushes back decisions on Truth Social, Solana, XRP crypto ETFs The SEC has pushed back decisions on Truth Social’s Bitcoin-Ethereum ETF, Solana products from 21Shares and Bitwise and 21Shares’ Core XRP Trust — all now set for October deadlines.

X’s declining Android app installs are hurting subscription revenueX is struggling on Android with installs down by 49% year-over-year as of June 2025.

FTC says 379,776 concert tickets purchased illegally for resaleThe Federal Trade Commission is suing Key Investment Group (KIG) alleging 379,776 concert tickets purchased illegally for resale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and other concerts involve violations of the BOTS Act.
The post FTC says 379,776 concert tickets purchased illegally for resale appeared first on Hypebot.

I, 3D PrinterLike many of us, [Ben] has too many 3D printers. What do you do with the old ones? In his case, he converted it into a robotic camera rig. See the results, including footage from the robot, in the video below. In addition to taking smooth video, the robot can spin around to take photos for photogrammetry.
In fact, the whole thing started with an idea of building a photogrammetry rig. That project didn’t go as well as planned, but it did lead to this interesting project.

Motion control used to be exotic, but 3D printers really put it in the mainstream. The printer has motors, lead screws, gears, and belts. Of course, there are plenty of 3D printed parts, too. He did buy a few new pieces of extrusion and some longer belts. In addition, he had to upgrade one stepper to one that uses gears.
The camera tilts plus or minus 90 degrees on what used to be the X axis. The Y axis moves the camera forward and backward. The Z axis still moves up and down, but the extruder motor has a new job.
The extruder motor rotates the target object. Originally, the plan was to spin the camera, but that was difficult since the ring is 18 inches across. In addition to reliably moving it, there’s the wire management to worry about, too. So even though the original plan was to rotate the camera, the final project rotates the object on a turntable.
After prototyping with the 3D printer, he had an outside service CNC many of the parts in metal, both for the appearance and for the rigidity. But we imagine it would be fine with good-quality 3D printed parts.
Overall, a nice way to upcycle an old printer. We didn’t see the design files for any of the parts, but you’d probably have to customize your approach anyway. We’ve seen plenty of these camera rigs. Some of them recycle other tech.

Trump targets scalpers: FTC sues company that bought and resold thousands of Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen ticketsThe action targets Key Investment Group LLC and its network of affiliated companies, along with three individual executives
Source

The Live Beat: Of Monsters and MenLooks like the parade is coming our way—specifically The Mouse Parade. Iceland’s beloved indie-pop storytellers Of Monsters and Men are packing up their folklore and heartache and heading back to North America this fall in support of their brand-new record All is Love And Pain in The Mouse Parade (out October 17 via Skarkali Records).The trek kicks off in October, winding through November with stops in Toronto, Brooklyn, Washington D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Los Angeles. Before parading into the States, the band will tune things up south of the border with a set at Mexico City’s Corona Capital Festival.This marks the group’s first full-length in six years, following 2019’s Fever Dream, the album that gave us stadium-sized anthems like “Crystals” and further cemented the band’s reputation for blending mythical imagery with heart-on-sleeve songwriting. The new record promises more of that signature Icelandic alchemy—wistful balladry laced with volcanic crescendos—that has carried them from Reykjavík coffeehouses to the world’s biggest festival stages.Of Monsters and Men still march forward with their original five-piece core: Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir, Ragnar Þórhallsson, Brynjar Leifsson, Kristján Páll Kristjánsson, and Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson. Together, they’ve built a catalog that balances wide-eyed wonder with a weathered, lived-in melancholy.North America, consider this your invitation to the parade.More info and ticket prices HERE.The post The Live Beat: Of Monsters and Men first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

How Big Gigantic and Opiuo produce their unique genre of funk-fuelled electronic musicNot that many years ago, iconic artists were trashing EDM and its culture for its “stupid simplicity”. Today, talented multi-instrumentalists, such as Big Gigantic and Opiuo, are designing a new version of EDM that seamlessly blends virtuosic jazz saxophone, dubstep growls and deep house basslines. Maybe it’s not so simple after all?
Big Giantic and Opiuo often write boom-bap beats that sit in the 80-100 BPM range, which is their ideal foundation for genre-melding. Major rappers such as Waka Flocka Flame and Logic have recorded with Big Gigantic, and Opiuo has covered funk classics like No Parking (On the Dance Floor) from the iconic 80s outfit, Midnight Star.

READ MORE: “What if we just flipped the process?”: Matteo Pagamici and Michael Künstle on playing an orchestra like a synthesizer

At this point, both have released numerous albums fueled by this crossover flair. Big Gigantic just put out their eighth album, Fluorescence, back in June, and Opiuo’s next record, Ascension Seeker, will be released in September.
With so much experience, this established approach has seen them booked at major non-electronic events such as the Newport Jazz Festival, and they’ve arranged their music to perform with full symphony orchestras. To boot, they are far from the only ones supporting this style. The electronic trendsetter GRiZ is a fellow champion, while younger acts such as Marvel Years and Vincent Antone are bringing their own, decidedly guitar-driven flavour, to the trend.
Opiuo’s live show, complete with orchestra. Image: Press
But in terms of sheer longevity, Big Gigantic are among the originators, putting out their saxophone-heavy EP, High Life, in 2009.
“It’s cool to see it keep developing, as it will continue to develop for years to come, hopefully,” says Dominic Lalli of Big Gigantic.
“The more people bring it, the more people hear it, but also the more it gets pushed forward and pushes other genres forward,” says Opiuo, real name Oscar Davey-Wright. “As that evolves, it impacts everything else.”
Big Gigantic consists of Lalli playing saxophone and producing electronic beats, and Jeremy Salken playing drums. They evolved into leaders of this crossover movement from playing jazz and funk gigs together for years. But their interests overlapped with artists like STS9 and Pretty Lights, who were early ambassadors of using electronic music elements, like samples, over jam band formats.
Big Gigantic’s Jeremy Salken on drums. Image: Press
“What we were trying to do early on was somewhere in that realm. [Asking ourselves], ‘How can we mix some of this live element jamming and some of the sampling and beats mixture of what Pretty Lights was doing into our own sound?’” Lalli says.
Davey-Wright grew up attending electronic music festivals in his native New Zealand, where he appreciated the widespread, but also stock and trade genres being presented.
“[At festivals,] there was always a trance stage, a house stage, a hard house stage, and I loved it all,” Davey-Wright says. He paired this universal appreciation with his upbringing of playing drums to fill a gap in what he wasn’t hearing at those events. “I always had a heavy passion for rhythm, and I loved big bass lines. Often, the beats in my music are relatively simple, but it gives me the opportunity to fill all of the extra groove with sounds that are foreign to that genre.”
Integrating electronic sounds has been vital to filling that gap, but Lalli and Salken also saw an overlap within the underlying form of electronic music and jazz and funk. No matter how different they sounded, there was always tension and release, similar to a buildup and drop.

“Whether it was a jazz gig or a funk gig, there was this element of building a solo. You build it to a peak, and then you drop it,” Salken says. “That concept of building energy is the same in dance music as it is in a jam band. Bringing the two together to make this experience felt unique. It was a way to nerd out on our instruments, but still play dance music, and have that concept.”
Both artists have their ways of nerding out when they’re building their music in the studio. Lalli often works with samples, just like Pretty Lights. When he records his saxophone into an electronic backdrop without any embellishment, the divide between organic and synthetic can create a discrepancy in the mix.
“It just doesn’t have the same flavour if you just do it directly, especially when you’re trying to build a new horn line,” Lalli remarks.
However, after creating in this style for so long, he’s developed a series of horn samples that are already EQ’d. He layers these samples around the live saxophone or other horns he may record, so they’re not prominent in the mix but provide support to the instrumental line.
“[The samples] are not far out in the mix, because it would sound weird. They’re back in the mix a bit. It gives it this really meaty [sound] that you wouldn’t get if I brought in five horns,” Lalli continues. “Adding this element is the core. You can put all this stuff around it. It really gives it that beefiness that it needs in the song.”
The resulting mix is so seamless that Salken, who is often separate from the production process, wasn’t even aware that Lalli incorporates this technique into the music.

Davey-Wright isn’t a horns player, so when he needs recordings, he reaches out to fellow musicians like Russ Liquid, who also operates in this instrumental electronic space, and Benny Bloom, the trumpet player from the celebrated funk band Lettuce. Once he has their parts, his process is subtractive rather than additive:
“No matter what I get back, I’m always going to pull it apart. They give me a palette of sound. I’ll try and make a new song using the minimal amounts of things possible to give it just enough of the original,” Davey-Wright says. “That’s the same as when I have live instruments. I like grabbing the piece they gave me, and messing with it as much as I can to see where I can go with it, and then sometimes coming back closer to the original.”
Davey-Wright’s method of smashing and rebuilding can mean dragging and dropping pieces of the recording into an entirely new horn line. One example is his 2016 song, Jelly. He was sent a recording, then he chopped it up, then a saxophone player rerecorded his new version, then he chopped it up again.
“It’s kind of a never-ending thing until it just hits, and you can just imagine someone rocking it,” Davey-Wright says. Overall, whenever he reaches out for horn recordings, he treats it like a collaboration between two equal parts:
Big Gigantic. Image:Press
“Maybe they’ll nail your vision. Maybe they’ll be miles away. Maybe your vision doesn’t even exist until you hear someone playing on it. When you can sit there for hours on end, playing a loop, grabbing singular hits for different saxophone tones, and moving them around, there’s freedom in that because you’re not influenced by anything else. After a while, you’re actually starting to create this instrument that you can’t play, potentially, and that’s pretty satisfying.”
Whatever anyone may think about electronic music or EDM, it’s the only genre that allows for the opportunity to create an instrument that can’t be played. Such a feat requires the union of technology and music. Opiuo and Big Gigantic are taking that union in a funky direction, but there’s no telling how it will evolve in the future.
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