Inside Abbey Road Studios’ new collection of rare and vintage instruments: “We wanted not just the digital version of this gear, but the original”London’s Abbey Road Studios, the UMG-owned studio that’s home to countless iconic recordings, has vastly expanded its music gear collection. The studio aims to provide visiting artists with a much wider sonic palette and to inspire creativity in anyone making music there.
In an era where much of pro audio gear is digital, Abbey Road Studios is attempting to give musicians and producers access to more ‘real’ gear, some of which might not be familiar to even the most die-hard synth aficionados.

READ MORE: Inside Neumann: The iconic brand is coming after your entire studio chain

Abbey Road’s Mark Robertson (Head of brand, marketing, and creative) and Jack Lintorn (Artist relations manager) were among those in charge of acquiring the new instruments and effects.
Speaking on the storied Abbey Road, Mark tells us: “Obviously, we have a lot of vintage gear that was designed and built here by the EMI engineers — vintage microphones and also a lot of old keyboards, from pianos to organs. People love exploring, and it’s a driver for them to come. But we’ve known for some time that there are other things that we would like to add to the collection to really enhance that offering.”
The long list of new gear spans the coveted and the classic. But stand out models include 16 synthesisers and seven vintage drum machines, including iconic synths such as a Roland Juno-106 from 1984, a Minimoog from 1974, Roland Jupiter synths, and drum machines including the Roland TR-707, 808, and 909. Oh, and a LinnDrum. Several pieces have been previously owned and used by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and Adrian Utley of Portishead.
Image: Rob Jones
When asked about the process of sourcing such unique gear, Jack says he “developed a list over about 18 months of the stuff we’d like to get. We had help from [vintage gear specialists] SoundGas; Tony at SoundGas helped us source the Minimoogs, the Jupiter-4s, the 808s — all these big pieces of kit, which we knew were fundamental to have in Abbey Road now. A lot of gear is retrofitted with Kenton MIDI.”
Crucial to the creation of the list, Jack says, was the community of resident producers and artists at Abbey Road. “I thought it would be great to make a real creative playground that artists could really just dive into and take into the studio. We worked with the artist community, speaking to the likes of Kid Harpoon, Two Inch Punch, and Jordan Rakei, to get their opinions. By the end of that process, there was a list of about 100 pieces of equipment, both vintage and future-facing.”
The new gear isn’t just stored in back rooms either; it’s out for people to use. As Jack explains, “In the Gatehouse studio, we’ve now got a six-tier synth rack, and we filled it with a treasure trove of synths. We’ve got drum machines on there as well, so you can go into that space now, and really just plug and play. Through speaking to artists, we found that it was something they were very keen on”.
Image: Rob Jones
In such a trove of gear, we wonder which instrument is the most obscure. “It’s a Japanese synth called the Suiko ST-50 Poetry Trainer,” reveals Jack. “They’re really rare — they’re called a poetry trainer because they were used in Japan to go along with poetry recitals. Someone could be a poet, and they would play this instrument alongside the recital. So it has amazing sound effects like the sound effects of a Koto and amazing old synth pads.”
Abbey Road has also been having a shakeup of the way its spaces are organised, as Mark explains. “We’ve got a space outside Studio 2 that used to have tape machines in it. We’ve cleared that, so a lot of the gear is now on display, and people can come and pick things up and hopefully feel inspired by things they might want to try and take into their session.”
“There’s also 40 guitar pedals”, chimes in Jack. “We’ve got the Chase Bliss, the Holograms, the Earthquaker Devices. Before a session, you can go and get your pedal board, pick the pedals you want, and take them away. There’s all the SOMA gear in there — we’ve got the Terra, the Lyra, Pulsar, and Super. We’ve never had these accessible before.”
Since its recent introduction, the newly expanded hardware collection has already proved a firm favourite at the studios, Mark promises. “People have been grabbing it, both artists and engineers. It’s been a bit crazy, but actually really rewarding and sort of validating.”
Image: Rob Jones
Jack adds, “It’s only been a few weeks we’ve had it all out — it’s lovely to see the engineers being so excited, especially in the corridor, they stop, and there’s an OmniChord that they start playing. It’s stuff which we haven’t had access to before, so it’s really exciting. And the Moogs and the Junos have already been used in sessions. The pedal boards have been really useful as well.”
Mark concludes by stressing the idea behind the endeavour. “We wanted not just the digital version of [this gear], but the original. It was important to us to find things that had some pedigree.”
Abbey Road’s purchase of all this gear is the single largest investment it has ever made in new creative tools. Is the company looking for a big return on its investment, or to just turn the place into a museum of synth relics?
“We’re thinking about Abbey Road’s place in wider popular culture and how we make it more accessible to artists: ‘How do we build perhaps the truest home for music making, a place where people can come and create?’”
The post Inside Abbey Road Studios’ new collection of rare and vintage instruments: “We wanted not just the digital version of this gear, but the original” appeared first on MusicTech.

Google’s Gemini app has surpassed 750M monthly active usersGoogle revealed a significant milestone for it's Gemini app, announcing over 750 million monthly active users as it competes with ChatGPT and Meta AI.

LaMonte McLemore (September 17, 1939-February 3, 2026)Engineer/Record Producer Bones Howe and Harvey Kubernik Interview on The 5th Dimension   

LaMonte McLemore, a founding member of The 5th Dimension and a longtime celebrity and sports photographer whose images appeared in publications including Jet magazine, died Tuesday morning, Feb. 3, at his home in Las Vegas surrounded by his wife of 30 years and family. He was 90. LaMonte died from natural causes following a stroke suffered several years ago.

With The 5th Dimension, McLemore helped bring a polished, genre-blending sound to American pop and soul in the late 1960s and early 1970s, scoring era-defining hits including “Up, Up and Away” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” The group won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year twice—first for “Up, Up and Away” (1968) and again for “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)” (1970). Both recordings were later inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame (“Up-Up and Away,” 2003; “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” 2004).

The “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” medley topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks in the spring of 1969, becoming one of the signature recordings of its generation. Other mega-hits included the Number 1, “Wedding Bell Blues,” and the iconic “Stoned Soul Picnic,” amid seven Gold albums and six Platinum RIAA-certified singles. In 1991, The Original 5th Dimension received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Born Sept. 17, 1935, in St. Louis, Missouri, McLemore served in the United States Navy, where he trained and worked as an aerial photographer—an early chapter in what became a lifelong parallel career behind the lens. He later pursued professional baseball in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ farm system, one of the first African Americans to participate, before settling in Southern California and turning his attention to music and photography full time.

McLemore co-founded The 5th Dimension in Los Angeles, joining Billy Davis Jr., Florence LaRue, Marilyn McCoo, and Ron Townson. Known for his warm bass vocals and easygoing presence, he helped anchor the group’s sophisticated harmonies and modern pop sensibility, which broadened the palette of soul and R&B on mainstream radio. They appeared on major television variety shows of the era and toured internationally, including a 1973 State Department cultural tour that brought American pop music behind the Iron Curtain.

Outside the recording studio, McLemore built a distinguished reputation as a photographer, with work spanning entertainment, sports, and editorial portraiture. His images captured many of the defining figures of 20th-century popular culture, and he contributed photography to Jet magazine over the course of multiple decades.

McLemore and The 5th Dimension also reached new audiences in recent years. Their musical performances were featured in Questlove’s Oscar-winning documentary ‘Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),’ which revisited the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and its enduring musical impact.

In 2014, he co-authored with Robert-Allan Arno the autobiography From Hobo Flats to The 5th Dimension: A Life Fulfilled in Baseball, Photography, and Music, reflecting on a career that moved effortlessly between the stage and the camera.

Statements

“All of us who knew and loved him will definitely miss his energy and wonderful sense of humor.” - Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis, Jr.

“Proverbs 17:22 states that "A joyful heart is good medicine…" Well, Lamonte really knew my prescription! His cheerfulness and laughter often brought strength and refreshment to me in difficult times. We were more like brother and sister than singing partners. I didn't realize the depth of my love for Lamonte until he was no longer here. His absence has shown me the magnitude of what he meant to me and that love will stay in my heart forever,” said Florence LaRue.

"As a childhood friend to me from St. Louis, Mo., he will certainly be missed," shared bandmate Billy Davis Jr.

"Lamonte loved music and was always so generous, making his photography studio available to us in our early years before the hits started,” said Marilyn McCoo.

Survivors

McLemore is survived by his wife, Mieko McLemore, his daughter Ciara, (adopted) son Darin, sister Joan, and three grandchildren.

Services

A memorial service and celebration of life will be announced at a later date.

For more information on The 5th Dimension, forever5thdimension.com, 5thdimensionlive.com, 

In 2008 I interviewed the legendary sound engineer and record producer who guided and produced the epic 5th Dimension recordings. He will turn age 93 this March.  

A 2023 article in Sarasota Magazine, a Florida-based publication headlined a profile on Howe, “How Bones Howe Helped Shape America’s Pop Music.”

During 2008 I interviewed Bones Howe. Portions of our conversation were published in my book Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon.

Dayton “Bones” Howe, a soft-spoken, jazz-loving, Southern gentleman, came to Los Angeles from Georgia in 1956. He quickly settled his rail-thin frame (hence, the nickname) behind the mixing console at Radio Recorders Studio, serving under principal engineer Thorne Nogar on some the young Presley’s breakthrough hits. 

Over the next decade, Howe became one of the most celebrated engineers in the music industry, working on albums by Ornette Coleman, Jack Kerouac and Lenny Bruce as well as recording a parade of Top Ten singles from Timi Yuro, The Mamas & Papas, and Johnny Rivers.

Howe then produced The Association, The Turtles, The Monkees, and The 5th Dimension. The West Coast sound was as much a product of his panoramic vision as it was the worship of cars, girls and warm summer breezes.

With his 1968 partner, television director Steve Binder, they set Elvis Presley off on a personal journey that bordered on a career resurrection.

The result was Elvis…The ’68 Comeback Special. 

In the early 1970s, Bones would engineer and co-produce Tom Waits’ Closing Time.  

Howe and The 5th Dimension are not in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That’s a Shonda.

Interview excerpts from my 2008 interview with Bones Howe.  

Johnny Rivers had discovered The 5th Dimension who were originally known as The Hi-Fi’s in 1966 to his Soul City label done with Imperial Records. Howe produced Rivers also inked Jimmy Webb to his music publishing house and produced The 5th Dimension’s “Up Up And Away,” a Webb tune that Howe engineered.

Howe took over the group’s musical activities. Howe selected material from the Webb, “Carpet Man” and “Paper Cup,” and scripture from the Laura Nyro songbook: “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Sweet Blindness” and even cut Nyro on an attempt on “Save The Country.” 5th Dimension also waxed the anthem, “California Soul” by the immortal Valerie Simpson and Nicholas Ashford team.

Excerpts from my 2008 interview with Bones Howe.  

“I produced ‘Windy’ by the Association and went to number one and made ‘Never My Love’ which also went to number one. Johnny Rivers called me up. I had been the engineer on the ‘Up, Up and Away’ album. He asked me if I would be interested in producing the Association. ‘Yeah!’ And he said the first thing was that I’m to do an album with Jimmy Webb called ‘The Magic Garden.’ ‘He wants to do a big orchestra.’ ‘If you’re willing to pay for it, I know what to do. We will go into the big studio at United and record the tracks there and I’ll put the voices.’

“The album really didn’t have a single in it. From one record to the next I began to find things that could get played on the radio. Jimmy wrote these beautiful harmonies. He was the hippest songwriter in town. All of his songs have major sevenths and major ninths. All those altered chords like you find in jazz. So that was what I thought was very attractive. He also wrote beautiful melodies. It was find doing those things with Jimmy. Somebody once introduced themselves to me ‘You’re Bones Howe. You work with Jimmy Webb.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How does he sleep with all that music in his head?’

“I was actively working with music publishers. I heard Laura Nyro’s ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ on KHJ radio ‘cause Bill Drake the RKO programmer liked the record. Then I saw Laura at the Monterey festival in 1967. I thought Laura was amazing and it was almost jazz what she was doing. Laura was different. She had some L.A studio musicians with her at Monterey like Hal Bline who also worked with Johnny Rivers. I did a session with her on ‘Save The Country’ with her. Clive (Davis) called me and asked me if I would do it.’ She wanted to do it very badly and she wanted to use the West Coast rhythm section. So, Clive flew her out and we did it. She was a dear woman and I really loved her. She would play me stuff on the piano and I would just be bits and pieces of stuff and I would keep saying, ‘Finish it!’ R&B radio stations played ‘Stone Soul Picnic.’ It was a number one R&B hit. I kept mining the Nyro and Webb mines. I kept finding stuff I loved and it got easier when we got rolling on it.

“On The 5th Dimension it was Hal Blaine on everything. And Joe Osborn. I discovered Joe doing those Johnny Rivers records with Lou Adler. Mickey Jones was the drummer on the first Rivers sessions. And Joe Osborn. He played the bass the way I thought, as a jazz player, rock ‘n’ roll players should play the bass. Joe and Hal together were together and really the lock and the feel. Those guys were just amazing together. And then Dennis Budimir and Tommy Tedesco jazz guys. That’s kind of how I built a rhythm section. A lot of it was conversation. I always started my session in the room. The lead sheets would go out but I always started with the guys and stood out there with them as they ran the first tune. I hated the disembodied voice that came from the control room to the floor telling everybody what to do.

“The 5th are in New York and somebody had given them tickets to see ‘HAIR.’ They told me about an amazing song called ‘Aquarius.’ ‘We can do that song and it will be a big hit.’ I listened to the song and felt it wasn’t a whole song. I went to New York with my wife Melodie and we went to see HAIR. I’m watching this thing unfold and I realize ‘Aquarius’ is simply just like an introduction to the show. It doesn’t go anywhere. And then in a pair of shorts comes down sliding on a wire and they sing ‘The Flesh Failures.’ A downer of a song talking about civilization is going to hell. But then the chorus ‘Let the sunshine in.’ 3 bars being repeated. ‘Oh shit! That’s how we do it.’ But I couldn’t do this until I got permission from the music publisher. I went to United Artists who had the copyright. I played the two things for The 5th Dimension and then told them we will do the chorus at the end.

“With the 5th Dimension I also had Bob Alcivar, a vocal arranger on the team. We worked close together. He would help me find the keys for the singers to do the songs and coax them vocally. He found ways to help them. Bob would sit at the piano with each member and teach them their part. A huge asset. He made a tremendous contribution and I couldn’t go forward with any song until he figured out what key we would do that these guys could sing it in. That was a partnership we had with the things that we had.

“On ‘Aquarius’ during production, Bob Alcivar went, ‘There in different keys! How are we going to get these things together? ‘We’re gonna hook them together like two trains.’ We will record them separately and I will find a way to put them together with Hal Blaine on drums. I mixed it and put it together. We put strings and horns and stuff on it and put it together. It was more like building and architecture.

“When I was an engineer, I was there to serve the producer and the music. I never lost touch of that. By the time they were done I could sing along with every record I made. I suppose what I did was that I did what I was told except I found ways to do it but I thought benefited the performance of the musicians in the studio. And I made suggestions like putting the girls on one side and the guys on the other side on Mamas and Papas. That sort of stuff. ‘Let’s do it this way and see how it works.

“Those became concrete formats. And when I started working at Studio 3 at United Western, I invited that rhythm set up. Because what I found out is that if you put the guys close enough together, they’ll play better. And not only that, the sound will be better. Because the sound doesn’t have to travel as far to the other microphone. It’s all about an ensemble sound.   

“The best record made during the whole era was ‘Pet Sounds. And in the case of Brian Wilson, it was a whole room full of people playing together. Brian was a different kind of music maker. Way ahead of everybody else where he was. He was so far ahead he wasn’t in the race. Brian had the vision and brought the musicians together and write the charts. And poor Chuck Britz, the engineer, had to figure out how to get all that sound on the tracks. Chuck’s influence. Those records are amazing, including the sound.

“And I remember going in when they were recording Pet Sounds and having to wade through all of those musicians, two drummers, seven guitar players, pianos. And Bill Pittman and others filling in the spaces in between. And Chuck in that little room, and it had a lot to do with it because everyone had to be close together so there was nobody spread out and there wasn’t a time lag from one place to another. It was everybody was hearing the time at the same time. And so, getting that on the tracks and mixing them with Brian was really part of putting the paint on the canvas.

“And with Brian, like Spector, Brian liked to mix in mono. They were made to play on the radio, which was mono. And they were made to sound good on the radio, which was mono. I had to pull over on the side of the road on Barham Boulevard one night when I heard Phil’s ‘You Lost That Loving Feelin’’ for the first time. That was the first record that kind of nailed me down. ‘Oh Jesus…’

“I didn’t get to know Phillip until later ‘cause he was working at Gold Star and I was at Radio Recorders and then I went to United. I knew who he was. I met him a couple of times. And then in 1966 he called me up and was doing a Tina Turner album and wanted to do the whole orchestra live and [engineer] Larry Levine at Gold Star couldn’t do it.

“So, Larry called me and asked ‘Do we think we can do this at Studio A at United?’ ‘Absolutely. I did four or six tracks on that Ike and Tina Turner album, including ‘A Love Like Yours Don’t Come Knockin’ Everyday.’ Larry came over and clued me in on how to set up the wall of sound tape reverb echo and all that stuff. 

“I had worked with Ike and Tina at Studio B at Radio Recorders and Ike used to pay in cash. Ike had the girls and he paraded the girls. I liked Ike. He was a good guy and I had a good time working for him.

“I had done surf records with [producer]Lou Adler on Jan and Dean, and before that I recorded the Hi Lo’s with Clark Burroughs and that’s how I found him to do the Association’s’ ‘Never My Love’ and ‘Windy.’ Those are his vocal arrangements. I did record a lot of vocal groups when I was at Radio Recorders but they were more traditional vocal groups. But the Hi Lo’s. I knew them and the Four Freshman from my jazz days. So, these kind of harmonies were very much what I was into.”   

(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.

Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. 

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) will be published in mid-February 2026 by BearManor Media.

Harvey spoke at the special hearings in 2006 initiated by the Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation.

In 2017, he appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in its Distinguished Speakers Series and as a panelist discussing the forty-fifth anniversary of The Last Waltz at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2023).The post LaMonte McLemore (September 17, 1939-February 3, 2026) first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Spot Bitcoin ETF outflows total $2.9B as BTC price drops to new 2026 lowBitcoin’s 12-day ETF outflows, derivatives data and the crypto market in tandem trading with tech stocks suggest traders will continue to cut exposure to risk assets.

Kei Truck Looks Like a Giant Power ToolKei trucks are very versatile vehicles, but their stock powerplant can leave a bit to be desired. If you need more power, why not try an electric conversion?
[Ron “Mr. G” Grosinger] is a high school auto shop and welding teacher who worked with his students to replace the 40 hp gas motor in this Daihatsu Hijet with the 127 hp of a Hyper 9 electric motor. The motor sits in the original engine bay under the cab and is mated to the stock transmission with a custom adapter plate made from plate steel for less than $150. We really appreciate how they left all the electronics exposed to see what makes the conversion tick.
The faux battery was made by a foam sculptor friend out of urethane foam shaped with a carving knife and then painted. It slides on a set of unistrut trolleys and reveals the 5 salvaged Tesla battery modules that power the vehicle. The fold down sides of the truck bed allow easy access to anything not already exposed if any tweaking is necessary.
We’ve seen a kei truck become a camper as well or an ebike powered with actual power tool batteries. If you’re thinking of your own electric conversion, which battery is best?

Strange Audio DSP maniFold OmegamaniFold Omega is a hybrid real-time effect processor that blends real-time micro-looping, granular fx, spectral-style delay processing, and feedback-based textures. It's designed for experimental sound design, ambient layering, glitch textures, and abstract time-based transformations: Key Features. Micro-looper and Granular FX engine with 16 Play Heads. Each head plays from a shared variable-size audio buffer. Randomized playback: Position, length, panning, and pitch. Real-time Visualization: Monitor active heads and playback positions instantly. Advanced Buffer Management: Variable Buffer Size: Adjustable from 1 to 60 seconds, allowing for everything from tiny glitches to massive ambient loops. State Saving: The audio buffer state is saved directly with your DAW project, so your textures are exactly where you left them when you reload. Buffer Control. Freeze/Lock: Capture a sonic moment for infinite looping. bufferClear: Instantly flush the play/record buffer for a fresh start: Delay Cluster. 16 delay lines using all-pass filter topology (not standard delays). Rich comb-filtering, pitch smearing, and spectral-like time dispersion: Recirculation. Feeds the delay network back into itself for evolving, chaotic textures. Functions similarly to a high-end reverb tank or modular feedback loop. Envelope & Loop Shape. mLoopShape: Sets the amplitude envelope for each play head. mLoopSize: Defines minimum playback size (500ms to 5s) for tighter or broader loops. https://youtu.be/RerMg40BISk Available as VST3 and AU for macOS and Windows. Check this fully functional DEMO DEMO you can purchase FULL version with lifetime key and offline activation Full Read More

Antares’ announces major update for its AI-powered Metamorph plugin, allowing users to import third-party voice modelsAntares, the company behind AutoTune, has announced the first major update for its AI vocal transformation plugin, Metamorph V1.1.
Building on Metamorph’s foundation of premium, offline processing, the update introduces the ability to import third-party RVC models (AI-powered voice changers) while “maintaining the security and privacy that Metamorph users expect”. The update is free for all existing users.

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Metamorph first landed in November last year, and runs entirely offline inside your DAW. From its first launch, it came with 12 “ethically trained” voice models, plus six others developed in partnership with Voice-Swap.
Now, with the ability to import third-party RVC models, users can bring over custom-trained models or community creations directly into the plugin, all while a “security-first” approach protects your computer and privacy.
Vocal Range Matching has also been introduced to the plugin, which automatically analyses a user’s vocal input and optimises it to sit naturally within the chosen voice model’s range. A drag-and-drop export feature now also lets you drag processed vocals directly from Metamorph onto your DAW timeline with no extra steps.

Antares also reiterates that it is “a proud supporter of The Principles for Music Creation with AI”, meaning AutoTune remains “committed to responsible AI development”. While V1.1 enables third-party model import, all 18 voices included with Metamorph are sourced with authorisation and compensation in place.
AI is fast expanding across the plugin market, and LALAL.AI has just launched its first ever VST plugin, bringing its stem-splitting technology to your DAW for the first time to reduce the time spent switching between workflows.The plugin uses its Lyra model, and is designed to run locally on nearly any hardware.
To find out more about Metamorph, head over to the Antares website.
The post Antares’ announces major update for its AI-powered Metamorph plugin, allowing users to import third-party voice models appeared first on MusicTech.

10K Audio update Gyro real-time looper 10K Audio have recently launched a major update that adds some powerful new functions to their real-time looping instrument.

Krystal Dynamics offers three new FREE plugins for macOS and Windows
Krystal Dynamics is a new developer, launching with several new plugins for macOS and Windows, and best of all, they are absolutely free! Before we get into the plugins, a quick word on the Krystal Dynamics website. The website launched a few weeks ago, and all appears to be fine, but my antivirus software hates [...]
View post: Krystal Dynamics offers three new FREE plugins for macOS and Windows

Behringer’s recreation of the Roland Juno-60 has finally landed – “supercharged” with eight-voicesRight off the back of January’s NAMM show, Behringer has officially launched the JN-80, its recreation of the Roland Juno-60.
Behringer claims this new launch is faithful to its original inspiration, with a “meticulously engineered” signal path built around genuine DCOs, a 24 dB low-pass VCF based on the original 3109 chip, and classic VCA architecture.

READ MORE: “What’s currently out there isn’t good enough; we can do better”: Why AKG wants to raise the bar for budget microphones

The Roland Juno-60 was first launched in 1982, with production ending 1984. It followed on from the Juno-6, and can be heard on classic ‘80s records, including Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams and across the catalogues of Wham and Enya. It was even well-loved by house music pioneer Larry Heard, Daft Punk, and Liam Howlett of The Prodigy.
What are the key features of the JN-80?
Behringer’s JN-80 is a fully analogue synth, and is “supercharged” with eight-voices rather than the six-voice architecture of the original Juno-60. Each voice is fully polyphonic, with flexible poly, unison, and dual modes available. It has a built-in arpeggiator with an adjustable rate slider and multiple playback modes including up, down, and up/down, and you can also dial in your desired tone with controls for the LFO, DCO, HPF, VCF, VCA, envelopes, and chorus.
While the original Juno allowed users store patches, the JN-80 takes things further by letting you save up to 400 presets, each with a “compare and match” feature that helps you “quickly align your analogue controls with stored settings”, according to Behringer. 200 presets are already on board, however, featuring 100 Premium Sounds courtesy of Ultimate Patches.
Hear how the JN-80 sounds, and find out more in the video below:

The JN-80 is priced at $569. Find out more or buy now at Behringer.

The post Behringer’s recreation of the Roland Juno-60 has finally landed – “supercharged” with eight-voices appeared first on MusicTech.

6 key arguments from Concord and UMG’s $3bn Anthropic lawsuit – and why it’s one of the most significant AI copyright fights yetA closer look at UMG, Concord and ABKCO's second copyright infringement lawsuit against AI giant Anthropic
Source

John Legend shares his go-to chord progressions
John Legend shares some of his favorite chord progressions that he instinctively reaches for when trying out the new sounds inside of Splice INSTRUMENT.

Audiotonix to acquire DPA Microphones, Wisycom, and Austrian Audio, delivering “substantial advantages to all professional customers who demand the best”Audiotonix will be acquiring three popular microphone and wireless audio companies: DPA Microphones, Wisycom, and Austrian Audio.
A press release from the company says the acquisition is now being filed for regulatory approval and should be completed in H1 2026. Audiotonix is a global market leader in the design, engineering and manufacture of professional audio mixing consoles and ancillary products. It is the parent company of Solid State Logic, Sonible, and many more.

READ MORE: Native Instruments CEO updates users: “Business continues as usual at Native Instruments, iZotope, Plugin Alliance and Brainworx”

DPA Microphones is a Danish company with more than six decades of microphone design experience, having created mics for a range of professional markets including live sound, theatre, film, and installation.
Italian company Wisycom provides solutions for RF (radio frequency) challenges across broadcast, live events, corporate and location sound, while Vienna-based Austrian Audio delivers innovative microphones, headphones and audio tools while maintaining a strong connection to the brand’s acoustical heritage.
James Gordon, CEO of Audiotonix, states, “With the development work we have been investing in with Sound Devices, it makes technological sense to add Wisycom to the team. The next logical step is to move closer to the performer with microphones, and DPA as a premium brand is the ultimate choice.
“Austrian Audio, with their decades of microphone and headset design experience, have immense potential and will help complement our existing and future portfolio. We always aim to work with brands that add value for our customers, and the future potential of this trio as part of Audiotonix is not hard to imagine.”
Kalle Hvidt Nielsen, CEO at DPA Microphones, adds:  “DPA Microphones, Wisycom, and Austrian Audio are premium brands known for their strong and visionary product offering, used by many high-end customers who are familiar with all the Audiotonix brands.
“We share many location sound professionals with Sound Devices who rely on best-in-class audio quality and top-notch reliability and so by joining Audiotonix, DPA Microphones, Wisycom, and Austrian Audio get the opportunity to offer more premium solutions to discerning, quality focused customers. The synergy across the brands enhances the group’s capacity to deliver substantial advantages to all professional customers who demand the best. I look forward to more collaboration and moving the state-of-the-art forward in new verticals”.
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We’re deep into a RAM crisis — will music gear prices go up?AI. First, it steals our music. Then it steals our water. Now it’s stealing our RAM.
RAM, or Random Access Memory, found in our laptops, phones and yes, music-making gear, is getting gobbled up by AI data centres. And the companies that produce RAM are seemingly all too happy to not just raise prices, but prioritise these chip-munching server farms, leaving musicians and consumers in the lurch.
How much should producers worry about this? Should we be buying up laptops and memory-intensive gear like samplers and grooveboxes while prices are still manageable?
What is RAM?
Before we get to the doom and gloom, let’s define what RAM is.
RAM acts like a device’s short-term memory. Whatever the machine is currently working on gets loaded into the RAM and used to process tasks in real-time. The faster your RAM, the quicker it can do these processes. And the more RAM a device has, the more jobs it can do simultaneously.
In a sampler, for example, RAM acts as the temporary storage facility. Record a bit of audio, and it stays in the RAM while you edit and process it, before getting shuttled into a storage area like an SSD for saving. Effects processors use RAM as places to store buffers or delay lines, or for caching to keep processing smooth.
Why does AI need RAM?
AI is wolfing up the world’s supply of RAM. What does artificial intelligence need it for anyway?
In much the same way that a laptop requires RAM to do temporary calculations, so too do AI applications. The difference is the number of calculations, which is exceptionally vast. Neural networks and large language models (LLMs) need massive amounts of memory to accomplish this. And that’s where data centres come in.
Data centres eat RAM
One computer isn’t enough for AI. It needs gargantuan server farms to handle the workload. These are data centres.
According to Wired, there are at least 5,400 data centres active in the United States alone; the global number is estimated at 12,000 around the globe. Not all of these are AI-focused, but they increasingly are, with 1,000-server centres becoming ever more common. And, because of environmental issues (over half of data centres’ energy requirements come from fossil fuels, according to Eco-Business), there’s even talk of putting data centres in orbit.
“Have you heard this?” says Girts Ozolins of Erica Synths when asked about his company’s use of RAM. “Elon Musk is actively promoting these data centres in space. That’s an absolutely insane thing.” Ozolins goes on to explain the plan for a data centre in orbit with a four-kilometre-wide solar panel. “And this startup has raised like 34 million dollars. It’s impossible by whatever common sense.”
Lots of companies are betting big on space data centres, such as Nvidia’s Starcloud. Whether these ever take off remains to be seen, but either way, the demand for RAM will remain astronomically high.
No matter whether data centres are up above our heads or earth-bound, one thing is for sure: they need RAM. The Wall Street Journal reports that up to 70 per cent of RAM stock for 2026 has already been allocated to AI.
Laptop and phone prices are definitely going up
Data centres use two kinds of RAM: DRAM (the dynamic version of RAM, the type that we’ve been talking about), and HBM, or high-bandwidth memory, which comes packaged with fancy GPUs, as in Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra chip. DRAM and HBM are made up of silicon wafers.
Three companies control 93 per cent of the RAM market: Micron in the United States, South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung. They’re making immense profits, and have been increasing prices as they desire. With demand outstripping supply by around 10 per cent, according to TrendForce, a company that tracks markets for computer components, manufacturers have no choice but to pay up, with some estimates raising current prices by 50 per cent compared to a few months ago.
And, as demand from data centres increases for chips, supply is being directed more and more in their direction and away from the consumer sector, which includes the high-tech devices that music producers need, such as laptops and grooveboxes.
“I keep telling everybody that if you want a device, you buy it now,” said Avril Wu of TrendForce in an article by NPR. “I myself bought an iPhone 17 already.”
Both Micron and SK Hynix are working on bringing new chip fabbing factories online, but they won’t be ready until 2027 or 2028. That means the RAM shortage will likely continue for the foreseeable future.
So what about music gear?
We’ve gotten used to inexpensive memory for our devices. It’s one thing that helps reduce prices and democratise music-making equipment. However, the days of cheap memory appear to be over. Does this mean that prices on gear will go up in response?
The Verge predicts that the shortage could cause overall costs to go up across a broad swathe of consumer gear, including computers, phones (with fewer sales predicted for this year as an overall result), and game consoles.
Will this also affect electronic musical instruments? Possibly, but it mostly depends on the type of instrument or effect it is, the amount of processing required, and other similar factors.
According to Bloomberg, computer company Lenovo is currently stockpiling RAM as part of an attempt to “strike a balance between price and availability.” Larger musical instrument companies that rely heavily on chips may also be doing this, although it requires a large market presence to outbid giant consumer electronics manufacturers.
Another strategy to prevent prices from spiking is to cut costs in other areas. “You may use a cheaper battery, maybe a smaller capacity battery,” Jeff Janukowicz, research VP at International Data Center, a research firm for the technology industry, suggested to The Verge. “Display [screens] might be an area where you might look to do some cost reductions.” While this would not be ideal, memory-heavy instruments like those in the Akai MPC line could be candidates for this kind of cost-cutting. (Akai Professional declined to comment on the RAM shortage.)
Some synthesizers, including Korg’s digital lineup that includes the multi/poly, use Raspberry Pi devices to handle DSP. Bad news: Raspberry Pi has raised prices on its Pi 4 and 5 modules. Korg’s Multi/poly synth uses the Compute Module 4, which contains a Pi 4 module inside. Some of the company’s other synths, like the Wavestate, employ the Compute Module 3, which has already reached the end of its manufacturing lifetime — an issue that could pose other problems going forward.
Roland offers a number of high-tech products with sampling features, such as the SP-404MK2 and Fantom line of workstations. When asked how the RAM crisis may be affecting things, the company tells MusicTech: “RAM chip supply is a common global issue all the manufacturing industries are facing, like US tariffs, and we have been working in flexible and agile ways to find optimised solutions.” What those ways are, the company did not elaborate on.
Ozolins doesn’t see it as affecting Erica Synths, however: “Our RAM chips, they are really on the small side, because we do not need such processing power like a data centre. So, yeah, no effects at the moment.”
No need to worry… yet
So, should you start stockpiling digital gear in anticipation of rising prices? For the immediate future, it’s probably not necessary. Music producers are feeling the economic pinch now for various reasons, and companies know this. With rising inflation, stagnating wages, and tariffs in the United States, no one is really in a position to bear the brunt of another price hike.
Hopefully, manufacturers will find a way to ride the RAM crisis out without significant price rises. Or perhaps the industry is small enough to weather the storm without it causing much upset. That is, if the problem resolves itself as predicted.
If the crisis drags on, however, and RAM manufacturers continue to prioritise data centres, the situation could change within a year or two.
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Fancy winning a Minimoog Voyager XL signed by Thomas Dolby? Here’s how to enterThe Bob Moog Foundation has announced a fundraising raffle for a Minimoog Voyager XL, which has been signed by the legendary musician and tech innovator Thomas Dolby.
The Minimoog Voyager XL, serial number 0745, is in excellent physical and technical condition, and is valued at $7,500. All you need to do is buy a ticket for your chance to win, and all proceeds will benefit the three core projects of the Bob Moog Foundation: Dr. Bob’s SoundSchool, the Bob Moog Foundation Archives, and the Moogseum.

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The Minimoog Voyager XL was released in 2010 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Minimoog Model D. It builds on the original Voyager, released in 2002, with an expanded 61-note keyboard, ribbon controller, additional LFO modulation bus, and an extensive front-panel analogue patch bay. Like the original Minimoog Model D from 1971, it features three wide-range voltage controlled oscillators, one noise source, two resonant filters, an external audio input, two ADSR envelopes and an LFO.
Thomas Dolby is an English musician, record producer, composer, and professor. He was gifted a Voyager XL at Moogfest 2012, when he was awarded the Moog Innovation Award. Early in his career he was a session musician, and played a key role in Foreigner’s 1981 album 4, contributing signature synthesiser sounds, famously heard on Waiting for a Girl Like You and Urgent.
As well as releasing solo music, he’s also worked with Def Leppard, George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Thompson Twins, and more. In the 1990s, Dolby founded Beatnik, a Silicon Valley software company whose technology was used to play internet audio and later ringtones.
The raffle is open now internationally and ends at 11:59 pm (ET) on 23 February 2026. Virtual tickets are $25 each, five for $100, 12 for $200, and 35 for $500. You can get your tickets now.

“The Bob Moog Foundation is proud to be offering the Minimoog Voyager XL, the most expansive version of the last synthesiser that Bob Moog designed,” says Michelle Moog-Koussa, Executive Director of the Bob Moog Foundation. “We are honoured to celebrate Thomas Dolby’s deep legacy of creativity and innovation through his participation with this raffle.”
Dolby adds, “The essence of the Voyager XL is that it’s the best of all worlds. It’s got the modular capability, ribbon bend controller, MIDI, and presets created by some of the foremost synthesists of our time. It’s everything that we liked about the original Minimoog in a modern package.”
Enter the raffle now and find out more via the Bob Moog Foundation.
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