KIT Plugins release BB Chamber D In their latest collaboration with Blackbird Studios, KIT Plugins have captured the sound of the reverb chamber housed in the iconic facility's Studio D.

Gemini sent $10M in Bitcoin to Trump PAC after joint motion with CFTCThe Bitcoin donation can be used to support Donald Trump as a New York court considers whether to reverse a $5 million settlement between the CFTC and Gemini.

Spektralisk Obsydian: Raw Expressions for GenerateObsydian: Raw Expressions is 50 presets for Newfangled Audio Generate built around exposed tone and direct performance response. The palette moves from acoustic-like instrument emulations and tactile keys to synthetic leads, basses, experimental gestures, and complex aural structures. Delay, reverb, chorus, and other spatial processing stay restrained, allowing the raw oscillator character and expressive modulation to remain present. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_doJOW1P6Q Each preset is designed to respond through MPE and conventional performance controls. Pressure, slide, velocity, modulation, and expression turn the sounds into material that can be shaped in real time rather than static patches that only occupy a mix. Raw Expressions works independently and also completes the first three-part Obsydian arc alongside Dark Energy and Motion Arps. What's Included: 50 presets for Newfangled Audio Generate. Acoustic-like emulations, keys, leads, basses, experimental gestures, and complex structures. MPE-responsive performance design. Restrained spatial processing for a close, exposed sound. Requirements Newfangled Audio Generate 1.7.4 or later. An MPE controller is recommended but not required. Read More

IF THESE WALLS COULD ROCK: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE SUNSET MARQUIS HOTELI’ve been conducting interviews with musicians, authors, and filmmakers at the famed Sunset Marquis Hotel since the early seventies. Author Deepak Chopra and Oscar-winning documentarian D.A. Pennebaker were two of my favorite encounters.

A media announcement describes the documentary.

“For more than 60 years, there has been one place in LA that has served as the home-away-from-home for the biggest names in rock and roll. Tucked just off the Sunset Strip, the Sunset Marquis Hotel became more than a place to stay while on tour. It became a creative sanctuary where songs were written, debauchery was shared, and music history unfolded behind closed doors.

“Now, for the first time, that story is being told on screen.

Directed by Tyler Measom (Murder Among Mormons, An Honest Liar ) and Craig A. Williams, If These Walls Could Rockfeatures rare archival footage, vivid animation and candid interviews, the film tells the story of rock n’ roll through the lens of this legendary hotel as shared by the artists who call it home - including Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Billy Bob Thornton, Slash, Dave Grohl, Cyndi Lauper, Morrissey, Sheryl Crow, Roger Daltrey, Joe Elliot, Nancy Wilson, Steve Van Zandt and many more.

“But beneath the iconic guest list and tales of rock misadventure lies a deeply personal story: the remarkable partnership between founder George Rosenthal and his son Mark, who transformed a modest West Hollywood “motel” into one of the most iconic destinations in music history.

“Within five minutes of walking in the Marquis, you may hear a rock and roll story that sounds completely made up, but come to learn is true,” say directors Measom and Williams. “Still beyond the many amazing musical stories, the father-and-son tale at the heart of the hotel is what truly inspired us to create this film.”

The film opens August 14 at the Landmark Sunset theatre in Los Angeles, accompanied by special post-screening Q&A events with the filmmakers and guests from the film, while launching simultaneously on Apple TV and Amazon.

If These Walls Could Rock was produced by longtime MTV executives Rick Krim, Robert Friedman, and Mike Powers (Bungalow Media+Entertainment) along with Mark Rosenthal, David Thurston, and Alexis Thurston.

(Harvey Kubernik’s Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) was published in 2026 by BearManor Media).The post IF THESE WALLS COULD ROCK: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE SUNSET MARQUIS HOTEL first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

SRM Sounds introduce Max Richter Strings The latest sample library to be created at Max Richter’s Studio Richter Mahr facility captures the string sound at the heart of the composer’s music.

AMD takes on Nvidia with its Helios AI rack-scale systemAMD is challenging its chipmaker rival with a new rack-scale system that will start shipping to customers later this year.

A Train Departure Board For The HomeTrains are a great way to get around. You just have to make sure you’re across the schedule if you intend to get where you’re going in a timely manner. Train departure boards exist for that very purpose. As a train fan, [Jon] always wanted such a thing, so decided to build one for himself. 
The build started, as so many do, with a Raspberry Pi 4, with [Jon] deciding on the 1GB model. Hooked up to either an Adafruit RGB Matrix Bonnet, or an Electrodragon 3-port RGB Matrix board, it’s then possible to get the Pi running three to four HUB75E LED matrixes. Each matrix consists of 128 x 64 pixels, so stacking up a bunch of them can make a nicely-sized departure board that’s easily readable. [Jon] was sure to hook up a nice, juicy 5-amp 5-volt power supply to ensure there wouldn’t be any surprise brownouts under normal usage conditions. From there, it’s simply a matter of having the Pi query the Rail Data Marketplace in order to get the relevant schedule data to display on the board.
If you want to get information on your local rail services at a glance, or just want to impress your fellow foamers at your next railfan gathering, a build like this is a great way to go. We’ve seen similar builds before, too. Video after the break.

Music publishers file amended lyrics lawsuit against Anthropic – just as AI firm’s separate $1.5B settlement with authors wins court approvalThe latest filing draws heavily on Anthropic's internal records, obtained through discovery, to support claims the publishers first brought in October 2023.
Source

Friendgineer Labs releases Chance, a FREE random multi-FX plugin
Friendgineer Labs has released Chance, a free random multi-FX plugin for macOS and Windows. Chance is another 2026 KVR Developer Challenge entry I liked this year. I will take a closer look at a few more KVRDC plugins separately, but this is one of my favorites because I simply love plugins that can give you [...]
View post: Friendgineer Labs releases Chance, a FREE random multi-FX plugin

Westwood Instruments relaunches FREE Roots instruments as plugins
Westwood Instruments has relaunched Roots, its series of free virtual instruments, in the developer’s own plugin format. We have covered the Roots series several times on BPB while the instruments were available for Kontakt Player, including Untold Strings and Dust Piano. My favorite one was Dust Piano, but overall these are very cool instruments with [...]
View post: Westwood Instruments relaunches FREE Roots instruments as plugins

AI artists are already making millions from Spotify and YouTube – and they’re only getting biggerAI-generated music isn’t just flooding streaming services anymore – it’s generating some serious money.
Just a day after Deezer revealed that AI tracks now account for more than 50 percent of all new daily uploads on its platform, a new study from Kapwing suggests the biggest AI music acts have already built audiences worth millions in streaming revenue.

READ MORE: The best new music plugins this week, free and paid

Analysing data from Songstats and the AiMCharts database, Kapwing estimates that the 10 biggest AI artists have collectively generated around $6.1 million from more than 2.3 billion Spotify streams and YouTube views.
Spotify accounted for an estimated $2.38 million from roughly 595 million streams, while YouTube made up the lion’s share of the total, generating an estimated $3.7 million from 1.75 billion views.
Perhaps the most striking takeaway is that AI music has already outgrown its status as a novelty. According to the report, today’s biggest AI acts have amassed audiences in the tens of millions, landed hundreds of chart entries and secured spots on playlists followed by millions of listeners.
On Spotify, the highest-earning AI music artist is “1950s-style” vocalist Enlly Blue, whose estimated 95.2 million streams translate to roughly $380,800 in revenue.
Over on YouTube, Cherry 葵 Nightcore sits comfortably at the top, having generated an estimated $2 million from 941 million views.
Elsewhere, AI synth rock project Masters of Prophecy boasts the largest following across all major platforms at 36.1 million followers, while comedian King Willonius – whose AI-generated diss track BBL Drizzy went viral in 2024 – has amassed 500 chart entries across all platforms, the highest of any AI music act included in the study.
Producer Don Bnnr also emerged as one of AI music’s biggest success stories, with tracks appearing on 1,852 playlists with a combined follower count of 46.7 million listeners.
Taken together, the figures suggest AI music has already crossed a point of no return. The question is no longer whether AI music can attract listeners – it demonstrably can. The bigger challenge now is ensuring that human artists aren’t left competing on an increasingly uneven playing field.
The industry’s response reflects that shift. Rather than trying to stop AI music outright, streaming platforms and rights holders are increasingly accepting that the technology is here to stay, shifting their focus instead towards issues like transparency, attribution and monetisation.
In recent months alone, Deezer has expanded its AI music detection tools as uploads continue to surge, while industry bodies including the IFPI, RIAA and the Human Artistry Campaign have proposed a voluntary labelling system designed to distinguish fully AI-generated recordings from those merely assisted by AI. Meanwhile, Tidal has introduced AI music tagging while preventing fully AI-generated tracks from earning royalties on the platform.
Whether those measures will be enough to slow the AI music train remains to be seen.
The post AI artists are already making millions from Spotify and YouTube – and they’re only getting bigger appeared first on MusicTech.

Expressive E Noisy 2.6 arrives Noisy 2.6 introduces a selection of new synthesis engines and resonators, and now spans sampled acoustic instruments, modelled analogue, FM, harmonic and wavetable techniques. 

Forget the desk: this one-handed MIDI controller lets you make music anywhereThe best musical ideas rarely strike when you’re sitting in front of your studio setup. Capturing them before they disappear, however, is another story altogether.
Enter MIDIGo, a handheld MIDI controller that aims to make music production genuinely portable.
Developed by New York-based product designer Phillip Höltgen, MIDIGo is built for making music on the move. Its ergonomic design fits comfortably in one hand, allowing producers to trigger sounds, tweak effects and record ideas without needing to stop and set up at a desk.

READ MORE: This clever little touch board can turn fruit, spoons and even pencil drawings into MIDI controllers

The device features eight programmable buttons that can trigger instruments, samples or other sounds, with “octave mode” expanding the interface to as many as 64 playable sounds. Four additional buttons, meanwhile, handle recording, playback, undo and octave selection.
Flip the controller over, and you’ll find assignable potentiometers built into the underside, letting you tweak effects like delay or volume without changing your grip. This configuration also allows users to adjust sounds with their fingertips while simultaneously adjusting parameters.
Credit: Phillip Höltgen
Bluetooth connectivity ties everything together, allowing MIDIGo to pair with a smartphone for MIDI mapping, audio management and controller customisation so you don’t need to be tied to a desk to get ideas down.
Höltgen says the goal was to rethink what portability actually means for music production: “Portability should mean more than carrying a device from one table to another. I wanted to rethink the controller into an instrument that could be held, played, and used to capture an idea wherever it occurs.”
Notably, MIDIGo also puts strong emphasis on repairability. Unlike most devices in the market, the controller can be completely disassembled using a standard screwdriver, allowing individual components to be repaired or replaced instead of throwing out the entire unit.
The concept has already picked up a 2025 Red Dot Award: Design Concept in the category Hobby, Leisure and Games through the Red Dot: Next Gen Award program. It was also named a 2025 European Product Design Award winner in the Consumer Electronics / Audio Category.

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Learn more at Philip Höltgen’s website.
The post Forget the desk: this one-handed MIDI controller lets you make music anywhere appeared first on MusicTech.

This producer reckons Skrillex could make music using a $40 keyboard from Toys R UsYou can give Skrillex a room full of million-dollar studio gear – or a bargain-bin keyboard – and producer Rogét Chahayed reckons the result will be just as impressive.
The Grammy-nominated producer Rogét Chahayed has heaped praise on the electronic music heavyweight, saying Skrillex’s greatest talent isn’t his equipment or plugins, but his uncanny ability to turn almost any sound into something musical.
The pair first linked up on the song Hydrate from Skrillex’s 2023 album Quest For Fire, alongside PEEKABOO, Flowdan and BEAM. They later reunited for Baby Royal, a blistering track from Skrillex’s 2025 album Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!!.

READ MORE: Why Kaleidoscope Orchestra’s Steve Pycroft studied Skrillex to make the orchestra’s first original album

Speaking to MusicRadar, Chahayed says Skrillex approaches the studio in a way few producers do.
“He’s one of the most enormous talents in the world and one of the only people who treats the computer like an instrument. You’ll graze a key by accident and he’ll say, ‘What was that?’ very much in the same way that Dre is very sensitive to sounds.”
“I could hit this table and he’ll make a crazy snare out of it, so he’ll take whatever’s available and make it work,” says Chahayed. “Sometimes we’ll be in a room with multi-million dollar speakers and he’ll be sitting on the floor listening to a song on the worst quality headphones with his laptop doing his thing. To me, that’s very grounding and cool.”
One session in particular drove the point home. Chahayed recalls turning up to Skrillex’s studio with little more than a beat-up Korg KROSS keyboard.
“There was a day when I went to one of his studios but was feeling kind of lazy and didn’t want to bring any crazy equipment. All I brought was a shitty quality Korg KROSS keyboard and a lot of those sounds are not good.”
“They’re very basic and in-your-face, but there was something about it that I thought could work and I remember making 10 different beats with him and every sound was hitting because Skrillex is really good at taking raw, fake sounds and making them pop out and cut through.”
According to Chahayed, the experience reinforced a lesson that plenty of producers could probably stand to learn – that great production starts with your ears, not your equipment.
“He really showed me that it’s not about what you have; it’s how you use it – I get the feeling I could go to Toys R Us, buy a $40 keyboard and he’ll just make something out of it. Skrillex really is proof that you don’t need anything but a good ear.”
The producer also praises Skrillex for his humility, noting that “there’s no ego there. Every time we work together it’s just this insane exploration of sounds, and he likes to keep it interesting and fun.”
“I’ve had some of my best days making music with him, and he’s always been a great collaborator and friend,” says Chahayed. “I’m hoping to get back in the studio with him soon!”
The post This producer reckons Skrillex could make music using a $40 keyboard from Toys R Us appeared first on MusicTech.

Morphor ECHON 6 review: A new dawn for analogue synthesis?€2,295, morphor.io
To best understand the ECHON 6, you really need to understand Belgium-based developer Morphor. And to best understand Morphor, you really need to understand the sonic wonderland that is bucket brigade delay (BBD). And the best way to understand bucket brigade delay is through the simple (and fun) fact that the series of capacitors in these venerable little analogue circuits ostensibly get their name from old-fashioned firefighting methods, where firefighters would pass buckets of water down a line. If you imagine doing such a thing with any urgency, you might say water would inevitably be ‘slopped around’— or, in electronic terms, be subject to a degree of filtering, both on the way in and way out, and aliasing.

READ MORE: UDO’s DMNO is ingenious in ways that I have not seen before

It’s this degree of imperfect ‘sloppiness’ that gives BBDs their unmistakable character. Warm, saturated, noisy, and a tad unstable; it’s everything I love about analogue circuitry. BBDs constitute the heart of a litany of celebrated delay units, from the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man to the highly sought-after Moog MF-104. And it’s what that team at Morphor first congregated around, debuting with the Analogue Plectrum (AP-1) ‘string synthesis’ Eurorack module in 2022. The AP-1 was based on the Karplus-Strong principle, which is essentially the combination of incredibly fast, high-feedback delay lines and filtering to create resonances akin to acoustic sounds.
Since releasing the AP-1, Morphor has more or less devoted itself to harnessing the power of the BBD, and it is precisely this focus that lies at the heart of the ECHON 6. Says Morphor: “ECHON 6 stands as the culmination of that journey, our legacy of BBD research, hands-on analogue craft, and Eurorack design distilled into a fully-fledged, standalone musical instrument.”
It’s the company’s first non-Eurorack design and indeed, declares Morphor, the world’s first polyphonic synth based around analogue BBD resonators. The ECHON 6 has six voices with a discrete BBD delay-line resonator per voice and an all-analogue signal path. It has a phenomenally flexible modulation matrix, a generous raft of inputs/outputs and capacious storage for both presets and ‘voice groups’; that is, a set of parameters particular to specific groups voices within a patch which can— you guessed it— be layered up any which way to be played multitimbrally, or indeed played as separate instruments via different MIDI channels.
Image: Press
The ECHON 6 is simply beautiful. Slim, sleek and modern with a completely flat front panel, it has a similar feel on the table to something like the Torso S-4 or the Elektron Octatrack. It’s weighty, too, encased in sturdy matte-black aluminium and with impeccable build quality. There’s no screen to speak of on the panel (“no display, no distractions,” says the developer), instead a few rows of multipurpose buttons are used to navigate various settings and functions.
Beyond this it’s a near-total hands-on affair, with all sonic controls accessible at surface level. It comes with a pair of rack ears for mounting into the 19-inch format and can also be VESA mounted. Its metallic knobs are firm and smooth, its buttons are tactile and accessible and visually it guides the eye to all the right places. A synth this ergonomic and intuitive feels less like a debut and more like the culmination of decades of standalone electronic instrument design.
The aforementioned I/O consists of a discrete (stereo) output for each individual voice as well as a stereo pair of global outputs and a headphones output, which is a marvellous touch. There’s an input for external audio, USB-C MIDI, and DIN MIDI ports.
Sonically speaking, if you’re used to the architecture of conventional subtractive synths, the workflow of the ECHON 6 might take some getting used to. But once you’re au fait, the whole thing actually becomes incredibly instinctive. It operates across three core sections: there’s the Exciter section, the BBD Resonator section and a central section with controls for modulation and general global navigation.
Image: Press
It goes without saying that a delay effect needs some kind of source audio to, er, affect. Which is to say, a BBD resonator needs something to excite it. The Exciter section is responsible for exactly that, generating the initial sonic stimulus for the resonator section to chew on. At its most basic level this can take one of a few forms. It can be a simple analogue waveform from a traditional VCO, which moves through sine, triangle, sawtooth and square wave shapes (courtesy of the section’s top-leftmost knob). It can be pure white noise, or it can process that noise with a variable-rate sample and hold circuit to create more broken, crackling noise types (adjustable via a knob on the top right). And between these two is a knob to blend between the noise and the simple waveforms.
Noise, I find, is generally made for more flute-like ‘blown’ responses, while a saw wave, for instance, creates more brassy sounds. A sharp, short envelope based on a square wave is brilliant for bright percussion, while an equally short sine or triangle wave forms a good basis for marimba-like tones. Each one is as harmonically rich as I could ever desire!
Beyond these internal sound sources, there’s the aforementioned capacity for external audio to be used as the Exciter signal. This is not so much a bonus feature as an absolute game-changer; opening up new sonic worlds, since it means that more or less anything can be ‘played’ as a resonant polyphonic instrument. I have particular fun sending an Audio.Computer Beat Friend analogue drum machine into the ECHON 6, melodically ‘playing’ its rhythms with a distinctly dirty, piano-like chordal resonance. It can act as a type of vocoder, a guitar effect; you name it.
Beyond these, the lion’s share of the Exciter section is allocated to an envelope, which presents a loopable ADSR design with the addition of a Delay stage. This engages a delay time before the Attack stage. This is particularly handy when playing in a multitimbral patch as it means voices can swell in at different times when holding a single chord, almost like sections of an orchestra.
On the other side of the panel is the BBD resonator section. This is where the feedback network of delay lines lives, the sonic essence of the ECHON 6. At the top of the section are two filters. First is a 12dB-per-octave input filter, which manages the frequency content of the incoming excitation signal. Then there’s the gentler 6dB-per-octave feedback filter, which almost behaves like a conventional low-pass filter. That said, this filter is placed within the feedback loop and not after it, so adjusting it affects the tone while also producing sweeping harmonic shifts as the upper harmonics within the sound lose energy. There’s also a neighbouring Invert button for flipping the polarity of the signal within the feedback loop, altering its sonic character instantaneously.
Image: Press
Then, right in the centre of the BBD section is the Feedback knob. This turns things from order to chaos extremely quickly, and when used in conjunction with the Feedback Filter knob creates visceral, infinite resonances, or short, sharp, pinging responses. This at times means things get out of hand too suddenly for my liking, and on occasion I also find myself wishing for a third filter at the end of the signal chain for a little more control over the synth’s overall tone. This isn’t so much a criticism as a recommendation: an external compressor and filter will get along famously with the ECHON 6! At the bottom of the section is a Dry/Wet knob for blending the Exciter and Resonator sections’ outputs, and a Note Offset to ostensibly manage the tuning relationship between the two by transposing incoming MIDI messages.
The central section of the ECHON 6 presents a detailed modulation section. Modulation and movement is one of the core tenets of this synth, and its 9-by-32 modulation matrix pulls no punches. More than simple oscillations, here modulation means that the ECHON 6 can do things like cycle through different types of harmonic emphasis and more or less change its character completely. Beyond the highly flexible polyphonic Quad LFO, there’s capacity to use the envelope, modulation wheel, velocity, aftertouch or key follower as modulation sources. Programming these is a cinch; more or less all the ECHON 6’s controls have a light-up button next to them to engage modulation of that parameter—I would like to have seen these visually display the movement of their respective parameters, but they are useful all the same.
Whether evoking plucked, bowed or struck responses, the great thing about the ECHON 6’s brand of synthesis is that it doesn’t seek to imitate the sorts of responses one associates with physical surfaces. Instead, it naturally behaves in a similar way. Resonance is resonance, you might say. The woody attack, the harmonic ringing or the metallic reverberation you might hear in this analogue physical modelling synth is no simulation: it’s physics.
There is only really one market competitor I can think of to the ECHON 6, which is the Erica Synths Steampipe. That synth operates with a convergent design broadly consisting of an excitation section and a resonating section, and retails at just over half of the price. But in itself the ECHON 6 is excellently made, its sonic character is as rich and variable as Morphor promised us, and its pure, analogue soul will doubtless stand the test of time.
Image: Press
Key features

6-voice analogue physical modelling synth
BBD Feedback system with full analogue audio path
6-part multi-timbral architecture
6 analogue VCO exciters with analogue BBD resonators
Quad LFO + Random generators per voice (24 in total)
Extensive modulation matrix (9 sources × 32 destination parameters)
216 possible presets
External audio input
Left/right stereo outputs
6 per-voice stereo outputs
MIDI in, out and thru sockets, and MIDI over USB-C
Preset management locally or via online configurator

The post Morphor ECHON 6 review: A new dawn for analogue synthesis? appeared first on MusicTech.