Udio is suing Sony again…Sony Music Entertainment is suing Udio…again. The two parties have been involved in copyright infringement litigation since June 2024, and this recent development surrounds 30,117 recordings that Sony attempted to include in the first lawsuit. A judge struck down that motion on June 29, so now Sony has filed a second lawsuit specifically focusing on those initially rejected recordings.
The first lawsuit was part of a concerted effort between Sony, several of its subsidiaries, and the other two major record labels: Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. The Recording Industry Association of America coordinated this comprehensive effort from the music industry. However, the other two major labels have since settled their litigation and struck licensing deals with Udio.

READ MORE: Hackers reveal Suno scraped music data from YouTube, Deezer, Genius, and more

This second lawsuit will fall specifically on Sony. When the judge dismissed the order to add the 30,117 recordings, the ruling stated that “Plaintiffs have the right to seek to stop infringement of, and recover damages for, all copyrighted works” and that “there is no requirement that it be done in [that] lawsuit.” Sony is citing the latter quote as the basis for the second suit.
Sony selected the 30,117 recordings after discovery on the first suit let it use audio fingerprinting software on Udio’s training data. Apparently that number reflects “only a small portion” of what Udio used without permission. Some of the works come from major artists such as Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Johnny Cash, and Harry Styles.
“Udio’s belated embrace of licensing only underscores the unlawfulness of its decision to copy Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings, without a license, in the first place,” reads Sony’s complaint.
Sony remains the only major label to not have a deal with Udio. Other major companies who have entered into licensing agreements include Merlin, Kobalt, Believe and the National Music Publishers’ Association.
Read Sony’s full complaint in the new lawsuit.
The post Udio is suing Sony again… appeared first on MusicTech.

Addictive Drums 2 vs EZdrummer 3 vs Superior Drummer 3: Which drum plugin is best?If you’re looking for more out of your MIDI drum kits, there are a handful of excellent plugins that offer more realistic expression, sounds and grooves. XLN Audio and Toontrack’s software, for example, go far beyond a drum machine’s capabilities, and are trusted by professional producers and mix engineers for their authentic sounds. But they’re not exactly cheap.

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

XLN’s Addictive Drums 2 and Toontrack’s EZdrummer 3 and Superior Drummer 3 are all immensely capable drum plugins. The cheapest also starts at around £145 and, with all the drum sounds you can purchase, can get expensive very quickly.
All three drum plugins are regularly maintained, and are arguably the best three out there. But which one should you invest in? I’ve tested all three of them against each other — there’s not a clear winner, but one software has the edge.

Which should you buy — EZdrummer 3, Addictive Drums 2, or Superior Drummer 3?
After trying all three, my personal choice is XLN’s Addictive Drums 2 because of the immediacy of its sound-shaping workflow. While Superior Drummer offers unique professional features, especially in terms of electronic drum kit MIDI mapping and achieving the most realistic drum sound possible, these features aren’t required by the average producer.
When you’re creating music predominantly within a DAW, having a plugin that is fun to use makes the process more inspiring, and this is where Addictive Drums has a slight edge over Superior Drummer due to the immediacy of its workflow.
Arguably, the redundant choice of the three is EZdrummer, because AD2 offers so much more for the same price.
Below, you can read the breakdown of how I reached that verdict.
Addictive Drums 2. Image: Press
Which Drum plugin is the most versatile — Addictive Drums, EZdrummer, or Superior Drummer?
Drum plugins are used in different ways. While some producers want to create the most authentic replication of acoustic drums possible, others are looking to design unique sounds.
Addictive Drums (AD) and Superior Drummer (SD) have the most similarities in this area, with high-detail velocity-sensitive multisampling and a wide range of kits that can be assembled piece-by-piece to build your own customised sound. The primary difference between the two is that, while they perform many of the same basic functions, Superior Drummer is almost like a DAW in itself, whereas Addictive Drums is more of an extension of your DAW.
Superior Drummer offers a far deeper level of articulation control, with multiple articulation layers per drum and even positional sensing, which can be accessed from programmed or real-time triggered MIDI data. Instead of being limited to stereo overhead pairs, SD has specific sample libraries for room mics, additional bleed, and surround that provide over 11 room mics and per-channel bleed controls for recreating each aspect of a studio drum performance.
EZdrummer 3. Image: Press
Meanwhile, the scaled-down EZdrummer doesn’t have the per-channel sound shaping as its more elaborate sibling, SD. However, it does still offer impressive arrangement tools, with its integrated grid editor, Song Creator, and Bandmate Engine, which allow you to generate arrangements from imported audio or MIDI files. In addition, EZdrummer has many of SD’s advanced e-drum mapping features, such as manufacturer presets, positional sensing and hi-hat control, which is exciting if you plan on using it with e-drums.
Addictive Drums offers a huge selection of MIDI grooves with the ADpaks, plus tools to customise each MIDI loop within the Beats page — but Superior Drummer has a far more comprehensive sequencer. This gives you precise control over editing the timing and velocity of individual notes, as well as block-based multitrack arrangement with quantise and humanise functions. What’s more, there are convenient arrangement tools for creating tempo changes and a Song Creator feature that suggests compatible MIDI loops and structures to build cohesive drum parts.
When it comes to trigger integration, both AD and SD offer a range of preset mappings for popular e-drum brands. However, SD has local and global mapping settings. Not only is there a range of factory mappings, there are also specialist features like positional sensing for harnessing Roland’s multizonal trigger pads, as well as cymbal choking support for e-drum kits that send aftertouch MIDI data. What’s more, SD also offers more advanced mapping customization, with velocity curves to match the response to your playing style, and hi-hat calibration to ensure realistic open and closed transitions.
Winner
When it comes to versatility, Superior Drummer is the clear winner, with its detailed customization features in almost every area. While its baby brother, EZdrummer, offers a simple platform for accessing acoustic drum sounds, and Addictive Drums provides some excellent sound shaping tools, Superior Drummer is the most advanced drumming platform overall.
Superior Drummer 3. Image: Press
Which drum plugin is the easiest to use?
Naturally, as EZdrummer is the scaled-down version of Superior Drummer, you’d expect it to be the best option for beginners or those seeking a fluid workflow. However, it’s the Addictive Drums interface that is far more inviting, and it allows even an uninitiated user to dive straight into sculpting each piece of the kit. For starters, the AD interface doesn’t follow a traditional drum kit layout the way that the Toontrack drum plugins do, and the preset and kit piece browsers are intelligent workflow appendages that let you find sounds quickly and easily.
When you swap out a kick drum in EZdrummer for a larger size, for instance, nothing changes visually, whereas the AD interface gives each kit a visual identity that you develop a relationship with, as we all have with iconic kits like the green Ludwig Vistalite kit from the 1970s. While this may have little appeal to engineers who’ve been replacing drums since the nu-metal era, it certainly endears the AD plugin to new users in a way that makes it fun and inspiring to use. In contrast, Superior Drummer and even EZdrummer feel cold and clinical in comparison. While there’s no questioning how good they sound, making music is also about ideas and using tools that allow fluidity.
Addictive Drums 2 kit. Image: Press
Another key workflow aspect is the implementation of the mixer and effects. Both EZdrummer and SD have dedicated mixer tabs, but EZ is extremely limited with only mic bleed and tape saturation, which are global effects that affect the entire kit. Although SD excels in this area with access to plenty of effects per-channel from the mixer, there isn’t a definitive drum shaping workflow.
This is where AD leaves the Toontrack plugins dead in the water. For starters, the mixer is ever-present, situated below the Kit, Edit, and FX tabs, so you always have an overview of your levels and routing. The AD Edit tab lets you shape each individual kit piece with pitch and volume envelopes, and a tight selection of insert effects designed specifically for drum shaping.
Winner
While there’s no denying the great sound and level of expression you get from EZ and Superior Drummer, they just aren’t as fun or intuitive to use as Addictive Drums. SD has more advanced features in many areas, but many producers may never have recorded drums or connected a set of e-drums. The realism debate aside, AD provides a more cohesive interface for creating drum sounds, regardless of your prior experience level.
Superior Drummer 3 mixer. Image: Press
Which drum plugin has the best sound quality?
When I focus on the sound of a drum plugin, I look at two approaches to DAW-based drum production: Either aiming to program and engineer the most realistic-sounding acoustic drums ever, or simply use a creative tool to build unique and exciting drum sounds for your next production.
As far as realism goes, there is no question that the Toontrack plugins, especially Superior Drummer, offer a deeper set of features for using articulations, MIDI editing, and even following the groove of an existing audio or MIDI file, which is useful for locking your drums and bass guitar. Also, SD uses uncompressed audio samples, with a massive 230GB library that offers specially recorded bleed and surround sample packs. This delivers unparalleled realism when combined with the over 25 velocity layers per articulation.
AD is far more streamlined in comparison, making use of XLN Audio’s proprietary audio compression format, which keeps the file size to under 3 GB per kit for the most part, and uses far less system resources as a result. While AD’s philosophy leans toward round robin sampling for variation, SD combines this with additional velocity layers for an uncompromising level of detail. In simple terms, AD is a more straightforward creative tool that quickly delivers mix-ready results, whereas SD takes the more purist approach, delving into every subtle aspect of drum recording to provide the most customisable and realistic drum production tool.
Winner
Addictive Drums is an incredibly realistic drum plugin, but it just doesn’t simulate almost every aspect of drum performance and recording the way that Superior Drummer does. SD simply offers more depth, but requires more knowledge and input from the user.
EZdrummer 3 grooves. Image: Press
Which drum plugin has the best preset library?
Presets are absolutely essential in drum plugins. You want to be able to load up something quickly that suits the genre of music you’re working in, customise the kit sounds tonally, and adjust the ambience to fit your mix.
EZdrummer, Superior Drummer and Addictive Drums can all do this, and all three can also load a range of MIDI expansion packs with beats and drum riffs across a wide range of music styles.
When it comes to kits, EZdrummer has a selection of over 70 EZX Sound Expansion packs you can buy, which are all compatible with Superior Drummer. SD also has its own line of around 30 SDX Sound Expansions, ranging from electronic drum sample kits to kit packs designed by top producers like Tony Visconti and Sylvia Massy. The initial SD core library consists of seven kits recorded at Galaxy Studios by George Massenburg, while the EZdrummer one is the same size and was created by Michael Ilbert at Hansa Studios.
XLN Audio takes a slightly different approach to expanding the library, allowing you to choose each kit pack included with your initial purchase, which is usually three different kits. Although there are only 24 ADpaks to choose from, these cover a wide range of modern and classic music styles. For the most part, ADpaks are more affordable than the SDX Sound Expansions, and you can add individual kit pieces to take your library in a particular direction and expand when you need to.
While both XLN Audio and Toontrack use their own proprietary audio compression algorithms, the Addictive Drums ADpaks take up far less storage space, averaging around 600-700 MB each. On the other hand, the EZdrummer expansion packs are usually between 3 and 6 GB in size, while Superior Drummer’s are often over 65 GB, which is staggering.
Winner
As all the respective preset libraries contain brilliantly crafted sounds, there is no clear winner. While the Superior Drummer library is far more extensive, it also has the highest storage requirements. This means if your disk space is limited, the Addictive Drums route might be preferable, as you can tailor the library kit by kit to match your workflow, and the content is far more economical in terms of storage.
Addictive Drums 2 edit. Image: Press
Which Drum Plugin is the best value?
For $179 / €179, you can choose one of the basic offerings from either XLN Audio or Toontrack. With the AD2 Custom Collection, you get to pick any three AD packs, three MIDI packs, and three Kitpieces from the entire range, while EZdrummer 3’s core library gives you seven multi-sampled kits across 3 rooms for the same price.
However, AD2 is a more complete drum kit design platform with more detailed shaping tools. While Superior Drummer has all these features, EZdrummer does not, which funnels users to purchase the scaled-down version of the Toontrack software with the intention of upgrading to SD at a later stage, which can work out quite costly once you start buying add-ons.
Winner
AD2 gives you the full functionality of the plugin from the get-go, and you can choose the exact kit sounds you want, making it a clear winner in the value department.
The post Addictive Drums 2 vs EZdrummer 3 vs Superior Drummer 3: Which drum plugin is best? appeared first on MusicTech.

How not to make an organ album, according to Michael Cloud DuguayLast summer, composer and producer Michael Cloud Duguay embarked on a ten-day, 1,000-mile journey around Newfoundland, Canada, to record seven historic church organs for his album Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go…which is specifically not an organ record.
“We didn’t want to make an organ record. We wanted to make a record of making an organ record,” Duguay explains.

READ MORE: Can Jamstik finally make MIDI guitar stick?

When listening to Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go, this separation is clear. There are only brief moments that fit the instrument’s pious reputation. More often, the organs evoke unstable ambient textures. There are also deeply industrial moments, emphasising the intricate metallic parts that must operate precisely for these centuries-old instruments to produce any tones.
Besides, if they were going to make an organ record, Duguay would need to know how to play the organ. But the first time he touched one was when they stepped inside the first church in Brigus, Newfoundland.
“[Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go] is a document of a composer and a performer interacting and engaging with these instruments for the very first time,” Duguay says.
Alongside Duguay on this journey was Jake Nicoll. He’s a musician and engineer who built the solar-powered mobile studio, The Scamper, which they used to record the organs (he also built a bunch of other stuff, but more on that shortly).
Image: Press
Nicoll had never touched a pipe organ either, but the combined lack of experience from both the composition and production side allowed them to approach the instruments with complete freedom.
“It reminded me of my experience playing punk when I first started playing music. I didn’t experience inhibition at that age. I would just throw myself into the fire and start playing with the tools that I had,” Duguay says. “These instruments are very often performed by people with a high level of institutional training. So me bringing [punk] to the instrument results in sounds that I may have been told I shouldn’t be trying to produce.”
Duguay and Andrew MacKelvie, the other composer on the trip, had written all of their pieces before setting off. So they didn’t have any idea how they would translate to the organs, especially since all of the organs were in completely different states.
Some were well maintained. Others hadn’t been played in years. They also had completely different functionalities. One required a hand pump to push the air in to make any sound. Another used pedal pumps, so they were basically riding a bicycle while they were playing.
As Duguay was reaching out to each church in advance of recording, many in the church’s communities warned him about the state of the organs, but all that did was excite him even more.
“They were like, ‘We can’t really speak to how well this can be played on.’ And then there would always be this funny conversation where I’m trying to let them know that, not only is that not a problem, that’s actually motivating,” Duguay says. “These are instruments that have lived for over a century in these giant wooden structures.”
Image: Press
In this unpredictability, they infused the same spirit into the music. Many of the compositional choices were made by literally rolling dice. When they arrived at a new church, they would take the compositions they hadn’t recorded yet, roll dice to choose which one to work with, and go from there. They would even alter elements of each piece, such as octaves and melodies, by rolling dice.
“This was really an exploration, technically, conceptually, practically, logistically, of our DIY backgrounds,” Duguay says. “Pushing that sort of ethos as far as we could at all times.”
The recording process was completely DIY as Nicoll constructed almost every element himself. He built The Scamper out of an RV from the 1970s. He built the console into which the audio ran. He built many of the microphones himself (“I’ve had a DIY mic obsession for the last couple years,” Nicoll says), and he used cymbal stands to build the 30-foot mic stands they used to record the massive organs.
“We didn’t have a budget to spend thousands of dollars on a fancy mic stand,” Nicoll says. “I built it out of telescoping paint poles with an aluminum cross beam. They ended up kind of fittingly looking like very tall Jesus crosses.”
Nicoll mentions that they could spend a week grabbing different sounds from one organ, but they only had one day at most with each. Plus, the configuration for each of them was different. All of them were built into the structure of the church, which means the pipes could be spread out in endless different ways.
Image: Press
So, when it came to mic placement, they would have to figure out then and there how to grab the best audio. For some organs, it was easier to record close to the pipes. Others had mechanical quirks like the hand pump that they wanted to grab.
An overarching element was relying on Lom omnidirectional room mics to not only capture the sound of the organs, but how they sounded in each church. They also used them to grab impulse responses from each room so they could apply natural reverb in post-production.
Needless to say, when it came time to convert what they were able to record on this journey into a fully-formed album, they had a lot to work with. If they were setting out to make an ‘organ’ album, they would have likely done one piece per church. Instead, some pieces have one organ. Some have two. Some have all of them.
Little Seldom came together because at one of the churches they ended up doing a public performance. That material was more digestible, and so they brought together more conventional material from all the sessions into one. Damnable Island has all seven organs playing the same note at once. Due to their different conditions, each instrument was out of tune in its own unique way, creating an acoustic rendition of a phase shifter.
Then, throughout the album, there are moments of interviews Duguay conducted with members of each community about the history of the organs, and also the sound of the different clocks in each church that were so loud they were impossible to keep out of the recordings.

“On Damnable Island, when Dave and I were editing it, we zoomed in, listened to the clocks on each piece, and lined them up like a metronome across every single drone to get them all in place,” Duguay says. “That’s how we determined how to edit that piece. Taking the characteristics of each space to guide that process, which is both editing and composing.”
Their intention was to make a record of making an organ record. The clocks. The interviews. The hand pumps. Even other audio, such as environmental sounds when they were riding the ferry from Fogo Island. They’re all part of the journey. And now, the environmental element is fueling the free VSTs Nicoll is currently designing from the trip with the help of Decent Sampler.
For example, because they have all the impulse responses from the churches, users can apply the reverb from each different church as well as the notes from each organ, which all have their own individual modulations that the team engaged with when making the album.
“With the record, [we were] doing everything we could to not disembody these instruments—not remove them in any way, sonically, from the space that they were in,” Duguay says. “This sampling project allows us to quite radically disembody them. Things like being able to hear the Brigus Island church organ without the pump sound. Until this moment, it has literally never been heard without the pump sound. We can get so granular with these nerdy details, but at the same time, it’s this huge, infinite subject that we can continue to explore indefinitely.”
The post How not to make an organ album, according to Michael Cloud Duguay appeared first on MusicTech.

How To Be a Professional Hit SongwriterThis week, Ari is joined by hit songwriter, producer, and publisher Andreas Schuller to unpack how modern hits are made.

CLARITY Act could help CFTC deal with prediction markets: LawyerAccording to one lawyer testifying before a House subcommittee hearing, the CLARITY Act could grant the CFTC the authority it needs to address the “explosive growth of prediction markets.”

These are the countries moving to ban social media for childrenAustralia was the first country to issue a ban in late 2025, aiming to reduce the pressures and risks that young users may face on social media, including cyberbullying, social media addiction, and exposure to predators.

Remi Blaze OxidexOxidex is an analog tape saturation plugin for macOS. It models the behavior of real magnetic tape — hysteresis, head-bump resonance, wow and flutter, and spectral aging — so tracks take on genuine tape character rather than a static EQ curve. A single Wear knob ages the tape from a pristine studio reel to a crinkled cassette. Saturation engine: Magnetic hysteresis model with frequency-dependent behavior. Oversampled S-curve saturation (2×, 4×, 8×), anti-aliased. Three tape speeds — 7.5, 15 and 30 IPS. Asymmetric clipping for natural even-harmonic content. Tone and texture: Head Bump — resonant low-end lift that tracks tape speed. Tilt EQ — dark to bright on a single knob. Wear — wow and flutter, high-frequency loss and dropouts, pristine to worn. Tape Hiss and Vinyl Mode for period-correct noise. Performance effects: Tape Stop / Start — one-button slowdown and spin-up. Motor Pressure — momentary flange build with a drive boost. Tape Speed Shift — smooth glide between speeds. Workflow: Auto-Gain matching for honest A/B comparison. Dry/Wet for parallel saturation, output trim with a safety limiter. Flux Meter that responds to saturation. 22 factory presets, preset save/load. Resizable interface. Formats: AU, VST3, and Standalone — Universal Binary (Apple Silicon + Intel), code-signed and notarized by Apple, so it installs cleanly on macOS. Pay-what-you-want, from $5. Read More

Counterfeit Retro Mainboards with Fake AGP Slots Are a ThingSometimes that retro gaming itch strikes, and you just have to source components for a Pentium 4 build, like [Computer Retro Bus] did recently. Unfortunately, along the way he learned that you can actually get counterfeit mainboards. Case in point the purported ‘Asrock P4i45GV’ that was purchased as the core of this Pentium 4 build, which turned out to have many issues that included a fake AGP slot.
The mainboard was bought off Facebook Marketplace, with the first sign of trouble being spotty GPU support for the AGP slot, and an inability to install a driver for a card that seemed to work. Following this, issues with the installed Soundblaster soundcard popped up, with the use of Windows ME as OS being of course a factor, but even ME is generally not this sketchy.
Warning on fake AGP slot on genuine Asrock mainboard. (Credit: The Retro Web)
At some point he decided to actually dig into this Socket 478 mainboard that he had purchased, only to find out that there was a reason why there were no real markings on it. After an image search it turned out to be a clone of the aforementioned Asrock mainboard, including the original’s ‘feature’ of connecting the ‘AGP’ slot to the PCI bus. This explained why only the AGP GPUs that are compatible with PCI worked with this mainboard, as it’s actually Asrock’s ‘AGI’ slot.
Effectively just a way to scam buyers into believing that they bought a mainboard with an AGP slot when it was just a regular PCI slot cosplaying as an AGP slot. This doesn’t just mean lower speeds and spotty support with AGP cards, but also also potentially dead GPUs, as this mainboard inherited the same 3.3V-only card support.
Unlike PCI slots that are keyed for 3.3/5V voltage support, AGP slots are keyed for either 3.3V or 1.5V, or no key for universal support. These ‘AGI’ slots are sadly keyed for 1.5V AGP cards and thus will expose 1.5V-only AGP cards to potentially fatal voltages.
On the bright side, these are at least genuinely old mainboards, using the same AGP-less Intel chipsets, made back in the day to sell to unsuspecting buyers. Clearly the pain that these fake boards as well as genuine Asrock boards that these ripped off caused back in the day continues in 2026. Caveat Emptor, as they say.

Jessica Audiffred Performs Next-Level Set in HollywoodIt's been two years since Music Connection interviewed Jessica Audiffred for our weekly Hit the Decks! column, but we knew then that this bass music artist was onto something special.

She told us back then that she plays bass music across the spectrum. "Dubstep, House, Riddim and Drum & Bass," she said. "I’ve also been playing hard techno as a side project and at after parties. That seems to be very well received."

That same year, Audiffred became the first female dubstep artist to headline the Hollywood Palladium, and in July she returned to the scene of her triumph, this time for a mammoth three hour extended set. In the years between, Audiffred released the much-loved Rave New World album, cementing her standing as one of the top bass artists on the circuit right now.

The first thing that was quickly apparent was how rabid the large Palladium crowd was for all things Audiffred. Every mention of her name from opening artist Drinkurwater (who did a great job of warning up the Palladium) was greeted with enthusiastic, deafening cheers.

By the time she stepped up to the decks, situated in the middle of the Palladium floor rather than on the traditional stage, the energy was fever-pitch.

This is an artist who know exactly how to keep a dance floor moving. Spinning a mixture of her own tunes, classic electronica, and some expertly-woven oddities (Queen's "We Will Rock You," Killers' "Mr. Brightside"), Audiffred truly had Hollywood in the palm of her hand.

As more and more new tracks are dropped and word of her brilliance continues to spread, one can imagine Audiffred blowing up and transcending the bass scene. Let's see!

The post Jessica Audiffred Performs Next-Level Set in Hollywood first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

TikTok is testing an opt-in ‘Likeness Detection’ tool that lets US creators find and report AI deepfakes of themselvesIt was first spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra, who wrote in a post on X that TikTok was testing the feature with "some US creators."
Source

Dirty Boy Jr. Series from Warm Audio The new Dirty Boy Jr. Series promises to bring the authentic Dirty Boy tone to a broader audience while preserving the all-important character of the original designs.

cloph-dsp releases Grungr, a FREE drive pedal plugin
cloph-dsp has released Grungr, a free/pay-what-you-want drive pedal emulation for guitar, bass, and anything else that needs more bite. You might remember Pedro Castro from Freeze95, the fun little stochastic stutter and freeze effect we featured on BPB earlier this year. I loved that one, so Grungr is another interesting free effect from the same [...]
View post: cloph-dsp releases Grungr, a FREE drive pedal plugin

Pleatech Audio offers WorldVerb reverb plugin for FREE (Windows)
Pleatech Audio is offering WorldVerb, a creative reverb plugin for Windows, as a free download for BPB readers. Developer Niels posted the offer in the BPB community section and shared a coupon code that unlocks the full version, with future updates included. That code is KAAPXM3; I tested it, and it works. Thanks to Niels for [...]
View post: Pleatech Audio offers WorldVerb reverb plugin for FREE (Windows)

Can Jamstik finally make MIDI guitar stick?Ah, MIDI guitar. The promised land of unlimited six-string expression, but one that never quite delivered. From the space-age Roland G-707 to modern approaches like Fishman’s TriplePlay, many manufacturers have tried to translate the guitar’s familiar physical language into something a synth can understand. Few, however, have managed to deliver a solution convincing enough to stick.
Jamstik thinks the answer is integration. The Minneapolis company builds MIDI control into full-size guitars that still feel, play, and function like familiar six-strings. Except now, those strings can speak to synths, samplers, and DAWs.

READ MORE: Jamstik Core is the best affordable MIDI guitar at $650, by far

Its latest model, the three-quarter-scale Jamstik Core, is its most affordable yet, but the bigger story is how Jamstik got here. To trace the company’s past, present, and future, I’m speaking with Meredith Gaslin, director of marketing, and Jon Keller, senior engineer.
Both play guitar, though they’re quick to decline the label of ‘shredder’. Meredith even learned her first few chords on the five-fret Jamstik+, a device that smashed its $50,000 Kickstarter goal with over $800,000 in backing in 2015.
Three years later, Jamstik crowdfunded seven-fret and 12-fret versions, but its ambitions were already outgrowing the compact controller: “It worked well for the original concept,” explains Meredith, “but it couldn’t fully capture the kinds of expression that experienced players expect from a professional instrument; things like vibrato, natural string decay, and the nuances of a real guitar performance.”
Jamstik Core. Image: Jamstik
When Jon arrived in 2018 with a background in digital signal processing, the company’s focus shifted towards proprietary tracking algorithms that detected notes using an onboard hexaphonic pickup that output six discrete signals for independent processing — one from each guitar string.
Naturally, a new question arose: why keep building a controller that imitates a guitar when you could simply build the real thing instead? Two years later, the Jamstik Studio appeared: a compact, headless, MIDI-enabled guitar that unlocked the limitless world of synthesis by convincingly translating its fretted notes into ones and zeros.
The Jamstik Classic followed, a more traditional headstocked guitar with a Strat-style body incorporating the same detection tech as the Studio. In 2024, the lineup was refreshed again with the Standard and Deluxe models — though the team knew that getting more players on board would require a lower price of admission.
Enter the Jamstik Core, another crowdfunded success: “[The Core] is making the entire experience more affordable without compromising on the algorithms,” says Jon. “The tech inside is all the same [as the Standard and Deluxe], minus the battery and the Bluetooth because it helps cut the cost.”
At the other end of the spectrum is the Strandberg x Jamstik Chameleon, unveiled at NAMM 2026. Jon speaks enthusiastically about the sold-out collaboration: “It’s the best guitar we’ve put our tech into to date, by a long shot. Not only is the guitar itself better, but because the intonation is better and the action is better, it reflects in the tracking as well.”
The joint venture felt like a natural fit: “[Strandberg] are really innovative in the guitar community, and we felt we were innovators on the MIDI side of things,” explains Meredith. “It kind of came authentically when we met, from both sides.”
Through its ergonomic headless guitars, Strandberg has built a strong cachet with virtuosic players. Alongside the improved build quality of Jamstik’s newer models, the collaboration undoubtedly gave the platform more weight. Meredith smiles: “We’ve been able to turn a lot of the sceptics into supporters. The guitar community has vastly turned around from seeing Jamstik as a gimmick.”

MIDI guitar has been available for years, however, via Roland’s GK hex pickup and Fishman’s TriplePlay tech, both of which augment existing guitars. So what, exactly, is Jamstik’s pitch?
“It’s a fully integrated instrument from the ground up, so everything is optimised — the pickup placement, the electronics, the firmware, the processing,” says Meredith. “It results in more accurate tracking, lower latency, and a more natural playing experience.”
Jon puts it more simply: “Our algorithms are better at translating what you’re playing and tracking your pitch bends.” I ask him how it works, and he laughs: “It’s a lot of math.”
But accurate tracking only gets Jamstik to the starting line. Like a keyboard controller or MPC-style pad grid, it needs somewhere to send that data. The instrument may be a fully-fledged guitar — complete with humbuckers and a jack output for your amplifier — but its MIDI power depends on how easily it connects to the rest of your setup.
“Every Jamstik has a TRS MIDI out. There’s no proprietary 13-pin cable,” says Meredith. “We supply a TRS to five-pin adapter [with each guitar], and you can control any analogue hardware. We wanted it to be a plug-and-play experience that works with any gear you have.” Software is no trickier: “If you plug in via USB, you’ll see the Jamstik connected as you would any other controller.”
It goes deeper than pitch and velocity, too: “We’re the first MIDI guitar system that incorporates MPE,” Meredith continues. “Jon had some cool breakthroughs with his performance tracking, and we actually mapped the physical decay of the string to expression.”
The company has also built its own companion software for the instrument. Originally called Jamstik Creator, the app has now been reincarnated as Loon, a more fully-featured synthesizer that Jon describes as “a whole new sound engine, pretty much rewritten from the ground up.” It adds three layers per patch, multitimbral capabilities, and modular-style ‘blocks’ for more complex routing.
Meredith explains the name: “The loon is actually the state bird of Minnesota. We thought that was a nice callback to where we’re from, and the call of the loon is very widely known as resonant and eerie, reminiscent of soundscapes that a synth might produce.”

Loon’s arrival should draw fresh attention to Jamstik, but perhaps the most persuasive endorsement is seeing the instrument in the wild. The appetite for guitar-synth hybrids has grown substantially in recent years, helped along by players like Mk.gee and Dijon. While the former leans on a vintage Roland VG-8, the latter currently tours with an all-black Jamstik — a serious vote of confidence for the brand.
With musician uptake increasing and Loon now available, the company is already planning past the current lineup.
“We’re looking at a bass,” Meredith says, before adding, with an even balance of humour and sincerity: “We could probably do a MIDI ukulele. I don’t know how popular or needed that is, but stringed instruments with MIDI compatibility are in our wheelhouse.”
What about a hybrid synth/effects pedal that accepts both MIDI and jack input? A tentative smile appears on Meredith’s face: “It’s a fun idea, and it’s one that we often get requests for, especially from touring players.”
For now, Jamstik’s company size keeps its ambition tempered. “We’re about eight people full time,” Meredith says. “If one of those cool pedal makers said, ‘Hey, we should do something,’ we’ll take it into consideration.”
Meredith takes a moment to celebrate Jamstik’s decade-plus journey: “It’s always been our hope that we would put our tech into a premium guitar … We’re proud of how far we’ve come. I’m really proud of the build quality that we’ve been able to achieve with these newer models.”
And maybe that’s the point. MIDI guitar can offer all the sonic possibilities in the world, but guitarists will only embrace the technology if the instrument still feels immediate, familiar, and worth playing. The math can happen under the hood — but the guitar still has to feel like a guitar.
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The CDJ-1500X’s new song request feature is either genius or ragebait £1,469 / $1,599, alphatheta.com
In a market increasingly dominated by all-in-one systems and DJ controllers, the arrival of a brand new standalone CDJ is a surprise. Yet that’s exactly what AlphaTheta has delivered with the CDJ-1500X: a more compact, lower-cost player that borrows heavily from the flagship CDJ-3000X while introducing a few ideas of its own.
At first glance, it’s arguably one of AlphaTheta’s best-looking media players to date. The clean industrial design is immediately striking, dominated by the same 10.1-inch touchscreen found on the CDJ-3000X and paired with the now-familiar bank of eight Hot Cue buttons beneath it. The 1500X has a distinctly premium look, despite its lower positioning in the range.

READ MORE: How AlphaTheta’s CDJ-3000X is finding an unexpected new audience

That decision of slick minimalistic design, however, comes with compromise. Retaining the large display, while pursuing a smaller overall footprint, means sacrificing valuable panel space, resulting in noticeably fewer dedicated controls than many DJs may be used to. Whether that’s a worthwhile trade-off depends on how much you rely on the touchscreen navigation, but for some functions, a few extra physical buttons would have been welcome. The cue and play buttons feel ok, but certainly lack that premium feel of other devices, and removing the track search buttons means you are only able to skip back using the shift button and cue together.
Software additions go some way to making up for it. AlphaTheta’s latest waveform enhancements include Vocal Position indicators, highlighting exactly where vocals occur throughout a track during playback. This is a feature now available to all rekordbox users. Alongside this are Phrase descriptions and BPM Change markers, making it immediately obvious where song sections begin and where tempo shifts occur.
For open-format DJs, wedding performers and anyone mixing across genres, these visual cues genuinely improve track preparation and on-the-fly decision making.
Another thoughtful and much-requested software addition is Light Mode, a new interface option designed specifically for daytime events and outdoor festivals where screen visibility can become problematic. It’s one of those simple, quality-of-life improvements that quickly makes sense in practice, and one existing CDJ-3000X owners will undoubtedly hope arrives via a firmware update.
Image: Press
Jog wheels and workflow
Unlike the mechanically weighted jogs on the CDJ-3000X, the 1500X opts for mid-sized capacitive platters. They’re enjoyable to use, but the choice does feel slightly at odds with the asking price. Previous products such as the Pioneer DJ XDJ-1000MK2, XDJ-AZ and AlphaTheta Opus Quad all featured mechanical jog wheels, leaving us wondering why that premium hardware hasn’t filtered down here.
Another major disappointment is the lack of a digital output, with stereo RCAs being the only audio outputs available.
Elsewhere, AlphaTheta borrows another design touch from the Opus Quad with the same style dual rotary encoders. The left-hand control handles Beat Loops: press once to activate a loop, rotate to adjust its length, then press again to exit. It’s an elegant solution that feels quicker than traditional loop controls, particularly once muscle memory kicks in.
The right-hand encoder combines browsing, select and waveform zoom, although the overall navigation feels a bit clunky having to hit Back and then use the touchscreen to get to the browse or playlist page. Perhaps a shift-click of the Browse encoder is a refinement that a firmware update could easily introduce.
Image: Press
Smart hardware touches
One of the more unexpected design decisions is also one of the most practical.
The front-loading USB compartment—with integrated illumination—initially feels unusual before making perfect sense. Long-time Pioneer DJ users may even find themselves reminded of the days when CDs slid into the front of the player. Housing both USB-A and USB-C ports inside the recessed bay keeps drives protected from accidental knocks, which is something many DJs who’ve had a USB stick unexpectedly yanked mid-set will immediately appreciate.
The bay can even be customised with one of 12 LED colours, adding a small touch of personalisation.
There are, however, a couple of software quirks. Pressing Eject always prompts you to choose between “USB 1” and “USB 2”, even if only a single drive is connected. Displaying the actual drive name instead would make this more elegant.
Image: Press
Connected Crowd
As with the 3000X, the CDJ-1500X includes built-in Wi-Fi and NFC login support, giving access to CloudDirectPlay, cloud libraries and compatible streaming services.
But it’s an entirely new feature called CoBeat that will generate the most conversation.
Designed around QR-code song requests, CoBeat allows DJs to generate a unique code through their AlphaTheta account. Guests simply scan the code to submit requests and messages directly to the player, where they appear in a dedicated screen tab.
It’s easy to imagine this being genuinely useful at weddings, corporate events and private functions, where requests are often expected. Equally, it’s just as easy to imagine many club DJs hoping it never makes its way into any DJ booth.
The concept itself isn’t new. Third-party request platforms have existed for years, while VirtualDJ has its Ask The DJ functionality. What CoBeat does differently is integrate the experience directly into AlphaTheta’s hardware and rekordbox ecosystem, eliminating the need for additional laptop devices or software.
There are sensible controls available. DJs can, of course, turn off this feature entirely, or create a playlist of requestable tracks, although the messaging system currently feels less refined. A request-only mode, without allowing free-form messages, would arguably offer more flexibility.
CoBeat. Image: Press
Real-world use also exposes a few rough edges. Messages seem to be still submitted even when requests have been disabled on the player, leaving users with no indication whether anything has actually been received. Beyond a basic profanity filter, there are currently few safeguards governing what users can send, and while a three-minute cooldown period limits repeated messages from the same person, that time interval isn’t currently adjustable.
Whether CoBeat genuinely changes the request experience is another question entirely. DJs who regularly perform at weddings will know that digital systems rarely prevent someone from walking over moments later to ask the same question in person. In many respects, it solves a workflow that’s already been addressed through mobile apps, websites, or even the humble pen and paper.
Still, bringing requests directly onto the hardware is an important strategic move. It positions AlphaTheta more firmly within the mobile, corporate and wedding sectors while creating a connected ecosystem that extends beyond traditional club performance. It may not appeal to every DJ, but it represents a notable shift in where the company sees future growth.
Undoubtedly, the CoBeat feature and its future feature updates will become a key add-on to the rekordbox subscription service plans, but they will have to add more customisation and features like SMS support, tipping, custom customer-facing landing page creation and more to match the competition.
Image: Press
Should I buy the CDJ-1500X?
The 1500X is an excellent product. It looks every bit the modern club-standard player, feels reassuringly premium, and delivers exactly the kind of performance you’d expect from a flagship media player. It’s the ideal size and slick look for a killer home setup and much more transportable than the huge 3000X model.
The challenge is the price. At a time when all-in-one systems do the job and are much more portable, the cost of building a traditional modular setup is harder to justify than ever. Although AlphaTheta and Pioneer DJ products have always been premium, the wider technology industry’s AI bubble and the ongoing demand for processors and memory certainly isn’t helping AlphaTheta keep these new hardware devices wallet-friendly.
The lack of a digital output is a little too thrifty though, but because the 1500X shares the same screen and software as the 3000X it makes sense that AlphaTheta has cut back somewhere to set this device in its appropriate lane. I just think cutting the digital output is a step too far.
Yet most of these criticisms are unlikely to matter to the DJs this product is really aimed at. If you prefer the flexibility of separate players, want the familiar dual screen workflow of a club booth, or already own a mixer and simply need to refresh an ageing CDJ setup, the 1500X makes a compelling case for itself. It’s still a serious investment, but it could be the more attainable route into the latest generation of flagship media player features that many DJs have been waiting for.

Key Features

Compact design
Large 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen
Customisable side panels
Light Mode for daytime DJ sets
Dual USB-C and USB-A ports
Built in CoBeat request and messaging platform

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