“Those are my weapon”: Inside Audeze and Manny Marroquin’s MM-520 headphonesThreatening airport security is rarely wise, but Manny Marroquin had his reasons. “They pulled the headphones out, and were like, ‘What are these?’” says the celebrated mix engineer, stopped on his way back from Mexico. “Those are my fucking weapon. Don’t you mess with me.”
The weapon in question is the Audeze MM-520, the American brand’s new flagship planar magnetics, and the first pair of headphones to grace a MusicTech gear cover. More records than ever are mixed and mastered on headphones, and the MM-520 – the second product in Marroquin and Audeze’s collaborative MM-series – arrives engineered for the job’s toughest call: bass.
The Audeze MM-520 on the MusicTech Cover. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
The prolific Grammy Award-winner has run Larrabee Studios in Los Angeles since 2001, with production credits from Rihanna to Rosalía, and began tuning Sonos products in 2012. He first mixed on Solid State Logic consoles aged 17, and speaks to us from London before visiting SSL’s Oxford headquarters to test new equipment.
He used to think mixing on headphones was a joke. “If you had told me 10 years ago I would be mixing on headphones, I’d think you were crazy,” he admits. “I used to hate that. I would laugh at people.” So what changed?
The short answer is Marroquin badgered Audeze CEO Sankar Thiagasamudram to build the professional mixing headphones he actually wanted. He was repeatedly told there’s no money in pro audio (as compared to consumer audio), but one day, Thiagasamudram finally approached him at a trade show and said: “Manny, I think we’re ready to do this.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Marroquin worked through various prototypes with Audeze’s engineers, and the result was 2022’s MM-500. “My career is better because of them; it’s my set of speakers,” he says. It’s why he keeps coming back to work with the brand. “They took everything I told them and everything I wanted to do, and they were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll do that. Let’s go.’ They believed in me.”
The $1,700 MM-520 headphones come with a strange sales pitch: you might not need them. “I am not saying they’re better than the 500s, but it is an alternate version,” Marroquin insists. “If you own the 500s, it’s not like, ‘My gosh, I need to go get the 520s.’ Not about that at all. I want to make sure people know it’s not us trying to sell you a new pair of headphones.”
“If you had told me 10 years ago I would be mixing on headphones, I’d think you were crazy” – Manny Marroquin
A SLAM dunk
The star upgrade is SLAM, which is short for Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator and mercifully simpler than it sounds. Air passages running beneath the ear pad create extra space between the driver and your ear, forming a larger acoustic chamber and allowing Audeze to selectively boost the low-end frequencies.
“It’s kind of like increasing the body size of an acoustic instrument or a speaker,” explains Chris Berens, Audeze’s head of A&R. “It gives a little more resonance in the low end, and we tune that specifically for the headphone, so we have a nice, healthily reinforced low end.”
SLAM balances the air pressure on both sides of Audeze’s ultra-thin planar magnetic diaphragm, letting it move more freely and accurately. Measuring just 1.8 micrometres, the nanoscale polymer is around 40 times thinner than a human hair.
“It’s not like we’re just adding a subwoofer,” says Berens. “It really enhances everything that the driver does, which makes things [sound] a little bit wider, and gives you more accurate imaging in terms of location.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Peter James, Audeze’s director of marketing, says the tuning target was extension rather than flattery. “The bass of the MM-520 is pretty much flat to below 20Hz. We tuned this system to get a better bass extension rather than a bass shelf, the way the Harman curve has.”
For Marroquin, the low-end obsession is where records live now. “Whether you’re doing hip-hop, pop, country, or whatever, you want to make sure the low end is tight,” he says. “Low end is the most important thing in pop music, because if it’s too heavy, then it weighs down the track. If it’s too light, it sounds weak. Low end in today’s world has to really be accurate.”
The MM-500’s slightly forward upper mids, a common gripe, have been levelled off. The cost of all this is weight. Planars run heavy to begin with, but the 520s pile on more. SLAM adds material, while new snap on earpads require eight magnets per side.
Tipping the scales at 555g, they’re 60g up on the MM-500 and tower over non-planar rivals such as Sennheiser’s 330g HD 800 S, though Audeze says memory foam on the new earpads help disperse the extra load.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Turning the tables
For decades, engineers trusted monitors and used headphones for a second opinion, but increasingly, it’s the other way round. Low end is arguably the hardest thing to get right in any room, and Berens believes even serious money doesn’t fix it. “We have a lot of pro people in the space who are really primarily referring to our headphones for bass,” he claims.
“They can trust what they’re hearing, versus their room, [which] they can’t quite trust. Even people who have invested tens of thousands in great speakers, room treatment, all that stuff, there is always something that’s not quite right.”
Marroquin still mixes on Yamaha NS-10s; a mix that survives these famously brutal nearfield monitors is said to survive anywhere. He dreamed of taking that trusted reference on the road, and the MM series became his answer. “To me, that’s like [being] a kid in the candy store.” 99 per cent of the time, he says, he runs them straight out of his laptop, streaming his Larrabee sessions via a real-time remote streaming plugin by Audiomovers.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Audeze says it intentionally designed the 500s and the 520s to function perfectly fine from most devices without a dedicated headphone amp. That’s tricky, given most planar headphones are notoriously power-hungry. The efficiency comes from the company’s Fluxor magnet arrays, which pack a denser magnetic field across the driver, so the diaphragm needs less power to move.
Rival planar makers shed weight by using fewer, smaller magnets, James says, at the cost of needing an amp. Some of the 520’s heft, in other words, is precisely what frees you from carrying one.
The deeper reason Marroquin never travels without them has nothing to do with specs. “I’m pretty sure everyone is insecure, and it’s okay to admit to it,” he says. “Sometimes you’re having a bad day, or you didn’t sleep well, your mother’s sick. That’s going to reflect on your work. The successful [people] are the ones that can cut through the BS and just focus on this one thing.” His cure for mixer’s block lives in his headphone bag. “I’m feeling a little insecure, a little lost. Let me just put them on, and immediately, I’m back. I’m back within a split second.”
“I created these headphones for the masses. This is how I hear things” – Manny Marroquin
Sony and yet so far
Audeze was acquired in 2023 by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the PlayStation arm of the Japanese multimedia company, primarily for its patented technologies, planar magnetic drivers, and audio engineering expertise. So where does a pair of pro studio flagship headphones sit on PlayStation’s list of priorities? “Clearly, it’s still a priority for us because we put it out this year,” says James. “Nothing about the Sony PlayStation acquisition has changed that market orientation. We’re going to continue developing and deploying cutting-edge sound solutions.”
Is it odd that Audeze is now part of a bigger brand that makes the MDR-CD900ST and MDR-7506, some of the most ubiquitous studio headphones on the planet? James is unbothered, pointing out PlayStation sits a long way from Sony Electronics, and “Sony’s most expensive studio headphone is somewhere around the price of our least expensive.
“If PlayStation is the car brand, Audeze is the racing division,” he argues. “We’re out there at the edge of what’s possible, innovating and trying to see what we can do.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
The proof is SLAM, which debuted before the 520 and is now what James calls a foundational technology, deployed across the range as products refresh. That includes this year’s £339 Maxwell 2 gaming headset. And just last week, a Maxwell 2 ANC variant arrived, bringing active noise cancelling to a full-range planar magnetic driver – a world-first James claims the brand has spent over a decade developing. It also adds auto-calibrating head tracking and Dolby Atmos.
So who does Audeze want to see in the driver’s seat of its newest MM-520 racecar? “It’s a studio product for folks who are serious about learning their craft and perfecting it,” says James, pointing budget-conscious buyers to the MM-100, tuned for “the same kind of vibe”. For his part, Marroquin wants zero gatekeeping. “I created them for the masses,” he says. “This is how I hear things. And if you like it, if you give it a chance, do 10,000 hours on them.”
There’s plenty riding on his own pair. Marroquin is starting Post Malone’s next album, has just finished a Quavo record with Pharrell, and tonight will be back in his London hotel room, laptop open, controlling his console at Larrabee from another continent.
“It gives me a lot of confidence,” he says. And confidence, as he puts it, “is everything”. We sure hope airport security sees it that way.
The Audeze MM-520 is now available.
Words: James Day
Photography: Simon Vinall
The post “Those are my weapon”: Inside Audeze and Manny Marroquin’s MM-520 headphones appeared first on MusicTech.

Graph Tech Guitar Labs open UK Online Store Graph Tech Guitar Labs have just announced the launch of a new UK Online Store that makes it quicker and easier than ever for musicians, repair shops and guitar builders to get their hands on genuine Graph Tech products. 

Netflix paid $587M for Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking startupNetflix revealed that it paid $587 million in cash for InterPositive, a startup co-founded by Ben Affleck.

Kreativ Sound Juno Nocturnes — 96 Arturia JUN-6 V PresetsJuno Nocturnes is a KREATIV Sound preset collection for Arturia JUN-6 V. It focuses on dark ambient pads, deep drones, pulsing sequences, shadowed basses, fragile leads, dusty keys, and atmospheric FX for cinematic and experimental production. What's Inside. - 96 Arturia JUN-6 V presets. - 32 pads, 16 drones, 13 sequences, 8 basses, 9 leads, 9 keys, and 9 FX. - README, preset list, license, product description, and cover image. Best For. - Dark ambient, drone, cinematic, sci-fi, and experimental electronic music. - Soundtrack-ready pads, chorus-heavy analog motion, and long evolving notes. - Producers who want a complete JUN-6 V bank with a nocturnal character. Requirements / Format. - Arturia JUN-6 V required. - Recommended: JUN-6 V 1.6.x or newer. - Delivered as a JUN-6 V preset bank in .junx format inside a ZIP download. License / Usage. You can use the included presets royalty-free in personal and commercial music, film, game, and client projects. Do not resell, redistribute, repackage, or share the source preset bank itself. Load Juno Nocturnes into JUN-6 V and build darker cinematic parts fast. Read More

Automated Pressure Advance Using a Bed-Leveling SensorOne of the most crucial aspects of FDM 3D printing is ensuring sufficient material is extruded. Determining the right flow rate can be done manually, but some printers these days automatically perform this adjustment, which is very convenient. [Stefan] of CNC Kitchen investigates how to add similar functionality using existing bed-leveling sensors.
A major complication with extrusion in FDM printers is that the flow rate has to fit the printing speed. However, you can’t just immediately speed up or reduce the flow rate, as the melting filament is flexible and thus acts like a spring, especially as the extruder is exerting significant force on the filament, which adds compression.
The moment you reduce or increase the speed of the nozzle, you can get over- or under-extrusion, but the delayed response by the extruded filament means that you have to adjust for this change in advance. Ergo, the name ‘pressure advance’, also known as the K-value. Obviously, this is a parameter that differs with each material, printer, and other factors, so a direct measurement is always the best.
In the Bambu Lab X1 FDM printer, a Lidar scanner was used to scan various test patterns to automatically determine the optimal setting. This was later moved to the purge section of the extruder in newer Bambu Lab printers. On other FDM printers, the only available sensor in that area is typically the pressure sensor for bed leveling. Could this sensor make a similar measurement?
This wasn’t just an idle thought, but was inspired by the Snapmaker U1, which runs open-source Klipper, with tantalizing glimpses of how it does pressure-advance sensing in its extruder. This extruder also only contains a load cell, as do some Prusa printers. These much more open printers thus provided a test bed for some experimentation.
With load cell data available, [Stefan] measured how various extrusion rates affect the load cell, which can then theoretically be correlated with the appropriate K-values for specific transitions. He created a calibration tool for a range of Prusa printers that works with stock firmware, though this is definitely still a work in progress. There are also a couple of similar open-source projects, such as this Auto PA Calibration project by [Mark].
Overall, K-value presets tend to work pretty well, but adding a pressure-advance calibration feature to existing FDM printers is definitely an interesting idea. There’s also the prospect of lateral sensing using this same bed-leveling sensor, which could allow the printer to sense much more than just the bed.

Acustica reveal Mystic 2 Mystic 2 now offers a choice of three preamp models, with a new Vintage option delivering a more aggressive sound character, and Modern offering a more refined and flexible sound. 

Calculator UI Is More Complex Than You Might ThinkCalculators are so ubiquitous and so familiar that they are easy to take for granted in many different ways. [lcamtuf] points out one that has probably never occurred to many of us: the user interface for a calculator is an unexpectedly complex thing.
The internal logic to support sequential inputs and multiple operators in a way that feels intuitive is a complex thing.
Resolving something like 1 + 2 = is pretty straightforward but complexity compounds rapidly after that, with numerous special cases. Let’s imagine one decides to program a simple calculator UI as a weekend project. The development process might look a little like this:

User types in 1 + 2 = and the calculator displays 3. What happens if the user immediately presses -?
No problem, just consider the result of the previous operation as an already-there input. So we’ll have 3 - for this next operation, and wait for more.
Unless we should have treated that - as a negative sign for whatever number is coming next, making it a negative number? No, ignore that. Just treat whatever results from pressing equals as a pre-typed input.
Unless the user hits a number. Because if they hit 2 (for example) then we’ll have a 32 and not a 2 which they probably, definitely don’t expect. So that’s a special case and we should insert a clear if that happens.
Oh, better clear if the user enters a decimal, too.
I’m going to need a coffee…

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine trying to figure all this out for the very first time, without the benefits of habit and history to fall back on.
The fact is that supporting the apparently trivial behavior of a simple calculator requires an underlying complex state machine that deals with all kinds of special cases in order to make the UI feel intuitive. And that’s just for a basic four-function calculator; we haven’t even touched on how special keys like % should behave.
We know [lcamtuf] speaks from experience, not just because of their deep knowledge of calculator history but because they rolled their own calculator that uses voltmeters as digit displays and there’s nothing like actually implementing something to make one appreciate it.

Waymo says San Francisco service has resumed after one-hour pauseThis isn’t the first time power outages have caused issues for Waymo.

Stemwire Zero Sweep FilterA high-pass and low-pass filter that leaves the signal unchanged at zero, without clicks or wet/dry artefacts. Sweep the filter. Not the bypass. The sweep is the easy part. Getting the filter completely out again is where the workaround starts. With Zero Sweep, the signal moves smoothly from fully transparent to filtered, then back to clean. Zero Stays Clean No residual filtering at the resting position. Put it on a channel, bus or master without keeping a bypass lane beside it. One automation lane Draw the sweep itself. No separate bypass and wet/dry moves to keep in sync. Made for transitions Builds, breaks and DJ-style cuts without the usual bypass clicks, phasey wet/dry crossfades. Read More

Frap Tools update the Magnolia A second production run of the Magnolia is now complete, and the company have also been hard at work on a firmware update that delivers some enhancements and bug fixes. 

IK Multimedia add Brown Panel Signature Collection to TONEX Widely used across surf, country, blues and early rock records, the amps were behind everything from the expressive tones of Chris Stapleton to the pristine clean sounds embraced by Mark Knopfler.

FTX to distribute $900M to creditors in fifth payment roundThe FTX Recovery Trust and company have distributed about $10 billion since the exchange filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, leaving users cut off from their funds.

The Zoom hack that says, ‘Don’t record me’If every meeting, watercooler conversation, and date gets transcribed and summarized, who's actually reading any of it?

SCMS’ Balourdet Quartet, MLC Statutory DesignationHaving mentored musicians and sharing chamber music in homes, schools and health spaces, The Balourdet Quartet (Angela Bae, Justin DeFilippis, Benjamin Zannoni, Russell Houston) returns for a second residency with Seattle’s Chamber Music Society, through May 2027.

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Launching in 2021, The MLC now has almost 90,000 members and a database of over 54 million songs. With almost $4 billion in royalties distributed to songwriters and publishers to date, the US Copyrights Register continues in its designation of The MLC as the statutory Mechanical Licensing Collective for the United States.

The move follows a periodic review of designation required by the Music Modernization Act (MMA), with The MLC being determined to have met each of the redesignation criteria More HERE. Some improvements were recommended, including database tools, match-rate data disclosure, and investment transparency.

In addition to licensing and distribution, The MLC has also been actively enforcing royalty obligations of digital music services (including a lawsuit with Spotify against subscription bundling, and a dispute with Pandora over ad-supported radio).

The next review of The MLC is slated for January 2029.

The post SCMS’ Balourdet Quartet, MLC Statutory Designation first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

The BornHack 2026 Cyber Ægg Is A Badge With A Life AfterwardsA problem facing the designers of event badges is this: what happens to the badge after the event? It’s one that designers have tried to solve in many ways with varying levels of success, whether that be by making it a dev board, a games console, a mesh-networked communicator, or as in the case of Electromagnetic Field, a continuing badge for future events. Ar BornHack 2026 they have taken a novel approach, by making it a useful desktop appliance. The BornHack Cyber Ægg is a half-egg-shaped badge with a 3D-printed case, and aside from its on-camp applications it’s both a desktop clock/calendar, and a MeshCore node.
Produced with the assistance of the badge.team European badge makers, it’s an egg-shaped PCB with a Nordic nRF52840 at its heart, a Semtech LoRa module, and an e-paper display. On-site there’s a Tamagotchi-style virtual pet game, an event calender, and an RFID token game, but it’s the other two features that give it a life after the camp. The clock and Meshcore, coupled with its case being designed with a flat spot to sit on a desk, make this badge as much an appliance as it is a badge. This is where it will sit in the Hackaday office, and we’re pretty sure most BornHack attendees will use it thus too.
We like this approach to giving a badge a life after the event, and we look forward to seeing what influence it has on future badges. A badge should be a thing to enjoy, not a piece of e-waste.