Audient’s new flagship Horizon interfaces can run complex sessions in even the biggest studiosAudient has just unveiled Horizon, its new flagship line of professional-grade Thunderbolt 3 audio interfaces.
Aimed squarely at audio professionals, the range comprises three rack-mount models – the Horizon 8P, Horizon 16 and Horizon 32 – each offering top specs including 32-bit mastering-grade conversion, round-trip latency of less than a millisecond and at 192 kHz, and a scalable architecture which allows for the daisy-chaining of up to four Horizon interfaces on a single macOS driver.

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The three interfaces on offer cater to a range of use cases and studio setups, so let’s dive into what you get with each.
Universal specs
Credit: Audient
Though boasting slightly differing spec sheets aimed at different use cases, each of the three new Horizon interfaces has a set of universal specifications. They include 32-bit mastering-grade conversion and 0.99ms round-trip latency at 192kHz latency, meaning they can track through native plugins with practically zero delay.
Additionally, each Horizon interface features digital recall of all input gains and system settings, ADAT expansion, BNC Word Clock I/O and selectable reference levels for calibrating I/O to outboard analogue gear.
Three models – what’s the difference?
Credit: Audient
Horizon 8P – This one is aimed at the tracking studio, with 24 inputs and 32 outputs built around eight Audient Console Mic Preamps with ORBIT Control variable impedance. These are the same mic pres found on the brand’s flagship ASP8024-HE large-format recording console, now in a single rack unit for the first time. In terms of use cases, think recording bands, drum kits, vocal sessions or orchestral ensembles.
Horizon 16 – The 16 is a 34-in / 34-out interface built with 32 channels of mastering-grade conversion via four industry-standard DB25 connectors. On top of all this, it has a dedicated stereo mix-bus path. This unit will fit right into all the studios that have an extensive arsenal of equipment to capture a signature sound.
Horizon 32 – And finally, the top-end Horizon interface, the Horizon 32, is built for “large-format hybrid facilities, boasting a massive 50 inputs and 50 outputs, with 64 channels of analogue I/O across eight DB25 connectors. This one’s the perfect solution if you’re running a large and complex studio, and are looking to connect multiple outboard racks, consoles and multi-room setups via a single audio interface.
What is Audient saying about the new Horizon range
Credit: Audient
“Horizon has been five years in the making; the most significant R&D investment we’ve ever put into a product range,” says Andrew Allen, Chief Product Officer at Audient. “We spared no compromise at component level, and the result is the best-on-the-market audio and latency performance. This is a modern system built for modern workflows.”
Allen continues, touting the Horizon’s category-leading performance: “As Apple Silicon and modern host processing get more capable, the value proposition of the DSP walled-garden model continues to diminish.
“Engineers no longer need to lock themselves into proprietary plugin ecosystems to get pro-level performance. Horizon’s native architecture is built exactly for this shift, and we expect it to land well with customers who’ve been waiting for a credible alternative.”
Allen says a top-level audio interface should stay out of the way of the creative process. “We designed Horizon so engineers can focus on the performance, not the routing – and we redesigned the software from the ground up, paying close attention to the user experience. Whether that’s using ORBIT Control on the 8P to shape a ribbon mic at the analogue stage, or streaming an entire console through the Horizon 32, the hardware stays invisible and the workflow stays fast.”
Availability and pricing
The Audient Horizon range will be available from 28 September 2026 via Audient dealers worldwide. Pricing for each model is as follows:

Horizon 8P – £2,199 / €2,499 / $2,799
Horizon 16 – £2,199 / €2,499 / $2,799
Horizon 32 – £2,799 / €3,299 / $3,499

Learn more at Audient.
The post Audient’s new flagship Horizon interfaces can run complex sessions in even the biggest studios appeared first on MusicTech.

IVE at the Kia Forum, Inglewood, CAContact: greg.cortez@42west.comWeb: ive-official.comPlayers: Gaeul, An Yu-jin, Rei, Jang Won-young, Liz, Leeseo

Shedding their youthful image, the South Korean girl group IVE are ready to showcase their mature and confident growth with their latest tour Show What I Am. Since their debut in 2021, the six members have built their identity around the concept of “I,” delivering a message rooted in self-confidence and individuality. “GOTCHA (Baddest Eros)” was a great song to start the show as it perfectly encapsulates the group’s fierce energy. The group barely paused between the first eight songs, focusing all their energy into their dynamic choreographed dances. The group’s catalog is filled with catchy dance-pop hooks and plenty of English lyrics that are fun to sing along to. Unfortunately, it was hard to hear all the members sing at times as the playback music was often louder than some of their voices. However, together the group sounded strong. The best moments were always when they would harmonize together as their voices really complimented each other. It also uplifted the delivery of difficult high-pitched songs like “I AM” and “Holy Moly.” 

The show also featured solo performances that showcased each member’s individual talents. The group sang their solo songs from their latest album Revive+, which each member helped compose. Won-young, arguably the best-known member of the group, got the segment started with her solo track called “8.”The performance highlighted Won-young’s flirty confidence and the clever wordplay had everyone singing along. Rei followed with a youthful and cute concept for her track “In Your Heart,” which showcased her bright and distinct melodic vocal tone. Liz was the only member to come out on stage without any backup dancers for her solo performance of “Unreal.” This made her performance feel more intimate, as all eyes were on her as she belted those stable high notes. Gaeul brought a romantic vibe with her hypnotic whispery performance of “Odd.” Leeseo’s fierce anthem “Super Icy” was a great song to hear live, as the fast-paced, in-your-face lyrics are a show-stealer. Yu-jin, the group’s leader, was the last member to perform with her 2000s-inspired hip-hop track “Force.” Yu-jin has an amazing stage presence; she has great rhythm and isn’t afraid to belt out to show off her powerful vocals. 

The two-hour-long show was filled with a good balance of fan service and performances. The group took several small breaks to chat and get the crowd hyped. For their performance of “WOW” and “Off the Record,” the group just vibed along to the songs, waving and smiling to fans. IVE have great stage presence and are very likable. The group set ended on a fun note with “After LIKE,” the disco pop had everyone singing, “What’s after like?”The post IVE at the Kia Forum, Inglewood, CA first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

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Sony expand WH headphone line-up Sony have just announced the launch of three new pairs of headphones that span their premium, mid-range and entry-level line-ups.

Heritage Audio Herchild 670N compressor review: We’re going to need a bigger rack$3,000, heritageaudio.com

The original Fairchild is an ultra-rare valve compressor designed in the 1950s, famed for its flattering, gluey saturation, having risen to prominence when the Beatles used it in the studio. The Fairchild’s genius is in its Vari-Mu circuit, where compression occurs inside the valves themselves, with a progressively higher ratio as the signal peaks over the threshold – hence ‘Vari’ in the name. Despite the increasing ratio, a relatively leisurely attack means that transients rarely sound squashed, while the overloading valves reveal pleasing even harmonics.

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Fairchild has launched a recreation of the original unit in recent years. You can buy a new one for $30,000, but expect to pay an extra $10,000 if you find a vintage one. It’s no small investment.
In 2021, Heritage Audio created the Herchild 670. This emulates the dual-channel Fairchild for $10,000, using 22 new-old-stock valves and an array of transformers. It has a similar retro appearance to the original, with a mammoth 6U case, VU meters and large knobs, all of which evoke a bygone age of recording.
Two years later, the brand squeezed the essence of a Fairchild into 500-series format with the Grandchild 670/500 at around $2,000. With far fewer tubes, it still sounds sublime, and its stereo design makes it perfect for mixing or on-the-go mastering. This breakthrough gave Heritage the idea for something in-between.
The latest Herchild builds further on the success of these two earlier models, offering a sound that’s in the ballpark of the Herchild 670, but at one-third the price. This feat has been achieved by using fewer tubes and transformers and, not happy to stop here, the feature set even exceeds the full-blown 670 by adding per-channel make-up gain control.
I’m left wondering where the catch is.
Image: Press
Unleash the beast!
The 670N’s form factor is close to the Herchild 670, but with a case shrunk down to 5U. The rear panel is uncluttered, with pairs of XLR ins/outs and a socket for the external power supply. Despite the shrinkage, the 670N still feels huge in my compact workspace; I’d need to be really set on the Fairchild sound to commit to this over similar 2-3U compressors.
Furthest left on the front panel are illuminated VU meters that monitor gain reduction, followed by a bypass switch. Next are two large, soft-detent dials. Input Gain attenuates the incoming signal to control how hard the compressor’s input is driven, while AC Threshold increases gain reduction as the knob is turned up. The ‘turn up for more’ approach for both dials simplifies the process of control-setting.
DC Threshold adjusts the compression response curve, ranging from soft knees for smooth vocals and mastering through to harder knees for slamming drum room mics.
SC Filter sets the side chain frequency, and it’s surprisingly flexible. Not only does it feature the usual lower-frequency areas to stop pumping when mix-bus compression is triggered by kick drums, it also covers other troublesome areas. The uppermost settings, 1k, 3k, and 5k, help remove hi-mid harshness, sibilance and excessive high-frequency presence from drum overheads and cheap condenser mics. Really neat.
Four operating modes offer loads of flexibility and are accessed via the AGC dial. IND is dual mono, where the two channels are fully independent. LINK is used for stereo operation, where compression is applied equally to both channels, and then there are two equivalent modes for LAT and VERT where the channels are encoded/decoded to mid/sides instead of conventional left/right stereo.
Finally, there’s an output dial per channel—the aforementioned added bonus—which is especially helpful for gain staging in IND mode and for manipulating stereo wideness in LAT/VERT.
Image: Press
Mastering with the Herchild 670N
Mastering is the most compelling use case for the Herchild for me, since Vari-Mu compressors excel early in the chain to even out levels and add sustain and gluey tube vibe. Oh, and the 670N would look impressive in a table-style mastering console; its large and tactile controls just beg to be used.
The flexibility in stereo linking modes also makes the 670N a serious contender. And for even tighter control, the mid/sides mode not only offers separate treatment of mid and sides elements but also negates issues of the left/right balance becoming wonky due to the variations between different valves in the unit. When working with mid and sides, you should never end up with uneven left and right channels.
Tackling a folk rock session, I use LAT/VERT mode to remove a couple of decibels from peaks on the master using a leisurely Time Constraint and the compression effortlessly smoothes out all the digital harshness of my otherwise in-the-box production. I squash sides slightly more than the middle, adding level consistency to background vocals and effects while leaving centre-panned lead vocals less compressed. I pump up the output gain of the sides a decibel louder than the mid component and the result is a gloriously wide sound that appears almost three-dimensional.
A subtle bass thump is introduced too—in part due to the transformers in the circuit—and so a little EQ tweak is needed before going into the compressor when mastering. In other use cases, this might be just the thing to add weight to a kick, bass guitar or weedy lead vocal without boom or running out of headroom.
Image: Press
The big squeeze
On individual tracks in the mix, I drive the 670N harder. It gently grabs at peaks, this time extending to about five decibels of gain reduction but never sounding squashy. This is especially effective on vocals, offering tighter control of peaks to preserve the level at the ends of phrases, while breaths are brought closer to the listener to tighten expression. Once again there’s a thicker low-end tone but also a seductive mid-band saturation. I’m surprised by how quickly it is to dial in a luscious result using my ears and a few knob clicks. Who said that adding analogue outboard to an in-the-box production slows things down?
In dual-mono (IND) mode, it’s simple to process two of the main parts simultaneously. Even with just two parts running through the 670N, there’s a definite improvement to the quality of the mix – something that’s not easy to replicate with plugins. In my case, it’s dual lead vocals being compressed in a similar way, but it’d alternatively do a great job at adding a touch of class to a vocal while simultaneously driving the valves harder on the second channel for a gritty bass guitar line.
Image: Press
Should I buy the Herchild 670N?
Clearly, any rackmount, dual-channel Vari-Mu compressor isn’t going to come cheap. The ubiquitous Manley Variable Mu costs $2,000 more than the 670N. Gainlab’s The Dictator and Tegeler’s Vari Tube both take up less rack space (2U and 3U, respectively) and can be picked up for fewer dollars than the 670N, but they lack the stereo linking flexibility and mid/sides smarts that make the Herchild more appealing for mastering and bus compression gigs. When you throw the Herchild’s roster of vintage valves and bold retro look into the equation, it emerges as the clear winner in its price bracket.
If you’re searching for a slick-sounding and relatively affordable valve compressor for mixing and mastering, then you should seriously consider the Herchild 670N. It’s a perfect studio centrepiece that you’ll want to keep reaching for. I’m going to have to suffer the FOMO on this one – all my racks are 4U high.

Key features

Fairchild-style Vari-Mu compressor
4 NOS 6BA6 valves; 2 custom-designed input transformers
Analogue VU meters
Dual channels with switchable link modes
Mid/sides operation
Dedicated make-up gain (output) control
Requires 5U of rack space
External power supply

The post Heritage Audio Herchild 670N compressor review: We’re going to need a bigger rack appeared first on MusicTech.

“When you challenge the norm, you’re always going to have pushback”: Audima Labs’ Sway controller is an indie innovationIsaac Jack and Jeremy Buckley don’t look like your typical CEOs. At 24 years old, the Australian-based co-founders of Audima Labs are more beach-casual than business-casual, with white T-shirts, permanent chin stubble, and stubbies – for the non-antipodean reader, that’s a pair of shorts.
Yet in just a couple of years they’ve managed to get a toehold in the ultra-competitive world of music hardware, delivering something downright exciting in the process.
It’s called Sway. Its purpose? “To allow artists to crack into something new,” states Buckley.
The Audima Sway on the MusicTech Cover. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Offering music-focused motion tracking for note triggering and modulation control, it brings theremin-style magic to the world of MIDI. No keyboard, no fretboard, just a simple wave of the hand and you can conjure a wall of sound out of your favourite soft-synth.
At a glance, Sway looks like any old controller: there are some silicon pads, a few click buttons, a handful of pan knobs, and a small LED panel. The first clue that this isn’t a run-of-the-mill controller is the 16 small black oblongs spaced along the length of the front panel. These are Time-of-Flight sensors, and they emit a pulse of infrared light to measure distance. Together, they track the X-Y position of a hand with pinpoint accuracy and super-low latency, gathering positional data that can then be translated into MIDI, and finally into the synth stabs and filter sweeps you’ll hear in Sway’s promotional videos.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Sway further moves beyond the novelty of hand-waving by breaking the trackable area into a musical grid. You can populate up to 12 note regions with scales, chords, sample triggers – you name it. And you can play it all without ever touching the controller itself. Little surprise then that it’s already become a hot commodity, with mega DJ Illenium taking the stage at the Las Vegas Sphere armed with two Sway units for his 2026 nine-date residency.
“We think [its appeal] is very broad,” Buckley says. “But where Sway really excels is in the performance space.”
“‘Gimmick.’ That was probably the biggest comment. When you challenge the norm, you’re always going to have that pushback”
Sway With Me
When I get my hands on Sway, it quickly becomes clear what Buckley is getting at: this is a controller that not only requires you to move, but encourages theatricality. Playing a melody becomes a series of slaps, jabs and sweeps. Modulating an effect feels like you’re having an intimate moment with a ghost. And all of this is accompanied by neon LED hues that shift and pulse in response to your every move.
“Funnily enough,” says Buckley, “it’s how we naturally move to music, whether you’re in the car listening to your favourite song or you’re DJing, these hand movements translate so perfectly into music. So, to move it from being the reaction to music to then have these movements actually create the music was something that just made sense to us.”
The path to Sway began while both Jack and Buckley were studying engineering together in Gold Coast, Queensland – where Audima Labs is now based. “I was messing around with some ultrasonic sound sensors for measuring distance,” says Buckley. “Building little robots that would navigate around the room.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Both fans of electronic music, and with Buckley having learned piano from a young age, it was a matter of time before they found a connection between their engineering studies and music. “We’d been watching a lot of DJs,” Buckley recalls. “We were noticing how stagnant the DJ actually was on stage – very anti-social body behaviour. I guess that was the first step in this journey.”
Not everyone would have made the leap from critiquing shoegazing DJs to building your own gestural MIDI controller, but once the idea was out there the duo lost no time getting stuck in.
“Jeremy came to me with the idea, and we just started building,” Jack recalls. “First, linking sensors together so that one controls an effect on the X-axis, and then another effect on the Y-axis. Once we got those working together, we started expanding out to four, to eight, and then we started doing XY tracking at the same time.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Eventually, Jack and Buckley went up to 20 onboard sensors before whittling this back to the current 16. Many of those early prototypes are chronicled on social media – cardboard frames, Arduino microcontrollers, tangled wires, and enthusiasm abound. Those online posts might make it look easy, but the pair are frank about the challenge of getting an independent venture like this off the ground.
“Engineering itself is one humongous struggle,” remarks Buckley. “But you’re also building something that hasn’t been validated in the market, and you don’t even know if people are gonna buy it. So, you’re fronting up a lot of cash to get this vision out there.”
By the time early iterations of Sway were seen in public, Jack and Buckley had already been working on the controller for 18 months. Even then, to make the jump from DIY project to shippable product required far more investment than the pair could self-finance.
“We were noticing how stagnant the DJ actually was on stage – very anti-social body behaviour. I guess that was the first step in this journey”
Jump The Shark
An initial boost came when their pair managed to get themselves on the Australian version of the reality TV show Shark Tank, where they pitched their prototype and managed to secure $50,000 AUD in funding. When that still wasn’t enough to move to full scale production, Jack and Buckley turned to crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, launching a social media campaign framing Sway as the future of music making. The campaign caught fire, raising over $200,000 AUD to support the Sway’s initial launch of 300 units.
Crowdfunding was a game changer, but also introduced its own challenges. In comparison to an established company that might experiment, fail, revise, and refine with the benefit of privacy, Jack and Buckley had to perfect Sway in full view of a community renowned for having strong opinions.
“Early on, when we had our prototypes, we experienced a lot of rejection from the market through social media,” Buckley recalls.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“‘Gimmick,’” interjects Jack. “That was probably the biggest comment. I think when you create something that challenges the norm, you’re always going to have that pushback.”
Despite taking their lumps online, both believe that putting early versions of Sway out for critique was ultimately a net positive. “We were trying to get feedback,” explains Buckley. “Saying ‘hey, what do you think of this feature? Is this usable in your workflow?’ As we took that feedback on board, we then reached out to a bunch of local producers and musicians where we live and ran a bunch of sessions in person using prototypes. That was pretty valuable at that early stage.”
Throughout the process, one of the guiding lights for Sway has been its “user-friendly” design, says Buckley. The fruits of that focus are perhaps most evident in the accompanying desktop application that allows for quick customisation of the controller to fit different workflows.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
You can change the layout of Sway’s motion-tracked grid, set melodic scales for note triggers, and configure your LED colour palette. The controller also supports six performance gestures that add MIDI expression to triggered notes – including Pulse, a lifting gesture that adds modulation on top of a note or chord; Press, a downward movement to add note dynamics; and Strike, which ties the speed of your hand movements to note velocity.
All of these can be turned on or off, combined, and saved to presets. Presets themselves can be hot-swapped with a button press or even automated via MIDI program change messages sent out from your DAW.
“We all love personalising and customising our gadgets,” notes Buckley. “That was something that customers really requested early on. Sway is used in such a variety of setups: with DJ software, DAWs, even standalone setups. So things like mapping the playable area was one of the big things, and we could only make that possible with the desktop app.”
“The Sway’s purpose is to allow artists to crack into something new”
Music In Motion
That plug-and-play approach is essential for widespread adoption. Intrepid music-makers have been hacking motion capture devices for quite some time now. DIY projects using the Xbox Kinect, Leap, its successor Ultraleap, and even humble web cameras have yielded fascinating experiments, but very few consumer products.
In fact, with many of those devices now discontinued and hard to acquire, Audima Labs stands almost alone in its use of motion capture for music. Their nearest competitor in this space comes from the ROLI Airwave, but in Buckley’s view the two largely adopt different design paradigms.
“I would say the ROLI Airwave is designed to be a peripheral,” Buckley offers. “It works alongside other products. Here, we wanted motion control to be the entire interface. You can create music with Sway alone. I also think Airwave has taken a more educational route; learning to play the piano, and that side of things.”
“It’s restricted on the performance side of things,” adds Jack. “There’s the camera pointing down, which hides what you’re doing. So [Sway] has always been about the visual aspect of performing and doing the whole thing in one unit.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
There’s clearly demand for Sway. To date, the controller has been released in batches every six months; customers can reserve a unit with a $25 AUD deposit, and each drop has sold out. “For the crowdfunding launch, we did roughly 300 units,” says Jack. “We followed up with batch two, which was around 500 units, and then batch three was 1,200 units. So roughly doubling in growth each time. We’re still in the middle of batch four.”
Incremental releases might seem like a savvy strategy to increase hype but, in truth, it stems from the practicalities of handling manufacturing and global distribution as a small startup. “It’s a bit of a stepping stone, and probably out of the ordinary for most companies,” says Jack. “It’s the only way we can grow organically and continue providing support for customers. There are a lot of companies that go out of business, and then there’s a bunch of customers without any user support. That’s something we do not want to do at all – so this gives us the free run to take on orders, manufacture, and deliver.”
In a music industry where independent manufacturers often wither on the vine or get picked up by large conglomerates, it’s inspiring to know you can still bootstrap a new controller into existence with a good idea, elbow grease, and a healthy dose of grassroots support.
Do they have any advice for those thinking of following Audima Lab’s example? “Expect a lot of adversity,” quips Buckley. “It’s something you gotta overcome: we pushed through, and were able to develop something pretty beautiful.”
Audima Labs’ fourth batch of the Sway is currently open for pre-order.
Words: Clovis McEvoy
Photography: Simon Vinall
The post “When you challenge the norm, you’re always going to have pushback”: Audima Labs’ Sway controller is an indie innovation appeared first on MusicTech.

The Hidden Michael Jackson Vocal & Writing Session That Created an '80s Cult ClassicMichael Jackson wrote, produced and sang on Rebbie Jackson’s “Centipede,” a cult ’80s hit that became her signature song and a hidden Jackson family gem.

Insight Partners’ Devin Parekh on why the firm is diversifying while everyone else bets the farm on OpenAI and AnthropicInsight Partners' Devin Parekh opens up about losing Legora to General Catalyst, why he's fine holding stakes in rival AI labs, and why — even as everyone else piles into OpenAI and Anthropic — his $90 billion firm is deliberately staying diversified.

Rusting an E-scooter (In a Good Way)It is a classic Hackaday situation. You have an Egret GT E-scooter. It has a screen that shows the usual dash stats, but that led to an annoyance. You could accidentally enter firmware update mode and, from there, enter operational mode without the security PIN. [Ben] couldn’t let that stand, so he reverse-engineered the protocol and rewrote the firmware in Rust. As he put it, “… because I have to break… everything I own…” We get it.
The mobile app was useful for some basic info, since sniffing Bluetooth is fairly easy and analyzing mobile code is, more or less, straightforward. Analysis revealed some data that doesn’t show on the display and that several things are sent back to home base tagged with the scooter’s unique ID — another reason to gut the existing firmware.

Internally, the scooter uses the CAN Bus, so out came the oscilloscope and a homebrew CAN decoder.  Surprisingly, the CAN bus is accessible on the USB-C port’s data pins. Officially, the port is only for charging phones, so you have to wonder what your phone makes of the alien signals on the data pins when it is charging.
Firmware updates actually come in at least three flavors: display, input panel, and main controller. Reverse engineering the firmware update process was crucial to installing the new firmware.
If you own a similar scooter, this post is a goldmine. If you don’t, it is still a very detailed breakdown of a reverse-engineering workflow, and you can apply many of the tools and techniques to your next project.
Of course, another option is to just keep the scooter and replace the brains. If you want to learn more about reverse engineering, there are literally dozens of Hackaday posts to help you get started.

Lemur Audio ESTER TUBE EqualizerESTER is a two-channel programme equalizer drawn from a hand-built vacuum tube unit — the kind of equalizer that never fixes a sound so much as it decides one. It has no analyser, no curve display and no surgical band, because the original had none: what it has is five broad, deeply musical sections, each with a rotary frequency selector over its own gain control. The two low sections are separate on purpose. LOW CUT and LOW BOOST are independent, and using them together in the same region — lifting the bottom while trimming just above it — is one of the classic moves this design is loved for. MID CUT starts wide and grows narrower the deeper you take it, so a small amount clears a whole region and a large amount tucks out one thing. HIGH BOOST carries its own bandwidth control (HF Q), and HIGH CUT tames the very top the way the hardware's output stage does. In front of all of it stands the part that makes it a valve equalizer rather than a set of filters: a tube stage, driven by the INPUT TRIM knob, that faithfully reproduces both tubes the original was historically built with — the 6072A it opens on, and the 6N1P. It stands in front of the equalizer, like a preamp, so the drive you set and the curve you shape never pull on each other. Push it and the sound gains density, harmonic weight and the gentle rounding a real valve gives you. Switch it off with SAT and ESTER is a clean, linear equalizer. And both channels are genuinely independent: LINK them for one dual-mono unit, unlink them to treat left and right separately, or switch the whole plug-in to M/S and equalize the centre and the sides apart from one another. At a glance Five EQ Sections LOW CUT, LOW BOOST, MID CUT, HIGH BOOST and HIGH CUT — per channel, each a frequency selector above its own gain control. Boost and Cut, Separately The low bands are independent, so you can lift and trim the same region at once — the move this design is famous for. Exact Recalls The frequencies land on the values engraved on the faceplate, so a setting you love comes back exactly — session after session, on every mix. Level Held While You Work AGCreads the curve you have built and compensates for it, so the loudness stays where it was and you hear the tone you changed rather than the level. Undo and redo sit beside it for the move you would rather take back. Two Tubes, One Valve Stage Both tubes the original was historically built with, 6072A and 6N1P, faithfully reproduced in front of the EQ — driven by one INPUT TRIM knob, with a lamp that shows it working. True Stereo & Mid/Side Two fully independent channels with their own VOLUME trim. LINK them, split them, or switch the whole unit to Mid/Side. YourColour The faceplate's hue is a continuous slider in the panel. Set it anywhere you like — it changes the look and nothing else, and it is saved with that instance in your project. Read More

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OpenAI’s Sam Altman says it would be ‘ill-advised’ to go public in 2026While OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO, the company will not be going public this year, according to CEO Sam Altman.

Big Infinity Mirror Clock Invites You To Gaze Deeply[Andy Huot] has a fantastic-looking infinity mirror digital clock that really raises the bar. It uses high quality components, smart use of RGB LED animations, and a clever “stacked diffuser” vertical design to the 7-segment display elements that really enhances the infinity mirror effect. It needs to be seen in action, so check it out.
The end result is expressly portal-like, with the smooth animations of the LEDs really playing into the effect. The size helps, too. It’s 24 inches in diameter, giving it considerable presence.
The stacked diffuser design for each display element really enhances the effect.
A basic infinity mirror design consists of lit elements sandwiched between a reflective back surface and a partially-reflective, partially-transmissive top cover. That same basic principle is used here, but with great care given to ensure nothing so much as a fingerprint spoils the illusion. For example, the top cover is a disk of acrylic with a 90% reflective film affixed to the inside surface. That’s easy enough to DIY with some car tint, but [Andy] found that for the very best results it was worth having high-quality film professionally applied.
We like the use of 3D-printed custom jigs for soldering the segments of RGB LED strips, and holding the pre-measured wires in place with some putty is a great way to keep them in place while working. In case you’re wondering, the mirrored acrylic making up the back wall has holes in it for mounting each segment’s LED strip in a holder, and running the wires to the rear.
The video (embedded below) documents every step of the assembly, and it’s a serious build. While the design files for the 3D-printed parts are not free, there’s certainly enough detail for an enterprising hacker to replicate the design in their own way.