Apollo leads $700m investment into Sony Music Group partnership. (It’s a kind of magic!)Sources told MBW earlier this month that Apollo had co-funded Sony's takeover of Queen's catalog
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Electromagnetic Actuator Mimics MuscleMost electromagnetic actuators are rotating motors, or some variation on the theme, like servos. However, it’s possible to do linear actuation with electomagnetics, too. [Adrian Perez] demonstrates this with Linette, his design of a linear actuator that he was inspired to build by the structure of our own muscles.
The design uses a coil of copper wire in a 3D-printed plastic housing, surrounded by a claw full of strong magnets. When the coil is activated, the magnets are pulled towards the coil. When the coil is not energized, the magnets fall away. [Adrian] demonstrates the actuator under the control of an Arduino, which switches power to the coil to move it up and down.
He also notes that the design is similar solenoids and voice coil style actuators, though unlike most his uses discrete magnets rather than a single monolithic magnet. It’s possible to get more capacity out of the Linette design through stacking. You can parallelize the actuators to get more pulling force, with neighboring coils sharing the same magnets. Alternatively, you can stack them in series to get longer stroke lengths.
[Adrian] hasn’t put the design to a practical application yet, but we could see multiple uses for robotics or small machines. We’ve seen some other neat DIY magnetic actuators before, too. Video after the break.

Phil Dudderidge presented with honorary doctorate Focusrite Group are pleased to announce that Phil Dudderidge OBE has been made an Honorary Doctor in a graduation ceremony at Buckinghamshire New University (BNU).

Ask Hackaday: Is Shortwave on Life Support?A QSL Card from Radio Moscow probably got many 14-year-olds on government watch lists. (Public domain)
Between World War II and Y2K, shortwave listening was quite an education. With a simple receiver, you could listen to the world. Some of it, of course, was entertainment, and much of it was propaganda of one sort or another. But you could learn a lot. Kids with shortwave radios always did great in geography. Getting the news from a different perspective is often illuminating, too. Learning about other cultures and people in such a direct way is priceless. Getting a QSL card in the mail from a faraway land seemed very exciting back then.
Today, the shortwave landscape is a mere shadow of itself. According to a Wikipedia page, there are 235 active shortwave broadcasters from a list of 414, so nearly half are defunct. Not only are there many “dead” shortwave outlets, but many of the ones that are left are either not aimed at the world market or serve a niche group of listeners.
You can argue that with the Internet, you don’t need radio, and that’s probably correct in some ways but misses a few important points. Indeed, many broadcasters still exist as streaming stations or a mix of radio and streaming. I have to admit I listen to the BBC often but rarely on the air. My computer or phone plays it in crystal clarity 24 hours a day.
A future Hackaday author in front of an Eico shortwave radio
So, while a 14-year-old in 1975 might be hunched over a radio wearing headphones, straining to hear NHK World Radio, these days, they are likely surfing the popular social media site of the week. You could easily argue that content on YouTube, Instagram, and the like can come from all over the world, so what’s the problem?
The problem is information overload. Faced with a shortwave radio, there were a limited number of options available. What’s more, only a small part of the band might be “open” at any given time. It isn’t like the radio could play games or — unless you were a ham — allow you to chat with your friends. So you found radio stations from Germany to South Africa. From China and Russia, to Canada and Mexico. You knew the capital of Albania. You learned a little Dutch from Radio Nederlands.

Is there an answer? Probably not. Radio isn’t coming back, barring an apocalyptic event. Sure, you can listen to the BBC on your computer, but you probably won’t. You can even listen to a radio over the network, but that isn’t going to draw in people who aren’t already interested in radio, even if it really looks like a radio.
If you made a website with radio stations of the world, would people use it? Something like a software version of this globe or a “world service” version of RadioGarden. Probably not.
Do you listen to shortwave radio? If so, what are you listening to? Do you listen to “world services” at all? Tell us in the comments. Many careers were launched by finding a shortwave radio under the Christmas tree at just the right age. When Internet access is compromised, there’s still no substitute for real radios. If you want to listen to some of those vintage programs, they are — unsurprisingly — on the Internet.

From Universal Music’s Q2 results to Spotify’s new ‘deluxe’ tier… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe biggest stories from the past week – all in one place…
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Sonos CEO apologises for disastrous app rollout in open letterSonos CEO Patrick Spence has published an open letter addressing the development of the company’s new app, as well as providing updates for its users. 
The revamped Sonos app, released on 7 May, was aimed at making the audio company appear more in touch with customer needs while introducing a sleeker user experience.  

READ MORE: Daniel Ek confirms “deluxe version” of Spotify is coming soon with high-resolution audio

However, two months after its bug-laden rollout, users have faced “significant problems” due to technical issues leaving customers with malfunctioning sleep timers, issues with local music library management, and an inability to edit playlists or song queues. 
Shortly following its May release, the company doubled down on its new design overhaul stating the new app launch took “courage”, a remark described as “tone deaf” by users. 
“We’ve heard your concerns about the app update launched on May 7 and appreciate your patience as we make improvements,” Sonos’ official X account posted, before sharing a direct link to Spence’s online statement. 
The apology letter emphasises that fixing the Sonos app remains a “number one priority” for the company. 
“We developed the new app to create a better experience, with the ability to drive more innovation in the future, and with the knowledge that it would get better over time,” Spence writes. “However, since launch we have found a number of issues. Fixing these issues has delayed our prior plan to quickly incorporate missing features and functionality.”
The CEO continues outlining Sonos’ next moves to ensure customer satisfaction with the new app, giving mention of bi-weekly targeted software updates which will add features and fix bugs. 
The letter also includes a priority list aiming to address bugs with the music library by August and volume sensitivity and error handling by September. 
However, wider issues including alarm reliability and playlist editing will not be fixed until between September and October. 
The seemingly premature app rollout has resulted in an apology from the CEO and company – a move hoping to restore users’ trust in the Sonos brand. As for now, it looks like Sonos are doing as much as they can to meet the needs of their user base.
You can read Spence’s open letter in full here.
The post Sonos CEO apologises for disastrous app rollout in open letter appeared first on MusicTech.

Discrete Laboratories’ Atlas is a FREE Vintage Poly Synth Plugin for macOS
Yesterday Discrete Laboratories launched Atlas, a polyphonic virtual analog synthesizer for macOS. Atlas is inspired by the iconic synthesizers of the 1970s. The release aims to combine vintage charm with modern capabilities while including a comprehensive suite of features.  Discrete Laboratories states, “Whether you’re seeking subtle movement or bold sweeps, the intuitive interface ensures effortless [...]
View post: Discrete Laboratories’ Atlas is a FREE Vintage Poly Synth Plugin for macOS

Spotify Countdown Pages are now available to more artistsMore artists now have access to Spotify Countdown Pages for new release promotions. Spotify Countdown Pages offer a pre-release destination where fans can pre-save an upcoming album, preview the tracklist,. Continue reading
The post Spotify Countdown Pages are now available to more artists appeared first on Hypebot.

The Rise of a Middle Class of MusiciansRecent studies reveal the emergence of a growing middle class of musicians, challenging the notion that only a top tier of superstar artists find "success." How are these musicians finding such sustainable success?
The post The Rise of a Middle Class of Musicians appeared first on Hypebot.

Producers are mind-blown at how Four Tet made Looking At Your PagerFour Tet has explained how he made Looking At Your Pager, and it’s giving producers a surprise.
Speaking on the Tape Notes Podcast, the musician – real name Kieran Hebden – reveals that he made the 2022 song in bed with only 14 tracks, and it took him about ten minutes. He shared the track through his side-project KH, and it’s amassed over six million streams on Spotify.

READ MORE: Four Tet’s production hack for creating “a world” within his tracks so people connect to them “without even understanding why”

However, he begins, “Very, very little work went into it. It just came together, it sounded good, and people ask me about it all the time… these are the sounds I chose in this quick moment.”
“I don’t really use any hardware or any instruments when I’m writing music – it’s always just me and the laptop,” he continues. “90% of the listening and mixing and everything for the music I make these days is on laptop speakers.”
Hebden started forming the track simply by getting an a capella from his sample library and putting it into Ableton – the vocals are from a track by the 2000s R&B group 3LW, and he looped a snippet of the vocals and layered it underneath the sample.
He then took a drum loop produced with the Arturia DrumBrute drum machine from his library and a bassline via Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere, his favourite synth plugin and found a dubstep-inspired preset in its library. Yep, that’s pretty much it.
“Ideally, you’re doing as little as possible,” he summarises. “I pretty much never want to put a compressor on anything. If I have to put a compressor on something, it’s to deal with a problem, usually. I want everything to be as dynamic and open and natural as possible… I’m still thinking about [Nick Drake’s] Pink Moon when I’m mixing one of my club records!”
In the comments, people are reacting with surprise. “No panning. 14 tracks. Kind of insane given we live in an age of endless possibilities,” says one, with another saying, “I love how it’s clearly more about making the music and being in the groove rather than focusing on sound designing and creating every little sound! I feel like because our DAWs are so complex and technical that we sometimes forget we are making music and instead get bogged down tweaking every little thing just because we ‘think’ that’s how the pros do it. Very refreshing to see this legend break down such an iconic tune!”
Another simply says, “Proof that sound selection is everything, thanks Kieran, fucking legend.”
Hebden says that he’s a big fan of presets too, explaining, “I pretty much only use presets on things. I’ll get the melody I want, I’ll get it up and running… and I’ll just cycle through loads of them one after the other until I find one that’s quite nice.”
Check out the rest of the interview here:

The post Producers are mind-blown at how Four Tet made Looking At Your Pager appeared first on MusicTech.

Exploring the Shift Towards a Post-Social EraIn 2024, social media usage, behavior, and engagement patterns across various platforms are shifting dramatically. Are we nearing a post-social era?
The post Exploring the Shift Towards a Post-Social Era appeared first on Hypebot.

KUČKA’s digital world: “I can write music from anyone’s perspective – even someone created from my imagination”Laura Lowther’s voice has been heard by millions. Better known to the world as KUČKA, the UK-born, Australian-raised, and now America-based songstress burst onto the scene in 2013 with an appearance on A$AP Rocky’s seminal debut album, Long. Live. ASAP. Since then, her glassy vocals has been heard on some of the biggest and most influential electronic tracks of the past decade, including collaborations with the likes of Flume, SOPHIE, Machinedrum and Mount Kimbie.

READ MORE: Richie Hawtin is proving why DJs must embrace technology: “It’s about going beyond just putting two records together”

High-profile collaborations and guest slots initially grabbed fans’ attention, but it’s Lowther’s own expertly-crafted electropop productions made them stick around.
“Emotional voyeurism,” she says with a smile. “That’s the technique I’ve been using to put everything together.” Lowther is speaking to us from a home studio nestled in a leafy suburb of L.A, and that ‘everything’ she’s referring to is her excellent sophomore album, Can You Hear Me Dreaming?.
KUČKA. Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
Serving a kaleidoscope of emotions, stories, and perspectives across twelve tracks, the album sees Lowther experimenting with new genres, styles, and collaborators, all while putting fantasy front and centre. “Being an emotional voyeur, I can write from anyone’s perspective – even someone created from my imagination.”
That’s a marked departure from her deeply introspective 2021 debut album, Wrestling, which eschewed any high-profile guest appearances in favour of emotional honesty and full artistic control.
“With Wrestling, I was really strict on myself,” she recalls of her debut album. “I didn’t want to include any songs that didn’t feel 100 per cent true to my own experience. I felt like it needed to be very personal.”
This time, however, she says the guiding principle was ‘no rules’.
Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
“I wanted to really open up the process and have fun with it,” she says. “Thematically, I wasn’t restricted to my own personal stories, I wrote a lot with my wife and ended up with a bunch of tracks that I really liked. At a certain point, I realised ‘OK, this is an album’.”
Taking the concept of ‘emotional voyeurism’ to heart, Lowther says the album contains fragments of real-life stories paired with imagined fantasies, and all overlayed by images she’d find and add to a sprawling mood board. “I can kind of get bored of myself,” she laughs. “In real life, a story might end with you going to the supermarket and wrapping up your day, but when you get into that imaginative part of your brain there’s a million possibilities and the story can go anywhere.”
Album opener, Wasting Time (til the end of the world), dispenses with the here and now in favour of a near-future dystopia. Atop icy synth tones and snappy, minimalist beats, Lowther’s vocals pop in and out like morse code, telling a surprisingly upbeat story of love amidst an impending apocalypse.
Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
“I used a lot of soft synths and keeping them sounding digital was really important,” Lowther says of the song’s production. “I feel like I’m surrounded by digital things constantly, and a lot of the things I was writing about were filtered through my computer in some way.”
A cornerstone of that digital aesthetic was the ’00s classic, BLUE II, from Rob Papen. “Back when I first started producing I actually had a cracked version of it,” she confesses with a laugh. “I always thought it sounded really cold – which was perfect for this album because I wanted the synths to be really crisp and digital.”
While Lowther’s home studio boasts its fair share of analogue gear, she says much of it is used during the writing, rather than the production, phase. “I have a couple of synths that I use to work out chord progressions and ideas,” she says. “My [Sequential] Prophet 600 gets used all the time because it just immediately sounds good and has a vibe – but it doesn’t necessarily make it onto the finished track. The only synth that I pretty much always use is Moog’s Slim Phatty. For certain bass tones, it’s just the best thing.”
Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
A proudly digital production style helps unify the album’s twelve tracks, but, at the same time, these songs are defiantly eclectic. “From the beginning, I didn’t want any rules,” states Lowther. “And that really opened me up to pull from different genres, different ideas. I’d be listening to an industrial track and thinking ‘How are those drums made?’ or asking myself ‘What is it that I really love about this genre? How can I distil it into a four-bar loop?’”
The results of those experiments span everything from the sunny electro-pop of Cry, Cry, Cry, to the quasi-industrial grit of Gross Body, to the ’90s RnB inflected, Heavyweight.
“I used a Korg Electribe ER1 drum machine to write Heavyweight,” Lowther says of her recent single. “You can hear that the beats are quite different on that one. I found a groove and then resampled all the individual layers so that I could mess with it and bring it into the world of the album.”
Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
Resampling is a core part of Lowther’s workflow. Rather than get stuck in old, familiar patterns, she says she’s always looking for the happy accidents that come when learning a new piece of software or hardware. “I’m always buying new plugins,” she admits. “Partly just so I can have that ‘huh, what does this do?’ feeling. I like to just mess around until it’s like ‘Oh shit! Resample that!’ Then, if I’m being disciplined, I’ll chop it up and put it into my sample pack folder in Ableton.”
Can You Hear Me Dreaming? may keep guest appearances to a minimum, but Lowther did choose to include a track made with her most frequent collaborator, Flume. “I was touring a lot with him when I was writing this record,’ she recalls when asked about their single, One More Night. “We had three or four days in New York and I was wandering around with that song in my head and I couldn’t work out where it had come from.” Initially, Lowther says she suspected it was someone else’s melody that she’d picked up – but, after digging through her computer she came up with an old demo recording.
“Turns out it was something I’d written for his last album, Palaces, and then we’d both totally forgotten about it. So, we were in a van driving to the show that night and I was playing him the demo on my phone going ‘we have to finish this song!’”
Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
The song’s accompanying video sees Lowther take the part of a fictional cam girl as gyrating animations and retina-burning colour tones flash across the screen. “It was very ‘in the world’ of the lyrics,” Lowther says with a rueful smile. “We wanted to build out this fictional character and think about who she might be.”
As with all her recent music videos, One More Night was co-directed by Lowther’s wife, Dillon Howl. Since the release of 2021’s Wrestling, the pair have worked together closely, with Howl providing a visual identity for Lowther’s music. “She understands the project like no one else could,” says Lowther. “She’s been actively involved in the ideas and the writing process.”
Despite those years of collaboration, their first musical experiments came only recently – as part of a birthday wish. “I was asking what she wanted to do for her birthday,” Lowther recalls, “She was like, ‘I just want to write some music. Can we do that? Can you produce a song for me?’

“So, she was throwing words at me,” Lowther continues. “Sending me tracks she loves, types of beats. Then she sat there while I was producing and wrote out all of these lyrics on her phone, jumped on the mic and then did it all in one take. It was really free-flowing.”
Though that first song has yet to see the light of day, Howl’s vocals and lyrics can be heard on two tracks from Lowther’s new album. Credited as PESH, the songs – Communal Reverie, and Gross Body – hint at a fascinating new musical direction for Lowther. Underneath Howl’s hypnotic spoken-word delivery, Lowther’s production takes on a rough-edged distortion unlike anything we’ve heard from her before.
“She’s a really conceptual thinker,” Lowther says of her new musical comrade. “She’s got all these ideas that she describes in this extremely poetic way. It’s very inspiring, she’s always wanted to do a musical project centred around those ideas.”
Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
When asked whether we can expect to hear from the newly established PESH, she quickly replies in the affirmative. “We have a PESH session today! We probably have six or seven songs that feel fairly finished at the moment. Half of them are a bit more dance-y, and a couple of them are just weird. It’s a bit all over the place, which is cool.”
Having established herself in a notoriously male-dominated industry, Lowther has had to push back on any number of gender-based stereotypes over her years in the music business. “It’s pretty jarring when people come up to talk to you and say ‘yeah, but who actually produced your track?’” she reflects. “I think for a while I got a bit of a chip on my shoulder from those experiences.”
The casual assumption that a female producer must secretly have a man doing all the technical work isn’t such an issue for Lowther these days—not because the industry has gotten better, she points out—but because she now takes those comments with the pinch of salt they deserve. “I still get people asking those kinds of questions, but I don’t really care. I think I’m more secure in myself now, and more confident.”
Lowther is someone who clearly loves the technical nuts and bolts of music-making. So, we’re curious – does she use any AI tools in her workflow to speed up her process? “I haven’t played around with it much yet,” she shrugs. “It’s definitely interesting and there are certain processes you could shortcut. For me, the fun part is starting something fresh – but the final 5 or 10 per cent of finishing a track can be horrible. So, AI that can help with mixing stuff… I’d probably love that.”
Image: Dillon Howl for MusicTech
At the same time, Lowther has no illusions about the economic impact that some music makers are facing. “I really feel for people who have devoted their life to making music for sync and licensing; that’s the first area of music that is really gonna take a hit,” she predicts. “I’ve got friends who work on TV and commercial stuff and they take it really seriously – when they get a brief, they’ll spend days trying to make it perfect. But already that work is being devalued, the thinking is ‘Why would I pay you two grand when I can make it with an AI prompt?’
“But in terms of original music,” she continues. “I don’t think AI is really an issue. Maybe I’m ignorant, but I think artists have always used new technologies and integrated them into their work. If people can use AI prompts to make music that bangs, that makes people genuinely excited, then I’m down for that.”
At least in Lowther’s own music, we’re unlikely to see any prompt-generated beats and chords any time soon. For her, the allure of music is clearly not just the end result but the creative act itself. “The whole reason I got into music was because I really just enjoy making it,” she says thoughtfully. “I love the process of it – the hands-on stuff of playing keyboard or drumming out some beats, of just losing yourself for a little bit.”
With her album only recently released, and with shows planned in Europe and Asia in the coming months, Lowther could be forgiven for taking a bit of time to decompress. Instead, and staying true to form, she’s diving straight back into writing. “The past couple of days I’ve been making new music and it feels so great,” she beams. “Now that the album is out, I’m itching to write – it’s time to lock myself in the studio again.”
The post KUČKA’s digital world: “I can write music from anyone’s perspective – even someone created from my imagination” appeared first on MusicTech.

Arturia PolyBrute 12: Possibly the most powerful analogue synthesizer of the modern age£3,429 / €3,999 / $4,449, arturia.com
The original PolyBrute was Arturia’s first analogue polysynth and the company basically nailed it right out of the gate. Its Morphée and ribbon controls offer unique options for expression; the dual filters deliver robust sound shaping capabilities; and the expansive modulation matrix is capable of turning a simple saw wave into aural witchcraft.

READ MORE: Moog’s Labyrinth marks a bold new treaty between east and west coasts: “This feels like a new type of Moog”

Upon its 2021 release, the two big complaints were that, in a world where MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) was becoming more common, the PolyBrute stuck with monophonic aftertouch. And six voices just wasn’t a heck of a lot for a massive bi-timbral synthesizer. Arturia addressed both of those issues with the PolyBrute 12 and in the process may have built the most powerful analogue synthesizer of the modern age.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the core sound engine and signal path. There’s still two oscillators per-voice, with saw, triangle and square wave options, including pulse width modulation. The first oscillator has Arturia’s patented Metalizer wavefolder for turning those gentle triangles into something fiercer. The second has a sub-oscillator for adding body, which is welcome because the raw oscillators on the PolyBrute sound a touch thin at times.
Those run into the dual filters, one ladder and one Steiner Parker, which can be run individually, in parallel or serial. There’s three envelopes, three LFOs, a noise generator, a digital effects section and a massive modulation matrix that leaves almost no corner of the synth untouchable.

The PolyBrute’s sound design possibilities are almost overwhelming. It can deliver classic saw leads, gentle analogue pads and even does a decent job with bass (though, it’s not its strong suit.) But the Metalizer wavefolder, FM, Sync and digital effects section (not to mention the modulation options) expand the sonic palette well beyond your typical analogue synth. The PolyBrute does classic analogue, but it can also be one of the most wild and almost digital sounding analogue synths we’ve ever heard.
All of this was already true of the original PolyBrute, though — if you want to know more, we recommend reading our review..
What sets the PolyBrute 12 apart is the new FullTouch keybed and six additional voices. Let’s start with the easiest of these two things to address. Six voices is plenty on a smaller, monotimbral synth, but, on something the size of the PolyBrute, which can stack or split sounds, it can prove to be a bottleneck. If you were stacking sounds on the original PolyBrute, this limited you to three note chords and voice stealing became a major issue. With 12 voices at your disposal, it’s much less of a concern.
Image: Terrence O’Brien
Could an accomplished keyboardist pushing the boundaries of the PolyBrute 12 run into some issues? Perhaps. But most sound designers and synth fans will find fault in the keyboards capabilities.
Adding more voices is a welcome upgrade, but it’s hardly revolutionary — the significant change with the PolyBrute 12 is the keyboard. The FullTouch keybed brings polyphonic aftertouch to the PolyBrute, which is huge. But it does so much more.
The PolyBrute 12 is Arturia’s first MPE-capable instrument and the particular implementation here is unique. Its closest point of comparison is probably the Expressive E Osmose, but even that isn’t really apt. Whereas the Osmose has full-sized keys with something closer to a piano action that wiggle back and forth, the Polybrute 12’s keys are synth action and don’t move side to side.
A button on the left side of the synth cycles between three different aftertouch modes: Mono, Poly and Alt. Mono and Poly are straightforward. Though, the extra expressiveness that Poly aftertouch adds to the already impressive lineup of the ribbon and Morphée controllers should not be overlooked.
Image: Terrence O’Brien
Alt mode has three different sub-modes that you select from the menu: FullTouch, FullTouch Envelope or FullTouch + Z. These each offer distinct implementations of MPE and aftertouch that can completely change how a particular patch behaves.
Regular FullTouch triggers notes immediately when you touch the keys. But, instead of using just the last little bit of travel for aftertouch, it uses the entire travel distance of the key. This gives you much greater control, which can make a big difference since the sensitivity of the aftertouch on the PolyBrute 12 is difficult to dial in. For example, if you’ve got aftertouch connected to the Master Cutoff, it’s basically impossible to have it open up all the way while being able to subtly and slowly get to fully open with standard aftertouch. But with FullTouch, you can gently push individual notes to full brightness and find many shades in between.
FullTouch Envelope uses the travel of the keys to control the envelopes. Slowly and gently press on the keys and you get a slow attack. Press quickly and you’ll get a sharper sound. In this mode the sliders for the VCF and VCA behave completely differently. The velocity slider adds a pluck to the front of the envelope to highlight those quicker more percussive notes. The attack and decay sliders control how sensitive those portions of the envelope are to your playing, and sustain can be used to attenuate the envelope amount when set below 50 percent. This mode is particularly useful with string patches and brighter pads.
Image: Terrence O’Brien
Lastly there’s FullTouch + Z. This behaves similar to regular FullTouch mode where notes are triggered immediately and aftertouch is controlled by the travel of the key. The difference is that the normal aftertouch range at the bottom of the key now controls the Z modulation lane. If you’re playing larger, more spread-out keyboard pieces that require two hands this can be pretty useful since it’s impossible to control the Morphée pad if you need both hands to finger a chord.
These features set the PolyBrute 12 apart, not just from its older sibling, but from most other synths on the market. It offers an almost endless array of options for adding expression and modulation to your playing. Traditional pitch and mod wheels? It’s got those. A 3D touchpad? Sure, why not? A ribbon controller? Haven’t seen one of those in a while; let’s do it. Expression pedal jacks? How about two? A customisable modulation matrix with 12 sources and 32 destinations? Heck yeah. Oh, and of course, four different implementations of polyphonic aftertouch with MPE compatibility. With all the above on offer, almost every other synth is going to look simplistic in comparison.
The combination of a world-class sound engine and tons of options for expressive playing is an obvious winner. But there is a big hurdle for Arturia to overcome. At €3,999 the PolyBrute isn’t cheap. It certainly delivers a lot for the price, but this will almost certainly mean only pros and those with money to burn will splurge.
The original PolyBrute was proof that Arturia could make a flagship quality analogue polysynth. But the PolyBrute 12 proves that it can out-innovate even the most established names in the game.
Image: Terrence O’Brien
Key Features

12-voice analogue multitimbral synthesizer
2 analogue VCOs per voice with sub-oscillator
Mono, unison and polyphonic modes, with split and layering options
3 envelopes
3 LFOs
FullTouch keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch
Morph blends between two separate sets of parameters
Morphée, ribbon and polyphonic aftertouch performance controls
Ladder and Steiner Parker filters
Comprehensive modulation matrix
64-step polyphonic sequencer
3 effects slots with 26 effects
Size: 972 x 435 x 156mm
Weight: 23kg

The post Arturia PolyBrute 12: Possibly the most powerful analogue synthesizer of the modern age appeared first on MusicTech.

Bitwig Studio 5.2 now available The full release of Bitwig Studio 5.2 has arrived, and includes a new multi-band compressor, three EQs, a new clipper and a whole host of additional features and enhancements.

New Toys: Taylor 614ce LTD 50th Anniversary Acoustic GuitarCelebrating 50 years of exemplary guitar making, the Taylor 614ce LTD 50th Anniversary Acoustic is a limited-edition guitar of which 614 guitars will be made. Master luthier Andy Powers' latest offering has a Sitka Spruce top, Bigleaf Maple sides and back, gloss finish, impeccable appointments and Taylor V Class bracing. This bracing is advertised as increasing sustain, and this guitar does not disappoint. West African Crelicam Ebony as the fret board and bridge material also contributes to sustain. Electronics are the Expression System 2 Pickup with volume, bass, treble control and a phase inversion switch for feedback reduction. This is a high-end guitar of fantastic quality and sound.

Maple tends to have a more precise, forward and focused sound than the more traditional mahogany or rosewood. Maple can have a hard sound, and Taylor has taken deliberate steps in the aging of the spruce top and bracing to counteract that characteristic. With the necessity of manufacturing heading towards sustainable tone woods, you will see more use of maple. 

Grand Auditorium is one size smaller than the de facto standard dreadnought, and has become increasingly popular over the last few years. The Venetian cutaway enables players to reach the highest frets. Pictures do not do it justice—this guitar has a translucent white finish that shows the flame of a perfectly book- matched maple back, and a touch of white paint on the top blended smoothly at the edges of the spruce top gives a nice subtle shading similar to a sunburst finish. Taylor calls this Edgeburst.

The appointments of this guitar are definitely premium. The green abalone “Wing” neck inlays are a unique Taylor design. The sound hole rosette is also abalone. The headstock inlays are mother of pearl. The bridge is the Taylor swept wing design. The ebony bridge pins sport gold dots and match the gold tuning machines to celebrate the 50th anniversary.

The guitar plays beautifully as you would expect. Tuning and intonation is precise and this guitar shines for recording. The neck is a touch on the wide side, which is a giveaway that it is designed for finger style players, but still within a width that makes it good for any style. The action is a touch on the high side but still plays accurately and easily, even with the medium gauge strings the guitar shipped with. 

I fell in love with this very special guitar. This guitar is a great addition to any player’s tool kit. MSRP list: $3,999.00

taylorguitars.comThe post New Toys: Taylor 614ce LTD 50th Anniversary Acoustic Guitar first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.