Scanning for Lifesigns with ESP32 and Raspberry PiIt’s a sci-fi trope that you can ‘scan for life signs’ and detect if there are humans — or suspiciously human-shaped aliens — present, but in real life it’s harder than that. [The Masked Bear]’s wifisense-pi project isn’t really scanning for signs of life, either, unless you happen to consider breathing a sign of life. Even then, it’s not detecting breathing per se, but the subtle motion that goes with it: it’s a very sensitive motion detector that relies on the fact that we fleshy bags of goo disturb WiFi signals with our presence, and motion alters those disturbances.
We’d probably waste a lot of time watching the signal graphs on the WifiSense-Pi dashboard.
The device uses an ESP32-S3 to measure the radio channel 100 times per second, while a Raspberry Pi 4 provides the signal processing muscle. It can detect the slightest motions, and even determine the presence of a perfectly still human by their breathing, though you can hide your presence for as long as you can hold your breath. A single sensor, no matter how sensitive, cannot give position information, and while multiple humans will distort WiFi more than a single one, [The Masked Bear] reports you cannot reliably extract that signal. So this project answers the question: “are there humans in this room?” Or, even more likely, “are there any large breathing animals in this room?” We can’t imagine a 50 kg Mastiff looking any different to this sensor than an equivalent mass of quivering human flesh.
Before you dismiss this as just another motion sensor, keep in mind that it is sniffing the signals already present on the 2.4 GHz band, and, like the WiFi signals themselves, it can work through walls. So we think it’s pretty nifty. Of course, there are many other ways to detect humans, from machine-learning cameras to millimeter-wave sensors to a simple PIR. This isn’t the first project we’ve seen that uses WiFi like this. It isn’t even the first with an ESP32, but it’s an interesting implementation worth checking out.

Bybit adds Unitree, Moonshot AI to pre-IPO perpetuals lineupThe additions come as Bybit’s TradFi perpetuals lineup grows to more than 200 products spanning equities, ETFs, commodities, indices and private companies.

nervosa PREACHERPREACHER is a glitch/reverb/delay/whatever vst. its free. contains weird feedback/delay stuff, distortion, reverb size, etc. https://youtu.be/fROnrbeOTvo?si=XJ7OT-MfAsAcaOpZ Read More

Okina Audio releases Takumi EQ, a FREE EQ and multiband saturator
Okina Audio has released Takumi EQ, a free equalizer plugin with a Pultec-style section and optional multiband saturation. The product page is originally in Japanese and defaults to that language, but you can easily switch to English using the language selector in the upper-right corner. In short, Takumi EQ is a dynamic EQ, a Pultec-style [...]
View post: Okina Audio releases Takumi EQ, a FREE EQ and multiband saturator

JH Audio expand Universal-Fit range Designed to make their renowned monitoring systems more accessible than ever, JH Audio's Universal-Fit range brings the performance and engineering heritage of the company’s custom IEMs to a broader audience, without the need for custom ear impressions.

Gen Z favors ETFs and trades less than older cohorts: BinanceBinance data showed Gen Z allocating a growing share of equity activity to ETFs while trading less frequently and using less leverage than older working-age cohorts.

AROOJ AFTAB JOINS NORAH JONES FOR PODCAST PERFORMANCEArooj Aftab appeared on Norah Jones’ podcast Norah Jones Is Playing Along, where the two performed selections from their catalogs and a cover of Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”

The episode highlights their musical chemistry and conversation, arriving as Aftab continues a series of collaborations and sets off to open select dates on St. Vincent’s orchestral tour.

The post AROOJ AFTAB JOINS NORAH JONES FOR PODCAST PERFORMANCE first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Self-driving trucks are officially testing on California highwaysAurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, two companies developing self-driving trucks, have received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Automatic Naptime with BabyBjorn Bouncing ServoAny parent with a baby and deep pockets– or friends with deep pockets– will probably sing the praises of the BabyBjorn rocking sling chair. A simple spring-loaded sling seat allows you to rock a child to sleep like magic– but you do have to rock the child. In the tradition of fathers everywhere since the stone age, [Ceyhun Karataş] saw that as something to tinker around, creating his Automatic BabyBjorn Bouncer/Rocker with a servo, an Arduino, and some 3D printed parts.
You still can’t leave your child unattended with this hack, [Ceyhun] takes pains to point out, but it will free a hand so you can keep junior happy while tinkering up other toys for him or her. Music players are a popular staple, for example.
You should have plenty of time for such projects, because it won’t take long for you to replicate [Ceyhun]’s invention– it’s only as complicated as it needs to be, which is not very. The servo, a Futaba S3003 which is mounted to the bottom of the rocker in a 3D printed case, reels the baby in with a string tied to the bouncing seat portion.  The BabyBjorn’s built-in spring bounces junior back up. As stated, Arduino Nano controls the servo, with two potentiometers in the build allowing you to control the speed and amplitude of the bounce independently to get the perfect naptime ratio. Everything you need to get started — aside from the hardware and the child– is available at the link above. You can see it in action in the video below, which in spite what you may fear from the Turkish thumbnail, does have authentic English audio, not AI auto-dubbing.
If you’ve got the baby but not the bouncy chair, have a gander at this mechatronic crib that does something similar on a much larger budget.
Thanks to [Ceyhun] for overcoming the new-parent sleep deprivation to document this project and send in a tip.

CarbonDSP Carbon CL-610Carbon CL 610 is a compressor and a peak limiter running at once on a single threshold — one slow and musical for level, one fast enough that transients never get past it. Its knee is fixed, so changing the ratio does not change how hard you are hitting it and you can audition ratios without re-setting anything. There is no threshold control at all: you drive material into the knee, and the plugin holds the point of comparison still while you work. Carbon CL 610 sounds like a compressor you stop noticing. The gain change is program-dependent — the release stretches when a passage has worked it hard and shortens when it has not — so dense material settles instead of pumping, and sparse material keeps its space. Underneath it, a second detector responds in under a microsecond and catches the leading edge of a transient rather than the middle of it. You are not choosing between a compressor that breathes and a limiter that holds; both are running, on the same threshold, on the same gain cell. The thing that changes how you work with it is the fixed knee. On almost every other compressor, turning the ratio up also changes how hard you are hitting the detector, so you go back and re-set the threshold, and by the time the level matches again you have lost track of what you were comparing. Here the knee does not move. Set how hard you are driving it once, then audition ratios freely — the amount of compression stays where you put it and only the shape of the curve changes. It is a small difference in description and a large one in practice, because it turns a two-handed adjustment into a one-handed one. Peak control is where the second path earns its place. A limiter with a time constant can always be outrun by something faster than it; this one is measured in nanoseconds and simply is not. Oversampling up to 32× resolves the peaks that fall between two samples, which is the difference between a true peak you catch and one you find later on the master. Everything on the panel is measured rather than decorative. The transfer curve shows your signal riding it live with the knee pinned in place — turn the ratio and watch it not move. The gain-reduction figure changes colour as the plugin works harder, so you can read how hard it is going from across the room. All 32 presets ship level-matched by measurement, not by ear, so switching between them is a fair comparison instead of a loudness contest. Key Features: A knee that does not move — Change the ratio, keep your place: Turning the ratio does not change how hard you are hitting the plugin. Set the drive once and compare ratios freely — the point of comparison holds still. Two detectors, one threshold — Compressor and peak limiter at once: A slow, musical path for level and a sub-microsecond path for transients, sharing one threshold and one gain cell. Not a chain of two plugins. A release that listens — Program-dependent, 50 ms to 10 s: The release stretches when the plugin has worked hard and shortens when it has not, so it breathes with the music instead of pumping to a fixed clock. Peak control in nanoseconds — Up to 32× resolution: Fast enough that transients do not get past it, with selectable oversampling for the peaks that fall between two samples. Parallel compression built in — Blend, with the output after it: Mix processed and untouched sound, with the output amplifier downstream of the blend — where the hardware it descends from puts it. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Format: VST3, Standalone. System: Windows 10 or later, 64-bit. Host: Any VST3-compatible DAW. Sample rates: 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz. Trial: 7-day demo, fully functional. PRICE: Introductory $49.00 (regular $89.00). VST is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. Read More

Yorkville launch the EL24S With a peak power output of 5000W and a maximum SPL of 143dB, the EL24S promises to satisfy even the most demanding low-end reinforcement requirements. 

KRK’s V Series Five studio monitors feature wireless control, so you can tweak them without leaving your seatKRK has unveiled its new V Series Five Studio Monitors, the latest iteration of its flagship professional reference speaker range.
Featuring a “significant leap forward in both performance and functionality”, this fifth-generation V Series combines KRK’s renowned accuracy and translation with new wireless control capabilities and advanced acoustic tuning tools for the modern producer.

READ MORE: MathSynth is a free iOS synth that turns mathematical equations into instruments

The big new addition here is KRK Mesh, a wireless system that lets you control the monitors from your phone. Through the KRK Control App, you can adjust settings, compare EQ profiles and manage levels without having to get up and dig around your speaker setup.
It’s a feature that’s particularly useful once your monitors are properly positioned and calibrated. After all, the last thing you want to do when fine-tuning a mix is crawl behind your speakers to make an adjustment.
Controls can also be applied to individual monitors or grouped together, whether you’re working with a conventional stereo pair or building a larger Dolby Atmos setup.
Credit: KRK
The wireless controls are backed up by a set of acoustic tools designed to help optimise the monitors for their environment. KRK says the V Series Five has been engineered for professional recording, mixing and immersive audio applications, with the aim of delivering accurate monitoring that adapts to evolving workflow.
Under the hood, the V Series Five uses custom-designed transducers, including woven Kevlar woofers housed in cast-aluminium frames. KRK says these are optimised for low distortion and linear low-frequency performance, while a one-inch silk-dome tweeter handles the high end.
An integrated waveguide is also designed to improve off-axis consistency and imaging, which should help maintain a more consistent listening experience as you move around the room.
The electronics are no less serious. Each monitor features ESS converters, Analog Devices DSPs and Pascal Class D amplifier modules, with 280W of power dedicated to the low-frequency driver and 175W to the high-frequency driver. The result, says KRK, is a setup that delivers “exceptional headroom, dynamic response, and faithful reproduction” across different production applications.
There are three models in the lineup, with the choice largely coming down to woofer size and how much low-end extension and output you need.
The V4 is the most compact option, with a four-inch woofer, a frequency response of 48Hz to 40kHz and a maximum SPL of 113dB. The V6 steps up to a 6.5-inch woofer, reaches down to 40Hz and delivers up to 118dB SPL. At the top of the range, the V8 packs an eight-inch woofer, extends down to 32Hz and reaches a peak output of 121dB SPL, making it ideal for demanding mixing and mastering environments.
All three models feature a front-ported bass-reflex enclosure, along with Neutrik combo XLR/TRS connectivity and support for both analogue and AES3 digital inputs. Each monitor also has a removable protective grille and integrated mounting points for installation applications.

Learn more at KRK.
The post KRK’s V Series Five studio monitors feature wireless control, so you can tweak them without leaving your seat appeared first on MusicTech.

From Suno’s BMG breakthrough to Live Nation’s counterfeit crackdown… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-upThe biggest headlines from the past few days...
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Vibe coding has come for music plugins – are we witnessing a revolution?“AI works so well that now our internal sound designers can build products in two days that would have taken our entire dev team a whole year. It’s unbelievable.”
Casey Kolb, CEO of Lunacy Audio, had no plans to use AI in the company’s forthcoming plugin release. But while most of the music industry has been focused on deepfakes and full song generators, in the last six months something arguably even more impactful is happening in the world of music software. Lunacy is one of many developers just trying to keep up.

READ MORE: Anukari is a unique modelling synth that dares to be different, but how does it fit into my workflow?

“We’re trying to navigate this. It’s very weird; we weren’t even planning for it. It threw everything up in the air, and it was like ‘oh my god, maybe this is the future.’”
AI-assisted software development, or ‘vibe coding’, has the capacity to shortcut old practices, open the doors to complete novices, and have a foundational impact on the field of programming writ large. But what does this mean for audio development? In the case of Lunacy, that meant taking their human-made code and using AI to experiment and iterate on their designs at an astounding rate.
Kolb spent years building his team of human engineers. Talented audio developers are rare in his experience, and refining the development workflow took time. Before AI came onto the scene, the team at Lunacy manually coded CUBE, a sample-based virtual instrument and BEAM, a multi-effects plugin.
Lunacy’s next project, dubbed NOVA, invites people to build, share and remix plugins “like Google Docs for audio”. It never originally involved AI at all, but with the codebase already built, Kolb and his team took the chance to see what more AI could do with it.
Lunacy NOVA. Image: Press
“We had already built by hand a custom audio engine to make our product work. AI already has access to our algorithms and infrastructure paradigms, so all it is doing is coding – putting together the Lego blocks that we’ve handed it.”
If AI is having an impact for companies, it’s an even bigger shift for solo developers. As a former tech lead at Google and first-time plugin developer, Evan Mezeske wanted to combine his love of music with his background in programming. The result is Anukari, a weird and wonderful physics-based synth that takes inspiration from the 3D modelling environments usually found in video games.
At first, AI was simply a curiosity, and he did the first couple of years’ work the old-fashioned way. When Mezeske finally got round to seeing what AI could do, his initial reaction was mixed. “I was seeing it do things that I’ve spent my whole life getting good at […] and now there’s a robot that does my job. I went through a period where I was shocked and disoriented.”
“But at some point I realised I had to come to terms with the fact that this is how the world is now. I was like, okay, well, what does this mean for me? It means that I, as a solo entrepreneur, can’t afford to get help programming. But I can afford Claude.”
The allure of Large Language Models such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini is that you can talk to them in natural language and ask them to execute entire development cycles from design to testing to executing code. Experienced programmers might use it to bridge between languages they’re not familiar with, but people who have never written a line of code can also get AI to build their idea.
The danger here is that this paradigm might result in low-quality, buggy and uninspiring music software, as a consequence of developers not fully understanding the code being produced. This is something Kolb is aware of: “We don’t want everyone and their grandmother to come in and build awful things and share them. We’re trying to really curate the system such that it’s tasteful.”
Evan Mezeske. Image: Christopher Marchetti
Vibe coding might seem easy, but the reality is music software requires dedication and hard work to orchestrate something that not only operates, but performs well and sounds great too. Vibe coding might be a gateway to a new generation of plugin makers, but for Mezeske, the quality of new software will be determined by how much detail, direction and effort goes into the AI and Human working process.
“If vibe coding means I say ‘build Anukari’, it’s going to go off and do something awful. But in terms of the prompts that I gave Claude for the 3D renderer, it was something like a thousand chat interactions, starting with a huge thousand-line design essay and then a thousand iterations on that where I gave it feedback and provided direction. Is that vibe coding? I’m not sure. Personally, I think of vibe coding as somebody providing a lot less direction, in which case I think the results are going to be pretty poor.”
Furthermore, audio development comes with challenges that are highly unique to the industry. As Mezeske found out, audio software has to run on multiple operating systems, a long list of different DAWs, and there are all sorts of features worth considering from MPE to multichannel to microtunning and MIDI 2.0. “There’s just this vast surface area of contact points with other parts of software that are complex. It has to be in real-time, and on top of that it can’t crash. I mean, that’s insane, right?”
Anukari UI. Image: Press
At Lunacy, the secret recipe that goes into their DSP development is not something Kolb is ready for AI to cook with just yet. “It’s not perfect. Earlier this year, we were trying to figure out how Claude Code would fit into our workflow. If you used it on certain deep-level things like DSP algorithms or something, it would often fail or mess something up. It’s gotten better, but we kind of avoid using it on anything that’s too delicate.”
Nonetheless, AI has suddenly made music plugin and software creation exponentially more accessible, allowing musicians and producers to build bespoke tools that fit their needs exactly.
For Scott Young—a producer by night and a former front-end developer—AI helped him overcome personal learning difficulties to build his first plugin. Based in Hong Kong, he couldn’t find many local studios that were developing audio software, and so “found the courage to do it” himself. The result was Acetate, born from a need to create quick club-ready masters for the venues he was performing at.
Scott Young. Image: Press
Although Young’s project began as a means to solve his own problem, ultimately he’s determined to create a high-quality tool that others find useful too. “I wanted to make a statement that this could be done,” says Young. “That it could be done at studio-quality output. Just because I couldn’t do it on day one doesn’t mean that I can’t do it a year later.”
As the barrier to plugin development lowers, we might see a renaissance of plugins that are niche, esoteric, and unique — just as we did at the turn of the millennium with the introduction of the VST standard. On the other hand, we might be hit with a wave of bad plugins, poorly optimised or full of bugs, with bad actors hoping to make a quick buck.
In the current AI-sceptic landscape, getting the balance right for both users and plugin makers is difficult but necessary. For Kolb, it’s a matter of seizing the tools before they are co-opted by others.
Acetate analysis. Image: Press
“If you’re in the camp of ‘let’s never touch it, it’s only evil’, I think that’s wrong. We’re going to get swallowed alive by the evil tech giants if we do that. We need to find out how to harness this superpower in a way that feels creative so we can beat companies that are trying to bypass the creative process.”
At a time when the plugin and software market is arguably over-saturated, AI might—in the right hands— have a surprisingly positive impact on music software.
As Mezeske puts it: “To me, the cool thing about music is the human creative process and the way that that connects to other people. I like the idea of superhuman cyborg people realising ever more of their creative dream in more detail. If the AI tools are amplifying a human being’s creative process and the agent is helping realise that much more rapidly than they could on their own, I think that’s very cool.”
The post Vibe coding has come for music plugins – are we witnessing a revolution? appeared first on MusicTech.

Windows-G releases E-PeakClipper500 as a FREE VST3 clipper for Windows
Windows-G has released E-PeakClipper500 as a free VST3 clipper plugin for Windows. We covered E-PeakClipper500 last year as a JSFX clipper for REAPER, which could also run in other DAWs through the free YSFX wrapper. This new release is a native Windows VST3 version, so Windows users can load it directly without the extra wrapper [...]
View post: Windows-G releases E-PeakClipper500 as a FREE VST3 clipper for Windows