As Microsoft unbundles Teams, it might not have the impact on Slack you thinkOne of the primary reasons that Slack joined forces with Salesforce in 2021 in a $28 billion deal was to give the communications company the clout to compete with Microsoft. For years, company co-founder Stewart Butterfield railed against Microsoft bundling Teams with Office 365, calling it anti-competitive and saying at one point that Microsoft was […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Shure and PAMA Launch 4th Annual Mark Brunner Professional Audio ScholarshipThe Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA), in partnership with Shure Incorporated, is accepting applications for the 4th annual Mark Brunner Professional Audio Scholarship, offered to students worldwide who are pursuing an education in professional audio. Brunner, a long-time Shure executive, PAMA founding member, and leading voice in the audio community who passed away in 2020, had an unwavering passion for education and mentorship throughout his career. $2,000 scholarships are targeted to recipients following their passion for audio in an accredited audio program. PAMA and Shure are specifically interested to learn how the applicants plan to share their knowledge with others in a manner consistent with Mark’s legacy. Scholarship applications are open as of April 1, with a submission deadline of May 31.

Mark Brunner

Visit pamalliance.org/scholarship for more information and to submit an application.

The recipients of the first scholarship were Dennis Freeman from Middle Tennessee State University and Emma Brooks from Berklee College of Music. The second scholarship went again to Freeman and Brooks, as well as Benjamin Nix-Bradley of CSU Northridge. The third went to Freeman and Nix-Bradley, as well as Valor Swezey of University of New Haven.

For more information, go to pamalliance.org/scholarship.

Make music with Analog Lab Play for your chance to win an Arturia MatrixBrute Noir ($2299 value)
Make some music with Arturia's free Analog Lab Play for a chance to win the incredibly powerful MatrixBrute Noir Edition.

Pinkpad, A DIY Laptop You Must Print In PinkLooking to build a laptop all on your own? Check out the Pinkpad, a DIY laptop project that as if appeared out of nowhere, gives you a based on an off-the-shelf Dell motherboard. This build projects an aura of unabashed competence – the website brings you to a different universe, the documentation is as curt as it is extensive, and the build evidently works.
With a Thinkpad x61 keyboard, a reasonably modern (Dell Vostro 5481, Ryzen possible) motherboard embeddable inside, and a 10″ 1024×768 screen, this ~11″ laptop packs a certain kind of punch for what’s a build-it-yourself project. Most of the value of this design is in the 3D files – which were done in Google SketchUp, and the laptop is small enough that you could print its shell reasonably quickly. Not that you should follow the parts list religiously – the screen in particular might just warrant reconsideration in your eyes. On the other hand, we wish you all the luck on your SketchUp journey if you want to modify the shell. It also isn’t lost on us that the parts list doesn’t list a battery in it.
This is an impressive project to see open-sourced, and we hope it can inspire some hackers in the custom laptop building cohort. One prominent flaw of consumer-facing technology is that you can’t always get your devices in pink, and printing your laptop’s chassis yourself is a surefire way to combat this. If this laptop’s form-factor is too commonplace for you, we’ve seen no shortage of custom laptops grace our pages, from miniature ones to CRT luggable beasts, and click on the tags below if you’d like to see more!
We thank [Max_UA] for sharing this with us!

SatCat5: UART, SPI and I2C via Ethernet With FPGA-Based DesignArty A7-based prototype of SatCat5 with custom switch I/O board. (Credit: The Aerospace Corporation)
To the average microcontroller, Ethernet networks are quite a step up from the basic I2C, SPI and UART interfaces, requiring either a built-in Ethernet MAC or SPI-based MAC, with tedious translation between Ethernet and those other interfaces. Yet what if this translation could be done automatically and transparently?  This is what the SatCat5 FPGA-based project by [The Aerospace Corporation] aims to provide: a gateway akin to an unmanaged Ethernet switch that also supports those non-Ethernet links. Recently they answered a range of questions about the project on Hacker News.
The project name comes from the primary target audience: smallsat and cubesat developers, which is an area where being able to route more traffic over a common Ethernet-based bus is a major boon. The provided Xilinx Artix-7-based reference design (pictured) gives a good idea of how it can be used: it combines an Arty A7 development board with a custom PCB containing an Ethernet switch IC (SJA1105), TJA1100 transceiver, two RJ45 jacks and four PMOD connectors, here connected to two UARTs for bidirectional communication between them. Ethernet frame encapsulation is provided using the standard Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP), with more details covered in the FAQ. At a minimum an FPGA like a Lattice iCE40 is required, with an MCU capable of using the provided C++ libraries, or a custom implementation.
Thanks to [STR-Alorman] for the tip.

RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
Sauce
Main artist name:
KingPollo
Release date:
21st Mar, 2024
https://publme.lnk.to/Sauce
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #rap #hiphop

Bandsintown adds Waitlist to gather fan contact info on sold-out showsMusicians seldom have access to the contact information of fans who buy tickets to their shows, but Bandsintown has just added a tool to their growing toolkit that rights that wrong......
The post Bandsintown adds Waitlist to gather fan contact info on sold-out shows appeared first on Hypebot.

Get FREE LIMITER Plugin By Mastering The Mix — CLICK HERE! 🎁
Instead of making jokes on April 1st, we decided to do something more productive for our readers (thank you so much for supporting BPB!). Mastering The Mix kindly provided 25,000 FREE copies of the LIMITER (€58,95 value) plugin for Bedroom Producers Blog readers, and we will give them away on April Fools’ Day. To get [...]
View post: Get FREE LIMITER Plugin By Mastering The Mix — CLICK HERE! 🎁

10 SXSW Music Panels 2024 you can listen to nowSXSW records many of its past panels and makes them available for free to listen to. Here are some notable choices from this year's conference.....
The post 10 SXSW Music Panels 2024 you can listen to now appeared first on Hypebot.

Beyoncés Cowboy Carter breaks Spotify and Amazon one-day recordsMove over Taylor Swift. On Friday, Beyoncé’s COWBOY CARTER became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2024.....
The post Beyoncés Cowboy Carter breaks Spotify and Amazon one-day records appeared first on Hypebot.

Steve Lillywhite Scholarship at Confetti Institute Confetti launch a new Scholarship which aims to provide exceptional opportunities for UK-based students pursuing a career in music production.

Sequential to discontinue the Prophet X due to “unavailability of several key components”Sequential has announced the discontinuation of its Prophet X hybrid synth, citing the unavailability of key components.
Engineered by late synthmaker Dave Smith, whose brainchild included the legendary Prophet-5 and the Oberheim OB-X8, the Prophet X was released in 2018 and is what the brand describes as a “bi-timbral, 8-voice-stereo (16-voice mono) synthesiser that combines samples and synthesis.”

READ MORE: “Spent months making new versions of everything for this and you wonder why I never play EDM festivals”: Calvin Harris responds to criticism that his Ultra Music set was “underwhelming”

Announcing the news on their social media accounts, Sequential said: “Since its debut in 2018, the Prophet X has been a constant source of sonic adventure for musicians around the world, blending the warmth of analog synthesis with the endless potential of sampling.”
“With a heavy heart, we must announce that due to the unavailability of several key components, we’ll be waving goodbye to new Prophet X units after our current stock depletes.”
The brand did however assure existing users that they are “committed to ongoing support”, while their friends at 8Dio “will carry on offering a treasure trove of PX Add-On sample packs to keep your sound palette fresh and evolving.”
“If you’ve been considering bringing a Prophet X into your creative fold, now is the time! A limited number of units are still available at your favourite music stores,” the post continued.
“Thank you to everyone who has embraced Prophet X and made it such a beloved instrument. While production is ending, the Prophet X’s impact on music will continue to resonate for decades to come.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sequential (@sequential_llc)

Remaining Sequential Prophet X units are currently available at $3499,99/ €3499, while stocks last.
In the meantime, check out MusicTech’s list of some of the best polyphonic synths you can buy — at a range of prices — in 2024.
Learn more at Sequential.
The post Sequential to discontinue the Prophet X due to “unavailability of several key components” appeared first on MusicTech.

Give Your Pi Pico Captouch Inputs For All Your Music NeedsUnlike many modern microcontrollers, RP2040 doesn’t come with a native capacitive touch peripheral. This doesn’t mean you can’t do it – the usual software-driven way works wonderfully, and only requires an external pullup resistor! In case you wanted a demonstration or you have a capacitive touch project in mind, this lighthearted video by [Jeremy Cook] is a must watch, and he’s got a healthy amount of resources for you in store, too!
In this video, [Jeremy] presents you with a KiCad schematic and an PCB design you can use to quickly add whole 23 capacitive touch sensing inputs to a Pi Pico! The board is flexible mechanically, easy to assemble as [Jeremy] demonstrates, and all the pins involved can still be used as regular GPIOs if you’d like. Plus, it’s fully open-source, can easily be assembled on your own, and available on Tindie too!
Of course, such a board doesn’t get created for no reason – [Jeremy] has a healthy amount of musical creations and nifty ideas to show off. We quite liked the trick of using old PCBs as capacitive touch sensing, using copper fills as electrodes – which has helped create an amusing “macropad of macropads”, and, there’s quite a bit more to see.
If capacitive touch projects ever struck a chord with you and you enjoy music-related hacking, [Jeremy]’s got a whole YouTube channel you ought to check out. Oh, and if one of the musical projects in the video caught your eye, it might just be the one we’ve featured previously!

TechCrunch Mobility: Fisker enters into dumpster fire territory and Tesla chases FSD revenueTechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Remember in the last edition of TechCrunch […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

ESP-Drone: Building an ESP32-Based Quadcopter For Not Much CashThe fully assembled ESP-Drone flying around. (Credit: Circuit Digest)
What’s the cheapest quadcopter you can build? As [Circuit Digest] demonstrates with their variant of the ESP-Drone project by Espressif, you only need a minimum of parts, with at the core an ESP32 MCU module, inertial measurement unit (IMU, e.g. the MPU6050) and four MOSFETs to drive the brushless DC motors. As the PCB also forms the structural frame and landing struts for the quadcopter, not even a 3D printer is needed, with [Circuit Digest] coming to a total BOM cost coming to around 1,000 Indian Rupees, or about $12 USD.
While this [Circuit Digest] project gets you the basic done with IMU functionality, the Espressif project also has a few expansion boards detailed on its hardware page, depending on the base model of the mainboard you pick. The [Circuit Digest] project follows the ESPlane-V2-S2 version with no expansion boards, but the ESP32-S2-Drone V1.2 mainboard can be extended with position-hold, pressure and compass modules, as well as custom boards. As a derivative of the Bitcraze Crazyflie project, the ESP-Drone firmware also supports the rather nifty cfclient software for remote monitoring, logging and control. This may also be in the [Circuit Digest] firmware, but wasn’t listed among the features.

A nice feature of using cfclient is that you can use a standard (game) controller to control the quadcopter, while also getting a lot of flight data back. The other option is to use the Android or iOS app from Espressif (with source code available via their GitHub) and control the drone that way. Regardless of the method, you’ll be limited to the limits of the local WiFi network in terms of range, which probably resolves the issue of it not having a camera feed to steer from. This makes it arguably more of an (indoor) toy than a DJI competitor, but as a DIY quadcopter project it definitely is a lot of fun, while costing a lot less than most hobbies.