Ableton and Teenage Engineering veterans launch new company and tease first productA new music company has been launched by two experienced music tech veterans, with a teaser of its first product hinting at drums, percussion and resynthesis.
The brand-new start-up, named Forever 89, has been created by Rikard Jönsson and Svante Stadler, who collectively bring more than 30 years of experience from their careers across companies such as Ableton, Teenage Engineering, Reason Studios, XLN Audio, Cycling ‘74, and Spotify.

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The company is described as a “pan-European collaboration” between Stockholm and Berlin, with Stadler providing technical expertise accrued from working on products such as Teenage Engineering’s OP-1, Auxy’s iOS app, the XO VST/AU from XLNAudio, and more.
Jönsson worked at Spotify back when it was still in its start-up phase. He later became Ableton’s sole Product Marketing Manager, bringing multiple Ableton Live campaigns to the market, and later joined its Cycling ‘74 subsidiary as a Product Manager for the RNBO.
Forever 89’s first product is still in its private beta phase and is being tested by musicians across the globe. The company name pays tribute to the era of innovation that characterised the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Little information is yet available on the product, but you can watch a short teaser below:

“We want to be a source for both playful exploration and a reliable tool for musical results,” says Jönsson.
“We both grew up in a time when technological advances made last year’s innovations look outdated. Our vision is to create opportunities for similar progress again,” adds Stadler. “We looked at our own needs as musicians and based our first product on that. We want to be a guiding star for modern musical instruments and also believe it’s important to contribute with innovation in our sector.”
Find out more over at Forever 89.
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Lewitt Audio expand Connect 6 interface feature set The latest Connect 6 firmware provides a handy set of new features such as additional software and loopback channels, flexible routing options and more. 

How Sonible smart:EQ 4 offers a glimpse into the future of AI mixing£109 (individual upgrade prices available from website), sonible.com
Austrian developer Sonible is a leading company in AI-assisted mixing plugins. We reviewed smart:EQ 3 in 2021, praising its unique Group system that lets you prioritise certain instruments over others while automatically balancing the spectrum of each track.

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After listening to user feedback, Sonible has refined the software with a slew of useful updates that make it smarter than ever. But does smart:EQ 4 have the brains to beat out the competition?
What is Sonible smart:EQ 4?
Smart:EQ 4 is a workhorse equalizer featuring 24 flexible bands, global or per-band mid/side processing, and switchable minimal and linear phase operation.
This version has dynamic modes for each band, with controls for threshold, ratio, attack, release and range. This is an excellent upgrade that helps to make it more versatile as it can be called upon for multiband compression or de-essing duties. It could even replace your regular EQ plugin — although arguably still trails slightly behind FabFilter’s Pro-Q3’s toolset, which includes an external sidechain input, a natural phase mode, and Spectrum Grab features.

Is Smart:EQ 4 easy to use?
Visually, the clean, intuitive user interface retains Sonible’s dark but pleasing look. Annoyingly, some of the grey text is illegible with the window at its default size but, thankfully, you can resize the window to make it easier on the eye.
Some useful features include eight recall states, undo and redo, and a superb spectrum analyser that can show and layer information from up to ten different sources, as long as each has an instance of smart:EQ loaded into its channel strip.
A strong addition to Smart:EQ 4 is Auto Gain compensation. To avoid volume bias and make the most effective mix decisions, you ideally want any EQ settings to be volume-matched with the unprocessed audio. Auto Gain will automatically rebalance the output as you make adjustments, which saves you having to do it manually. We find it extremely effective and a great time-saver, but you can easily turn it off if you prefer to do the balancing yourself.
Sonible smart:EQ 4 main GUI
What makes Smart:EQ 4 unique?
The smart:filter and Group functions are the standout features of smart:EQ 4.
To use the smart:filter, select a sound profile from the drop-down menu. Options include a Universal setting, 21 individual instrument and vocal settings, and 22 genre choices — a big increase to the 14 in the previous version.
There’s a little more going on under the hood as well, as the plugin can recognise different kinds of instruments and will draw upon slightly different profiles as required.

In smart:EQ 4, you can load in any reference track to generate an EQ profile, which massively opens up the flexibility of the plugin. This could have a range of uses, from matching the profile of one vocal mic to another to using a more specific sound of another recording as a reference point for a mix.
The plugin will listen to a section of the track and then generate a setting that will shape your audio to fit the selected profile. The central graph shows adjustments across the spectrum, and you can change the amount and the width across the frequency range.
A new option allows you to add smoothing to the EQ curve, resulting in a less detailed adjustment and a more subtle, broad-strokes approach. If you increase the value of the Adaptive control, the curve will change in real-time to bring your audio closer to the target. This is where smart:EQ really goes beyond what’s possible with more traditional match EQ techniques, as it can dynamically react to your audio as it changes.
As a nice bonus, you can now add a second smart:filter band, which means you can target different parts of the spectrum with varying amounts of processing.
Sonible smart:EQ 4 Dynamic EQ
What is Sonible smart:eq’s Group mode?
The smart:filter can be highly effective at cleaning your audio, but a good mix is about balancing more than a single track. Happily, the Group mode now lets you balance up to 10 tracks in a single window.
By creating a new group and dragging each instance to the Front, Middle, or Back ‘lanes’ in the interface, smart:EQ will duck the competing frequencies to help let the most important elements shine.
As smart:EQ 4 now has remote control functions, you can edit multiple instances of the plugin from a single window, which is a boon to your workflow. You also have the choice between three different modes for dealing with how the tracks are processed. Track mode means each plugin will make balancing adjustments independently, Group mode just makes the relevant moves to unmask the audio, and Track+Group will do both.
To put it to the test, we load up multiple instances of smart:EQ 4 onto an unmixed track, then fire up Group mode and place each one into the Front, Middle and Back slots, before selecting the appropriate profiles.

A simple click of the Learn All button whilst the track is playing, and 10 seconds later we’re presented with a cleaner sounding mix, with resonances tamed and low-mid build-ups reduced. Is it perfect? Not quite, but as a starting point, it’s very impressive, and ten minutes of fine-tuning later we have a decent and well-balanced mix that can be used as a springboard for further processing.
It’s more natural sounding than the results from iZotope’s Neutron 4, which tends to sound a little too bright and doesn’t (currently) let you prioritise a lead track to take the focus.
The big downside is that Group mode doesn’t work dynamically. The specific frequency dips in your musical tracks that create space for your lead vocal won’t follow its movement and duck dynamically when the vocal is playing.
We were hoping that smart:EQ 4 might be a useful replacement for tools such as Wavesfactory’s TrackSpacer or Mastering The Mix’s Fuser, however, with static ducking, the results aren’t as transparent as they could be.
It would also be useful when mixing in Group mode if you could mute or solo certain tracks, and perhaps even change the volume, as this would mean you could potentially work on the balance of a whole mix (or most of a mix, depending on how many channels you have) from a single window.
Sonible smart:EQ 4 Group Editing mode
Should you buy Sonible smart:EQ 4?
Ultimately, these are minor quibbles, and smart:EQ 4 is an awesome plugin. Even if the profiles might not cover every single instrument or genre, the fact that you now can generate your own makes this much more flexible. Combine this with the improved profiles, dynamic bands, Auto Gain, and the ability to remotely control other instances, and you’ve got a plugin at the forefront of the mixing assistant revolution.
The way smart:EQ 4 treats the mix as a whole is nothing short of revolutionary and should be seen as the way forward for these types of plugins. The smart spectral presets provide decent results off the bat, but the enticing workflow also invites you to make it your own.
Sonible smart:EQ 4 Spectrum Analyser
Key features

VST, VST3, AU and AAX plugin
Dynamically matches your track to a profile spectrum
24 flexible EQ bands
1 universal, 21 instrument, and 22 genre profiles
Reference track loading
Global or per band Mid/Side
Group mode lets you load and unmask up to 10 instances
Multi-track analyser
New dynamic EQ mode
New smoothing for spectral curve
New remote control lets you edit multiple instances from one plugin
New Auto Gain feature

The post How Sonible smart:EQ 4 offers a glimpse into the future of AI mixing appeared first on MusicTech.

How Booking Agents NegotiateListen on your favorite podcast platform: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Acast JJ Cassiere is the co-founder of 33 & West, an independent talent agency that specializes in the representation of established and emerging musicians, comedians, and film & television entertainment professionals. Utilizing his 20+ years of experience, Cassiere oversees the diverse Music Touring Department alongside his partners, and […]

Autonomous vehicle company Motional is about to lose a key backerAutonomous vehicle company Motional is losing capital support from one of its primary backers as it aims to commercialize a robotaxi service in 2024. Automotive supplier Aptiv — the other half of a $4 billion joint venture with Hyundai that created Motional — said Wednesday it will no longer allocate capital towards the endeavor. “While […]
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We Are Moving The Needle’s First Annual Resonator Awards: Alanis Morissette, Corinne Bailey Rae, Caroline Polachek and morePowerhouse of the Year Award Award winner Catherine Marks, boygenius (Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus) 

We Are Moving The Needle, a non-profit organization that is radically reshaping the future of the recording industry by advancing gender equity for producers and engineers, held its inaugural Resonator Awards in Los Angeles last night, honoring six extraordinary women for their work in the recording studio as producers, engineers and mixers: Alanis Morissette, Corinne Bailey Rae, Caroline Polachek, Catherine Marks, Laura Sisk and Jennifer Decilveo. Resonator Impact Awards were also presented to music executives Michael Goldstone of Mom+Pop Music and Christine Thomas of Dolby Labs for their commitment to advancing gender equity across the music industry. Shirley Manson, boygenius, Jack Antonoff, Ariel Rechtshaid, FLETCHER, Autumn Rowe and We Are Moving the Needle founder/award-winning mastering engineer Emily Lazar were on hand to present the awards. 

Emily Lazar, Luminary of the Year Award winner Alanis Morissette and Shirley Manson- photo credit: Christopher Polk

Exceptional Ears Award winner Laura Sisk, Jack Antonoff - photo credit Christopher Polk

Harmonizer Award winner Corinne Bailey Rae and Emily Lazar - photo credit Rich Polk

The evening also featured stripped-down performances by Empress Of, Sasami, and a fiery cover of Morissette’s hit "Hand In My Pocket" by Remi Wolf. SiriusXM on-air personality and creator of the LSQ podcast Jenny Eliscu hosted the Resonator Awards, which were empowered by EqualizeHer. Artists, producers and music industry executives filled the audience at the Resonator Awards, including Thundercat, Bethany Cosentino, Christina Perri, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, Lisa Loeb, Shailene Woodley, and more.

The 2024 Resonator Awards

Luminary of the Year Award - Alanis Morissette presented by Shirley Manson

Powerhouse of the Year Award - Catherine Marks presented by boygenius

Catherine’s credits include: Alanis Morissette, boygenius, The Killers, Wolf Alice. 

Exceptional Ears Award - Laura Sisk presented by Jack Antonoff

Laura’s credits include: Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Jack Antonoff. 

The Golden Trifecta Award - Caroline Polachek presented by Ariel Rechtshaid

Harmonizer Award - Corinne Bailey Rae presented by Autumn Rowe

The All-Star Award - Jennifer Decilveo presented by FLETCHER

Jennifer’s credits include: Miley Cyrus, Hozier, Andra Day, FLETCHER, Galantis. 

The Transformer Award — Michael Goldstone, Founder/Owner at Mom+Pop Music presented by Emily Lazar

The Equalizer Award — Christine Thomas and Dolby Laboratories - presented by Emily Lazar 

4 key time management strategies for musicians
Here are four time management strategies that can help you make 2024 your most productive year yet for your music.

These producers are using the Amen break as a granular synthesizer and it’s awesomeProducers are taking the Amen break – a 1969 drum break performed by The Winstons’ Gregory Sylvester Coleman that has been sampled on thousands of tracks – and turning it into a granular synthesizer, and the results are pretty cool.

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The break has been sampled 6,296 times (officially, at least), according to WhoSampled, taking the top spot as the most sampled loop in music history. And it’s now taken on a new form.
If you aren’t familiar with the premise, granular synthesis is where a sound is broken down into tiny particles which are then micro-sampled, creating new textures out of pre-existing sounds.
The wave of Amen Break granular synthesis remixes was snowballed by Virtual Riot who posted this version, titled death by amen on YouTube:

Fans in the comments quickly spotted that the producer managed to construct Gourmet Race from the Super Smash Bros soundtrack using the Amen break, before dropping into Satisfaction by Benny Benassi and The Biz.
As a result, fellow producers decided to try it out for themselves. Here are some of the best ones:

British DJ Sub Focus recently shared his thoughts on the Amen break. In an episode of Tape Notes in July 2023, he broke down how he likes to process it in Ableton Live.
“The way I’ve used is slightly old school,” he explains. “I’ve chopped it up in a sampler and I change the transpose of it as the pattern goes on to give it variation. It slightly shifts up and down as the variation goes on.
“It’s mad the intimate knowledge you get of these breaks. Everyone has manipulated these tiny bits of audio hundreds of thousands of times and there’s loads of ways of interpreting this small batch of source material. If you’re a drum ‘n’ bass producer, you just become familiar with the varieties of Amen.”
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Sennheiser announce HD 490 PRO headphones Sennheiser claim that this new line offers exceptional clarity, comfort, and reliability, and have been specifically crafted to meet the demands of modern music production.

TikTok accuses UMG of ‘greed above the interests of artists’ [Full Text]TikTok has responded to UMG’s announcement that it will pull all its music off the popular platform today, January 31, 2024, after the two could not reach a new licensing. Continue reading
The post TikTok accuses UMG of ‘greed above the interests of artists’ [Full Text] appeared first on Hypebot.

Universal Music to pull all music off TikTok as deal expires: Full text of letter to artists and songwritersUniversal Music Group and UMG Publishing Group say they will pull all their music off TikTok and the TokTok Music Service worldwide today after it could not negotiate a new. Continue reading
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If niche is music’s new mainstream, how do you measure success? [Hanna Kahlert of MIDiA]“It seems that the 1000-stream artist is both everyman’s trash and everyman’s treasure… and is being thrown under the bus to ensure the more ‘successful’ artists are compensated,” writes Hanna. Continue reading
The post If niche is music’s new mainstream, how do you measure success? [Hanna Kahlert of MIDiA] appeared first on Hypebot.

NAMM 2024: Waves’ SuperRack LiveBox lets you “mix live with any VST3 plugins”NAMM 2024: Waves has unveiled two new products, the SuperRack LiveBox and a new version of its eMotion LV1 Live Mixer.

READ MORE: NAMM 2024 recap: All the biggest synth, studio, DJ and software releases

Announced during a jam-packed NAMM Show last week, the brand – “the world’s leading developer of professional audio signal processing technologies and plugins” – didn’t hold back on showcasing new products such as its 2023-launched AI-powered Waves Online Mastering tool, several new plugins and two brand new bits of hardware
Waves SuperRack LiveBox
The first to mention is the new SuperRack Livebox. It’s a user-friendly compact solution that lets you “mix live with any VST3 plugins” from “one simple box”. The unit, which you can mount in your rack in your studio, runs VST3 plugins from any brand thanks to Dante/MADI connectivity, ensuring seamless live production setups.
For the unawares: Dante and MADI are digital audio networking technologies. Dante, by Audinate, sends audio over Ethernet networks, simplifying setup and routing. MADI (Multichannel Audio Digital Interface) transmits multiple audio channels over a single cable, commonly used in professional audio for high-quality signal transfer between consoles and recorders.
The SuperRack LiveBox, according to Waves, delivers low latency. The included Waves SuperRack Performer software provides control over VST3 plugins.
Waves eMotion LV1 Live Mixer
Waves also announced a new product called the Waves eMotion LV1 Live Mixer at NAMM. It’s a digital audio mixing system that offers high-quality sound mixing capabilities for live events, broadcasts, and streaming.
Originally launched in 2016, this new updated version now includes compatibility with the MixMirror app for iOS tablets, enabling remote control of the LV1 and SuperRack.
There are also new expanded gain mapping options, a new mix bus input fader mode, improved touch usability, and bug fixes.
New Waves plugins: Space Rider, Feedback Hunter & Silk Vocal
Aside from these new announcements, Waves also revealed that it will now be “shipping” (ie. launching) three new plugins – Space Rider, Feedback Hunter and Silk Vocal.
Space Rider is a multi-effect plugin combining reverb, delay, and chorus. Its unique ‘Rider’ function dynamically shapes mixes, streamlining routing and automation processes.
Waves Feedback Hunter plugin swiftly optimises live sound setups, maximising gain before feedback in just 30 seconds. It analyses mic-speaker interaction, creating an EQ curve for clear sound, and eliminating the need for speaker ringing. Easy-to-use interface suits both seasoned engineers and beginners, with customisable settings for complex environments.
Silk Vocal balances vocals with smart EQ and dynamics processing. It removes common issues like resonance, boominess, and harshness, streamlining mixing. Additional controls fine-tune processing, while Silk Vocal Live offers real-time processing with reduced latency. It’s an intuitive tool for professional vocal mixing.
Find out more about the SuperRack LiveBox, the updated eMotion LV1 Live Mixer, Space Rider, Feedback Hunter & Silk Vocal plugins via Waves.
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Music.AI launches third-party AI modules Masterchannel and Cyanite on its platformAI-powered music solutions platform Music.AI has launched two third-party AI modules on its platform that are now available to all users: Masterchannel’s AI mastering and spatial audio mastering and Cyanite’s AI-based music tagging and search solutions.

READ MORE: NAMM 2024 recap: All the biggest synth, studio, DJ and software releases

With the introduction of the new modules, Music.AI expands its hub of best-in-class AI technologies, offering businesses an array of drag-and-drop modules from multiple suppliers in a single platform.
The result, it says, is the creation of an ecosystem on the platform for companies looking to build a foundation and quickly adopt AI into their workflows at scale needless of a in-house research and development team.
Masterchannel, for one, has been pioneering industry-first AI approaches to conventional mastering and now also spatial audio mastering. Digital streaming platforms have recently created incentives for labels to create spatial audio mixes for their platforms. Leveraging Music.AI, record labels can now easily combine Music.AI’s high-fidelity stem separation with Masterchannel’s Spatial Audio Mastering module to efficiently process and remaster extensive catalogues.
Cyanite, on the other hand, provides AI-based solutions that automatically generate comprehensive creative metadata for every song or catalogue in seconds. From genre and mood to instruments and tempo, Cyanite extracts a rich set of valuable tags directly from any audio file. Together with state-of-the-art search algorithms, this helps labels, publishers, production music libraries, DSPs, and radio and TV stations better and more efficiently organise, manage, and distribute their media catalogues.
“With a blend of creativity and expertly developed AI models, Music.AI is well-positioned to become the world’s most comprehensive and capable AI ecosystem specialising in music and audio,” says Matt Henninger, VP of Sales and Business Development. “We realise that it’s rarely a single AI technology that a partner needs to leverage, so we built an ecosystem capable of combining multiple technologies in a single place.”
The company adds that it plans to partner with specialists in the coming months to launch more AI-driven solutions that can be combined, integrated, and deployed quickly.
Learn more at Music.AI.
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It’s settled: Logic Pro is the best digital audio workstation in the world, at least according to the NAMM TEC AwardsThe battle for best digital audio workstation could finally be over, as the 2024 NAMM TEC Awards has given Apple’s Logic Pro with the title of Best Workstation Technology.

READ MORE: Universal Music Group pulls entire song catalogue from TikTok after fiery open letter

The NAMM TEC Awards aims to celebrate technical achievement and design, in areas including microphones, headphones, DJ technology, monitors and DAWs.
Logic Pro didn’t just win in the best digital audio workstation category; it also achieved the top spot for top audio app for smartphones and tablets.
The software has received its fair share of upgrades in recent months, including a Mastering Assistant. This offers creators a “quick and easy way to add that final professional polish for a release-ready mix”.
As Apple explains, once a mix is complete, Mastering Assistant can instantly analyse the audio and make “expert refinements to the sound, adjusting elements such as the dynamics, frequency balance, timbre and loudness”.
Apple’s developments in spatial audio has also set the DAW apart from the rest of pack, meaning producers can now create and mix music in three-dimensional audio.
MusicTech also awarded the iPad version of the software a 9/10, calling it “the most powerful way to produce music on the platform”, thanks to its use of intuitive multi-touch gestures, and it’s 96 kHw recording capabilities.
Other TEC winners include Native Instrument’s Traktor Pro for DJ production technology, and Universal Audio’s Volt 476P for best computer audio hardware.
The latter has been praised in helping achieve “album ready sound”, including an analogue compressor based on one of the most coveted compressors/limiters of all time – UA’s iconic 1176.
See the full list of winners over at the NAMM TEC Awards.
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