After 20+ years in professional audio: live sound engineering, studio technical direction (Deep Forest, Pierre Jacquot), head of digital marketing at Playback.fr. A first-hand witness to the analog-to-digital shift, I track the whole audio landscape and break it down here — no fluff.
Announced in spring, the Behringer D Mini is now available. This three-voice paraphonic analogue synth, inspired by the Minimoog Model D, packs a sequencer, a 27-key capacitive keyboard and a Moog-style ladder filter, all for €99 (around $120).
For its fiftieth anniversary, Harrison enters the interface market with the Flex-10, a 10-in/12-out, 32-bit/192 kHz unit that borrows the ergonomics of a console channel strip, transformer-saturation preamps and filters inherited from the legendary 32 Series.
Twisted Electrons brings its cult MEGAfm, the FM synth with a Sega-chip snarl, into a plugin that models the first-generation hardware down to its analog output stage. Twelve voices, four operators, eight algorithms, and an intro price of just €39.99.
Frequency modulation synthesis has a reputation for being obscure. Yet it rests on a handful of simple ideas: operators, frequency ratios and modulation depth. Here’s how it builds its bell tones, metallic basses and electric pianos.
sonicLAB has given Creation, its spatial granular instrument driven by a gravitational physics engine, a major version 2. It now handles up to 9,999 sound objects, reworks stereo depth and its resonant filter, and records both audio and video offline, sample-accurate.
REISEI puts spectrum analysis, EQ, dynamics, saturation, stereo imaging and limiting on a single screen, and adds a PARTIAL EQ mode built on additive resynthesis that locks onto each harmonic and follows it as the note moves. macOS Apple Silicon only, $299 at launch.
The line array redefined concert sound, yet its principle is still widely misunderstood. Source coupling, near-field summation, curvature, vertical control and system alignment: here’s what makes a line source carry far and cover evenly — and what it doesn’t do — without the needless jargon.
Five years after it was announced, the BCR32 is up for pre-order at €169. The 32-encoder MIDI controller revives the legendary BCR2000, but this time it bakes the 4-track Zaquencer sequencer straight into the firmware, with four CV/Gate outputs to drive a whole rack of gear.
Suno beefs up its in-browser workstation: MIDI recording and editing on the timeline, a built-in wavetable synth, proper audio effects and a chat bar that can build its own plugins. AI generation edges closer to a real DAW — analysis and opinion.
Boutique maker Ghost In Translation revives its Drone as a 2.0: an 8HP Eurorack module stacking four independent voices, sixteen synthesis algorithms and a gesture recorder onto a fully open platform. Here is why the tiny format is worth a look for texture builders.