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.
discoDSP pushes its OPL FM synth to version 3.0, a ground-up rewrite that drops the old OPL2 emulation for Yamaha’s YMF262 chip, better known as OPL3. Eight waveforms per operator, up to 16x oversampling and a resolution-independent GUI: that unmistakable ’90s soundcard tone gets sharper without losing its bite.
Teenage Engineering turns its EP-133 platform into a machine built for reggae, dub and dancehall. The real story isn’t the King Jammy and Mad Professor sound library, it’s Supertone: the first onboard synth engine in the EP range.
Kush Audio relaunches its Omega saturator line with reworked filtering and workflow. Model A leads the way: same trusted distortion algorithms as before, but one knob and a tonal rework that changes everything.
The Kush Audio Omega 2 boils harmonic saturation down to a single knob. Around that simple idea, here are eight plugins that colour, thicken and analogue-ise your tracks, from the essential freebie to the paid reference — sorted honestly: the true equivalents, the multiband variant, and the tape cousins.
In broadcast, a peak meter tells you nothing about perceived volume. Loudness, measured in LUFS and framed by standards like EBU R128, has become the way to level radio, TV and streaming programmes. This guide explains what these standards measure, why they exist, and how to actually use them.
1010music went back to the drawing board for its cult sampler. The blackbox 2 keeps the pocket form factor but doubles the processing power, moves to a 4-inch touchscreen, adds internal battery power and a brand-new granular engine. Available now at $649 / £579.
On Bastille Day, Europe’s largest open-air classical concert was captured at the Champ-de-Mars on a fully redundant audio-over-IP infrastructure. Radio France built front-of-house, monitoring and international distribution around Lawo mc²56 consoles and a doubled A__UHD Core, over RAVENNA.
Pittsburgh Modular is teasing the return of its most beloved synth voice. The Lifeforms SV-2 swaps its Eurorack ancestor’s rack format for a full keyboard, promises paraphonic and duophonic modes, and gets its official reveal on August 11.
The microphone maker beefs up its virtual monitoring plug-in. Space Replicator 2.0 rebuilds real studios and listening spaces inside your headphones, and now gives every space its own EQ and ambience control so your mixes finally translate.
The format that moved music production into the computer is turning thirty. Steinberg is re-releasing five of its earliest plugins — Neon, VB-1, CS-40, LM7 and Karlette — rebuilt as 64-bit VST3 and free, alongside a run of updates and sales.