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.
Tim Exile opens up Karst, a node-based modular audio environment built not for tool designers but for songwriters. Cable-free auto-patching, baked-in generative tools and plugin hosting, all running in the browser first, with a standalone app and plugin due in Q4 2026.
beyerdynamic rounds out its pro line with the DT 275 PRO, a closed-back on-ear monitoring headphone aimed at fast, reliable audio decisions on set, in the field, at the console and in mobile editing. Serious passive isolation, feather weight, user-replaceable parts and a $149 price that undercuts the compact-monitor establishment.
1010music’s Bento pocket sampler gets firmware 1.5: the Shredder engine, XY-pad DJ multi-FX and audio over USB-C, all as a free download.
Threshold, ratio, attack, release, knee, and the VCA, FET, opto and tube families: a clear guide to audio compression so you stop setting knobs at random.
Drawmer launches two 500-series compressors with an identical layout: the smooth, natural OC1 opto and the fast, punchy FC1 FET. Around 290 GBP plus VAT each.
A young Hong Kong outfit shows up with a pocket synth unlike anything else on the shelf: the MD-7 swaps ordinary encoders for force-feedback motor discs and hands you its entire DSP engine to hack. Small box, big idea.
Japanese developer Jun Murakami has released Synth-80, which he presents as the first complete software…
Spotted in the latest Syntribe software, the Behringer Mini Pops 7 is no longer a rumor: the clone of the legendary Korg rhythm box Jean-Michel Jarre used on Oxygène is closing in — in RD-78 format, and this time fully programmable.
Asparion spins its modular D700 control surface into a 19-inch rackmount version: 16 high-resolution 100mm motorized faders, 17 RGB encoders, 76 LED buttons and a rare openness to the OSC and MQTT protocols. Available at around $2,299.
ASM has finalized the Sequencer Entropy Deviation engine on the Leviasynth. Firmware 1.2 turns the 16-voice, 8-operator FM flagship’s sequencer into a variation machine — the kind of long-haul software support that built the Hydrasynth’s reputation.