Music Tech Magazine

It’s probably not all that contentious to say that everybody, at some stage in their music-making journey, needs a synth. Whether you’re working on deep, intricate soundscapes, creating pounding dance music or concocting chart-climbing pop hits, taki

In keeping with this month’s synth theme, we’ve rounded up a killer collection of synth-based samples for you to use and abuse in your tracks. There’s over 1.2GB of 24-bit audio including 140 loops, 26 playable multisampled instruments with patches f

£359 native-instruments.com NI has steadily built Kontakt into an awesome powerhouse of a sampler and its latest iteration is one of the most powerful sample-based instruments that’s ever existed. Its flexible sampling stage is linked to an equally f

The intuitive nature of subtractive synthesis and the speed at which interesting sounds can be crafted goes a long way to explaining its enduring popularity in music-making. This means that there’s a huge choice when it comes to selecting a subtracti

Compiling vocals is unlikely to be anyone’s favourite task during the editing process. There is something uniquely dull about listening to the same line of a song on a loop while you go through each take to pick out the best parts. It’s difficult eno

Proper mobile music-making has been a reality for a while now, especially on the iOS format. With a 12-plus-year history, the iPhone has had plenty of time to bed in, so iOS music-making has really exploded, with incredible apps – from full-fledged D

CHOICE AWARD 9/10 It was only a couple of years ago that British company Modal Electronics entered the synthesiser marketplace, with the rather fine PPG-inspired 002. Once I got over the awe factor, things were quickly followed by the all-analogue 00

EXCELLENCE AWARD 10/10 Patterning 2 from Olympia Noise Co offers a fresh and exciting way to program drums. It’s no secret that we have a fair few options to create beats: from entering MIDI data into a DAW or by playing drum notes live with a MIDI c

CHOICE AWARD 9/10 The sample-library market is an area that feels like it has simply exploded in recent years, with EastWest being a key part of a charge towards high-quality titles at sensible prices. While the company has always garnered a great re

The DDJ-800 is Pioneer’s latest controller for its rekordbox software (the price of the hardware includes a licence for the software), sitting between the rather basic DDJ-400 (£250) and four-channel flagship DDJ-1000 (£1,129) in the company’s range.

There are so many companies vying for your cash for interfaces at this price point, what you’re looking for are decent specs, low noise, a good build and a decent software bundle. On the face of it, the 102i from Tascam delivers these. It’s part of t

CHOICE AWARD9/10 Headphones are certainly becoming more important for music production, as more and more people take up this most satisfying of pursuits, only to perhaps find out they don’t always have the ideal setup or space for ‘proper’ monitoring

CHOICE AWARD 9-10 The audio waveforms that are drawn in our DAWs – and that we’re all familiar with reading, editing and generally messing around with – visualise the overall amplitude of the audio at any given point in time. In other words, the wave

CHOICE AWARD 9/10 If there’s one uniting feature of modular systems, it is the complexity of creating a patch that works convincingly polyphonically. But it’s pretty difficult for electronic music to exist purely on monophonic lines, with the restric

CHOICE AWARD 9/10 The benefits of owning a mobile recording device are obvious. Capturing ‘found sound’ is the primary goal, environmental noise and atmosphere that no plug-in can really offer. Then there are those moments of inspiration. A small dev

We looked at the bulk of the new Scarlett range of interfaces last issue in MusicTech. This is the third generation of those best-selling interfaces and is Focusrite’s relatively low-cost entry point to pro audio. The range costs from around £99 to £

CHOICE 9/10 The general rule about Bluetooth headphones is they’re very handy for music listening, but not always the best for studio monitoring. There may be latency issues and the whole Bluetooth ‘thing’ surely brings in some kind of degradation in

Price £29.95 Contact loopmasters.com Rising star Whiney is the latest Hospital Records member to craft a d’n’b pack for Loopmasters and this one includes nearly 700MB of 24-bit audio in a range of formats. You’ll find 201 loops covering tight basslin

Price £34 Contact loopmasters.com This new collection from Loopmasters ticks all the housemusic boxes, with jackin’ drums, lively piano riffs, funk guitars and deep, bouncing basslines. The 1.2GB of audio is divided up into 414 loops and 187 crunchy

Contact bozak.com Aside from maybe the UREI 1620 of the early 80s, the 1970s Bozak CMA-10-2DL is the definitive rotary mixer, originally hacked together from public-address-system mixers by Rudy Bozak, under encouragement from New York club-sound sys