Abbey Road Red’s Monthly Round-up – May 2022 Edition

Abbey Road Red’s Monthly Round-up – May 2022 Edition

8th June 2022

What are the music tech stories you should know about from May?


Here’s the third instalment of a new series sourced by our innovation arm Abbey Road Red and their research across the music technology and start-up ecosystem. Each month, Abbey Road Red's Karim Fanous and David Fong will present a short overview of their top stories — view this month's selection!

 

  1. It has been an active month in beats / sample pack marketplaces as Beatport, UnitedMasters and Beatopia have all launched their own beats / sample pack marketplace platforms


Beats / sample marketplaces have been taking the creator world by storm via platforms including Splice and Tracklib to name a couple, and a wave of new platforms is now upon us. The first of these is Beatport’s Beatport Sounds label which will drop exclusive artist samples every month made by dance music artists such as Steve Lawler, object blue and Marshall Jefferson, as well as dedicated genre packs. Independent artist distribution platform UnitedMasters has launched its Beat Exchange marketplace allowing creators to buy or license beats from both emerging and established producers like Hit-Boy and Turbo. Finally, Beatopia is the latest player in the space launched by sound-effects library Soundsnap which gives creators full rights to 5 beats per month to use in whichever content they desire.

 

  1. GPU Audio gives away free convolution reverb as it strives to make GPU-based audio processing the norm


Plug-ins have become increasingly CPU-hungry in recent times as their modelling algorithms become more complex. Some plug-in manufacturers, for instance Universal Audio, solve the problem by offering their own audio digital signal processing chips. GPU Audio is aiming to offer an alternative solution by harnessing the tuned processing power of the graphics card found inside any PC to run plug-ins in real-time with low latency inside it.

A trick AI devs have been using for a while too. The first plug-in of its proprietary suite of VST3G plugins which you can download for free is its FIR Convolution reverb which works by offloading DSP onto a computer’s local or remote GPU to increase performance by allowing real-time parallel audio processing, so that your CPU is free to do other core tasks within your DAW.

 

  1. MOD Devices made a guitar synth you can actually play like a synth – so your guitar is the CV


Extending the sounds possible using the electric guitar while not losing out on playability is a dream for many guitarists. MOD Devices has swept in to change the state of things with a unit that gives a guitarist access to a complete modular rig of synths and effects which you can play using your guitar and foot, along with additional footswitches assignable to filter sweeps, modulation and note bends.

 

  1. Check out Audiomovers’ new plugin OMNIBUS, which offers a virtual patch bay for your Mac


Audiomovers has released a great application for remote collaboration which allows creators to send and receive audio between apps and combine the audio from multiple applications into one audio stream. Check it out here.



 
 

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