CDM
cdm.link · Group blog · on HN since 2016
Peter Kirn's Create Digital Music covers music technology news, including synths, audio software, plug-in formats, and industry changes.
What HN saysCommenters recommend it as a favorite and an excellent resource for music production tech news, and link it for coverage of synth releases and terminology debates.
104HN people shared it
35linked it in comments
145stories submitted
3.4Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2016people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Homepage4 people · first shared 2017
- 2Clap: New MIT license audio plug-in format from Bitwig3 people · 79 points · first shared 2022 · 14 comments on HN
- 3“Plug and socket”, industry group pushes for "obvious" change in terminology3 people · 38 points · first shared 2021 · 76 comments on HN
- 4Ableton acquires Max maker Cycling ’743 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 5Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency3 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Apple's Relationship with Pro Music Needs Mending2 people · 179 points · first shared 2016 · 153 comments on HN
- 7Kraftwerk played live with an astronaut on the ISS (2018)2 people · 147 points · first shared 2018 · 28 comments on HN
- 8Experimental analog synth controlled by stem cell neural network2 people · 44 points · first shared 2017 · 14 comments on HN
- 9macOS Catalina will be incompatible with much of your music software2 people · 4 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 10Buchla Synth Repair Turned Into an LSD Trip2 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 11The first generation of CDs is already rotting and dying (2017)2 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 12Ableton Live and Push can now run on Linux, unofficially2 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 131000fps Projection Mapping on Faces2 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 14Steinberg brings VST to Linux, and does other good things2 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 15InMusic will acquire Native Instruments, as NI joins brands from Akai to Moog2 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
MomsAVoxell · 2026-01-04
There are plenty, but CDM is my favourite:
https://cdm.link/
See also, matrixsynth:
https://www.matrixsynth.com/
They both often have the same content, but CDM has a nicer vibe that I feel more comfortable suggesting ..
4d4m · 2024-07-10
Create Digital Music is an amazing resource for music tech (production) news: https://cdm.link/
troupo · 2024-02-14
> CSS was a mess, but together with React is now the best language for building GUIs.
People should stop saying this lie. To di so, they should try and look outside of the web for even a nanosecond.
Even Turbo Pascal from 1990s is a better language for describing UIs.
The "best language for building UIs" chokes on less than 1000 elements on a static page: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GF__tHjXgAAZGUA?format=jpg&name=medium
Compare that to an actual UI: https://cdm.link/app/uploads/2023/11/CleanShot-2023-11-15-at-01.18.07.…
nkurz · 2020-06-15
Yes, both "master" and "slave" have been used as a pair for a long time in a number of different technical fields to describe relationships between devices. Instead of computer networking, the linked article is on a site that focuses on music technology (https://cdm.link). If you search (for example) [midi "slave"] you'll come up with a lot of hits using "slave" in a technical sense for electronic music. Here's a nice example page from that search, that goes farther to distinguish (technically and without irony) two different types of masters and slaves: https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_artist/v10/en/cubase_nuendo/topics/s…
6stringmerc · 2016-11-03
Fancy seeing this here - cool for sure. One of the music journalists I follow, Peter Kirn, has a piece regarding this release:
http://cdm.link/2016/11/gallery-korgs-synth-line-gets-refresh-includin…
anigbrowl · 2026-01-28
A much more detailed and better-linked writeup: https://cdm.link/ni-insolvency/
As noted, the company has been in decline since going into private equity in 2020. Pro audio users have felt it was less and less about innovation and more about selling preset packs and slim-value upgrades, as well as increasingly onerous license management. At the same time people are distressed because the firm has a very impressive history of software and hardware products.
Inmusic (which owns Akai, Moog and several other premium pro audio brands) is a potential buyer to acquire them as they already have some product crossover in the form of NI plugins available exclusively on Akai hardware. However this would mean two flagship products that compete against each other (NI's Maschine and Akai's MPC, two very advanced drum pad/sequencing powerhouses). That would mean abandonment of Maschine, whose development was already stalled, and disappointment/bad feeling from many owners; pro audio consumers are necessarily emotional about their creative tools and tend to hold grudges.
OF course, the best of both products could be combined in a Secret Third Thing that embodied the best features of both, but the reality is that Inmusic has just released new flagship Akai MPCs (the 3rd generation of the current design paradigm), and they're such a big upgrade upgrade in both hardware and software terms that they're steamrolling their direct and indirect competition. Those flagship units (and some…
DonaldDerek · 2017-07-08
http://cdm.link/
Create Digital Music
joshka · 2025-09-02
Splice[1] Studio[2] used to be version control for music software (from about 2013-2021). You could browse Ableton Live (and a few other DAWs) projects and see the tracks and rendered versions each time you saved, add metadata etc. They pivoted into the more profitable sample discovery and sales business later and dropped the less profitable studio product.
I expect over the next few years that the DAWProject[3] open source protocol for exchanging between DAWs could make it possible for some of the ideas of splice come back without having to rely heavily on undocumented binary formats.
[1]: https://splice.com/
[2]: https://cdm.link/splice-studio-is-free-backup-version-control-and-coll…
[3]: https://github.com/bitwig/dawproject
rzzzt · 2024-08-11
There is a story floating around of a repairman who accidentally exposed themselves to the substance while repairing a 60s modular synthesizer: https://cdm.link/2019/05/a-buchla-synth-repair-turned-into-an-lsd-trip… (some broken embeds but the text is intact)
The article does say that it might not have absorbed through skin but through a touch of the eye or mouth.
coldtea · 2024-03-27
There are small or comparatively small corporations who proudly and decidedly stay small, and even refuse to sell.
https://cdm.link/2021/11/ableton-reportedly-refused-investment-interes…
bluedino · 2023-11-28
Isn't the wireframe death star scene the only part done in C (and therefore by computer) in the first movie?
https://cdm.link/2021/11/watch-larry-cuba-explain-how-he-animated-the-…
dharma1 · 2023-09-30
Splice actually started out with version control for collabs - it was called Splice Studio and was killed off recently. Don’t think it ever found PMF (doesn’t mean there won’t be a product for this eventually) - https://cdm.link/2021/04/splice-studio-is-free-backup-version-control-…
Turns out their pivot to being Netflix for samples/plugins is more in demand :)
mikelovenotwar · 2023-09-29
perhaps of interest https://cdm.link/2023/09/4ms-explains-meta-module/
x3874 · 2023-06-21
They changed the step buttons on the RD-8 though as Roland has trademarked this particular color scheme. (It is not written 'colorway', we are not in sneaker territory)
https://cdm.link/2019/02/roland-303-808-trademarks/
dezgeg · 2023-05-29
Here's a demo running on just the drive: https://cdm.link/2021/07/freespin-is-a-demo-made-for-the-commodore-154…
daydream · 2023-05-23
Interesting that standalone is powered by Intel and not ARM (Intel 11th Gen Core™ i3-1115G4 processor with 8GB of RAM).
I wonder why? They already support Live on Apple Silicon.
CDM [1] reports that standalone is running Linux on that intel core, so they have Live running on Linux Intel. Maybe it was too much work to get running on Linux ARM? Or maybe performance just wasn’t good enough?
1 - https://cdm.link/2023/05/new-ableton-push/
bambax · 2023-05-03
Here's a patch for "Complex-1", an attempt by Reason to do a modular synth: https://cdm.link/app/uploads/2018/12/cables.png
Given the nature of that synth, there may not be a better way to do this, but it's still far from clear what does what at a glance, or even after staring at it for a while.
trynewideas · 2023-01-03
See also looping tapes:
https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-last-two-weeks-…
and anything AMULETS does:
https://cdm.link/2017/01/heres-make-tape-loop-cassette-tape/
https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic/videos
kipchak · 2022-11-16
CDs are also at risk of disc rot, which might be a non issue for hundreds of years or fail within 20 depending on the CD and storage.
From a Library of congress study:
"The mean lifetime for the disc population as a whole was calculated to be 776 years for the discs used in this study. As demonstrated in the histograms in Figures 18 and 19, that lifetime could be less than 25 years for some discs, up to 500 years for others, and even longer."
https://cdm.link/2017/02/a-generation-of-cds-is-already-rotting-and-dy…
mxmilkiib · 2022-07-21
https://github.com/moddevices for most of the software
https://pedalboards.moddevices.com for shared audio graphs/patches
https://cdm.link/2022/05/mod-devices-made-a-guitar-synth-you-can-actua…
eating555 · 2022-06-16
Here is a more detailed technical post on CLAP, and the comparison between existed open standard LV2:
https://cdm.link/2022/06/clap-is-a-new-open-source-plug-in-format-from…
kristopolous · 2021-11-23
many musicians use a stack - I sure do. It's a bunch of tools I somehow make work together.
Unless we can track down interviews with the people, I think all we have are educated guesses. It is true to say however, that these days, Amigas sell for thousands of dollars (such as https://ebay.com/itm/224602338650) because modern musicians want to use vintage tracker software in music production.
People are still putting out hardware on it. Here's something from 2020 https://cdm.link/2020/08/amiga-just-got-a-new-open-8-bit-hardware-sequ…
glitcher · 2021-10-13
You may also enjoy this review on the device:
https://cdm.link/2021/10/whats-new-on-the-roland-sp-404mkii-sampler-sp…
sheinsheish · 2021-08-09
was just browsing today. If you are into ambient :
https://cdm.link/2021/08/grab-these-unhyped-releases-on-bandcamp-frida…
rasz · 2019-12-11
crucialfelix · 2019-11-12
To be precise, it looks like Robert Henke's original Max/MSP patch. https://cdm.link/2014/03/see-max-patch-robert-henke-built-ableton-live…
Max has always been flat and simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software)#/media/File:LandMap_Max_p…
benwad · 2019-11-11
They do! https://cdm.link/2016/11/free-jazz-now-ableton-link-sync-works-pure-da…
I also once managed to get PD into Logic X but it took quite a lot of fiddling around.
pottering · 2019-11-11
Tangential, but let me hype mutateful and gibberwocky, they are just too cool:
https://cdm.link/2019/10/mutateful-free-live-coding-ableton/
https://github.com/carrierdown/mutateful/
https://cycling74.com/articles/content-you-need-gibberwocky
http://gibberwocky.cc/
tomduncalf · 2019-10-07
This article explains it quite well https://cdm.link/2019/09/macos-catalina-will-be-incompatible-with-much…
mortenjorck · 2019-01-07
Peter Kirn has a more in-depth obituary over at CDM, including some of the most famous uses of 2500/2600s and Odysseys: http://cdm.link/2019/01/rip-alan-pearlman-arp/