With a number of workstations now offering their own ways to condense immersive mixes for personal listening, the differences between what they can do and how they do it can be complex. Here we unpack how different DAWs do it and what it means for you.

Most audio freelancers charge less than they should and dread the conversation. Here's how to calculate the increase, time it right, and keep good clients.

dxLevel from Accentize is a free audio plugin for professional speech and dialogue post-production, designed to eliminate manual dialogue levelling by automatically matching loudness across clips, balancing different speakers on a single microphone, or smoothing out level fluctuations caused by moving voices and inconsistent recordings. With Preserve Ambience mode, the original background ambience is left untouched while only the dialogue is adjusted to your target loudness.

Handing engineers control over audio playback, recording, and related processing, the Playback Engine is central to configuring and optimising the passage of audio to and from Pro Tools. Here we take a look at all of its options, and how it works in concert with other parts of the DAW.

Source Connect 4 has become the first remote collaboration platform to achieve Dolby Atmos certification with metadata connection to the Renderer. To find out if the 'no compromise' claim holds up, Paul Maunder joined a live session between certified Atmos facilities in California and Amsterdam. Here’s what happened…

We know that more and more high-end TV dramas and high-budget entertainment shows are being mixed in rooms designed for theatrical releases. Is this why we are having to increasingly resort to subtitles to follow the plot? We’re clearly not alone in this, with subtitle usage between 50 and 80%! In this article, we explore the challenges this workflow presents and how it contributes to the growth of subtitle use.

Curlo has today announced its first release, a native macOS audio asset manager that uses local AI to search, preview and organise sound effects and music libraries. It is built for anyone working with thousands of files spread across folders, formats and inconsistent metadata, and the whole thing runs on-device with no cloud uploads. We have the details.

McDSP has announced the DC-2 Dual Compressor, a new APB plug-in for its APB-8 and APB-16 programmable analog processors. The company claims the DC-2 is the most feature-complete APB plug-in they have released to date, combining dual-path analog compression with saturation and double precision EQ. We have the details.

max1mus Audio has announced Vert1go, a spatial and surround auto panner built for Dolby Atmos, Apple Spatial Audio, and surround formats up to 9.1.6. The plugin combines twelve dedicated movement pattern engines with an independent height engine, custom path drawing, XYZ automation export, and a built-in modulation FX chain. It launches on 8 June 2026 in VST3, AU, and AAX but you can try it now. We have the details.

How Greg Kurstin and Liam Nolan tracked Adele's Hello at Metropolis using four inputs and stereo stems. The workflow shaped the record, not the desk…

Dubbing Mixer Graham Kirkman put Free Range Audio's PT EDL through an intense day of reconform testing – EDL comparison, AAF analysis, and automated session updates. So did it make the cut? Graham shares his verdict…

Beat Panner is a panning sequencer that syncs movement patterns to the rhythm of a track across stereo and immersive audio formats. Aimed at producers, mixing engineers, and sound designers, it repositions panning as a compositional tool rather than a static placement decision. We have the details.

Sonuscore has today announced LUX Orchestral Strings Essentials, a Kontakt string library aimed at composers scoring film, TV, games, and production music. It uses the same 70-piece ensemble recording as the flagship LUX Orchestral Strings, positioned and priced for everyday cue work rather than the full scope of the original. We have the details.

Sonuscore now has a dedicated free orchestral instruments page, covering its full range of no-cost Kontakt Player libraries from strings and brass through to hybrid rhythm tools. These are not stripped-back demos or time-limited trials. Every instrument on the page loads and functions without restriction. We have the details.

Does macOS Tahoe Low Power Mode wreck your DAW? We ran a heavy Pro Tools session on an M1 Max, on battery, to find out what the YouTube panic gets wrong.

The numbers for women in audio went backwards again in 2025. Producers and engineers still stuck at single digits. Here’s what studios can actually do about it.

In this article, we look at the range of a free plugin developer you probably won’t have heard of. Kojima Audio is developing some very interesting plugins, with quite a few pitched at the post-production workflow. We have the details.

For a long time effects such as pitch quantization, harmony generation, and even the ability to bend voices in the image of incoming MIDI have been staples in the vocal production tradition in many styles. Klevgrand’s latest vocal production toolkit sets out to bring it all into one place for the studio and live arenas- here we take our first look at Altitude.

If pristine audio quality is one DAW superpower, surely the ability to pin down the timing of performances must be another. Whether it’s knocking live parts into line, or straightening out pre-existing MIDI, the Quantize family of Pro Tools functions is an editing essential. Here we run through how they work.

Klevgrand's Altitude combines formant-aware pitch correction, three-voice key-aware harmonies and a MIDI voice module, all with zero latency. We have the details…

Solid State Logic has today announced the SSL 1, a 2-in/2-out USB-C audio interface aimed at the bottom of its interface range. It sits below the SSL 2 MkII as the company's most affordable interface to date, pitched at musicians starting out and at producers who want something pocketable for mobile work. We have the details.

Softube has today announced Bus Processor 670, a plug-in modelled on the variable-mu tube compression architecture of the original Fairchild 670 hardware. It sits alongside the company's existing Bus Processor, which is based on the SSL G-series bus compressor, and is aimed at engineers looking for a character compressor for mix bus and mastering duties. We have the details.

Striking a well-judged balance between simple grunge and over-the-top distortion design, Acedia’s Kerosene combines four drive modes with a noise engine, an integrated compressor, and frequency-shaping filters. Here we dial in the dirt to see how it sounds.

HAL Audio has announced LILY today, a standalone application for configuring the Avid S6 without physical access to the console. The app lets mixers and studio technicians prepare S6 sessions in advance, whether at home or while moving between stages. We have the details.

Liam Nolan and Stephen Gilchrist on the Production Expert Podcast. Commitment used to be built into the format. Now it has to come from the engineer instead.

Following our article Six Monitor Controllers You Need To Check Out In 2022 we were asked for an article covering monitor controllers that support immersive audio formats like Dolby Atmos. We have covered this before, but things have moved on, and some products have been discontinued. In this article, we are going to take a look at monitor controllers available in 2026 that support immersive formats like Dolby Atmos.

Today’s dialogue noise reduction plug-ins provide a highly effective way to reduce reverb and noise in location recordings. Tools such as Hush Pro are so effective that it’s tempting to push them really hard and end up with a completely isolated voice. So how far do you actually go? Paul Maunder explains…