TALK 903 - KARST and Luxury Studios

[Nick] Sonic.

[Nick] Hello,

[Nick] everybody. Welcome to Sonic Talk episode

[Nick] 903,

[Nick] which happens to also be the

[Nick] well, three a is the Moog

[Nick] five u

[Nick] random voltage

[Nick] generator from about '2 nineteen sixties. So 1967

[Nick] onwards, somewhere around then. So, yeah, that's the nomenclature for this show, which sort of indicates what the show is about, which is in fact electronic music, electronic music production, music production, software,

[Nick] synthesizers,

[Nick] drum machines, all that kind of world that we as in use modern musicians inhabit

[Nick] and interact with. So if sit back for the next hour or so, we'll be chatting about those very matters.

[Nick] I wanna say thanks very much to our friends in the chat. Good to see a good a

[Nick] good

[Nick] crop there. Andy Vonal, haven't seen them for a while. Awkward Teeth and Hair Productions,

[Nick] Hobart Melted Rowbath Melted Cheese,

[Nick] Boo Electric. Oh, nice. And congratulations on the new album. Neil Elkins, saw him in the pub the other night.

[Nick] And I had

[Nick] Matthew Colossus.

[Nick] And, of course, Wagyu's there doing doing the Lord's work by moderating and just keeping the whole thing ticking over as he does for many streamers. He's a he's a national treasure even though he's not this part of that. Global treasure, I think, would be fair to say. Very lovely to see all of those people.

[Nick] So before I get into introduce my guests, I should give you a bit of a catch up with what's been going on.

[Nick] We've got the last chance to win the

[Nick] Circuit Happy

[Nick] Missing Link. There's two of those up for grabs. I think that finishes on Friday.

[Nick] And don't forget, if you're a if you're a Patreon or a YouTube member, we've got

[Nick] a piece I did with Venus Theory where we he's got the

[Nick] Genki Instruments Kettler,

[Nick] which is the Icelandic synth that is 6,000 US dollars that not many of us are gonna get to play with. So we have a look at that with him, and he's made us 18 fantastic decent samplers, which have to say sound fantastic.

[Nick] There that's available to members only at the moment. The video will be published on Friday,

[Nick] and the decent sample will be available to our Patreon users and YouTube members. In fact, we got a sale on at the moment, 30%

[Nick] off Patreon.

[Nick] And Patreon also has a bunch of discounts, so you could probably save more than it would cost to join if you go and add all the numbers up. How's that for a sales pitch? Anyway, so I just wanted to say

[Nick] mention those things. What else have we got? I've got the

[Nick] what's the other thing I posted recently? Oh, the Korg NTS four video.

[Nick] That's also up now. So there's there's still stuff coming through.

[Nick] And we've

[Nick] got a superstar hangout this weekend for you Patreon supporters at the right tier because I forgot

[Nick] I had a I had a thing last weekend, and I had to postpone it. So we'll see you there. So thank you very much. Right. I'll just play

[Nick] play our I'll play the Patreon ad because

[Nick] why not?

[Nick] For memberships.

[Nick] This is for memberships rather than Patreon. So I'll be back shortly after this. We'll introduce our guests.

[Nick] There we go. That's all the good stuff out the way. All the all the housekeeping out the way. Let's say hello to our guests. Hey. Look. It's Tim Exile

[Nick] from Cars. Well, I I used to put Tim Exile up there, but now I put Cars Systems because you've got your new app out, which I hopefully will be talking a little bit about. So you're you're down at down at the in laws doing

[Tim] the summer holidays. Right? The the laws. My I'm down at my place.

[Tim] Yeah. Down at my mom's place

[Tim] with the girls.

[Tim] Granny is actually out right now, so I've I've got them the girls are sitting down watching Miffy downstairs, and I'm hoping that we'll keep them entertained the length of this podcast. Hitting each other.

[Nick] Yeah. Good luck with that.

[Nick] It's possible. Well, lovely to have you, Tim. Of course, Tim, not only

[Nick] excellent sort of

[Nick] explorer of software and music production and a performer in his own right, but, yeah, maker of many great things over the years.

[Nick] We've also got Steve Hillier, who's from

[Nick] stevehillier.net/dubstar,

[Nick] and I guess Politech, which is what you've got. You've been releasing. You've been making releases. I've you've been upping your social media output. You've really been going for it.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Steve] I thought that maybe at this sort of late stage, I should start taking this seriously.

[Steve] I was I I actually joined Twitter

[Steve] when there was less than, like, a 100,000 people on it. And it I I had no idea really what it was for

[Steve] until

[Steve] until years later. But anyway, yeah. So I so there there's been a a new Polytech release this Friday.

[Steve] And

[Steve] I you know, it's early stages for this project, but I I I have realized that there's a there's a real skill which I'm having to develop about making sort of engaging

[Steve] content and and spreading the word. But I'll I'll I'll get there in the end. In between DJing

[Nick] and releasing old dub star records and all that kind of stuff. It's been quite a a busy time at the moment. We It is. What do they call it? We have to be we have to be poly what's the word? Poly gosh. I can't remember what the word is. Polyglots. Are we polyglots?

[Nick] You have to Polyglots. Yeah. Well, could polyglots. You may be polyamorous. I was I I'll keep it between you and your your various relationships.

[Nick] So anyway but, yeah, let me just I've just gotta do a little bit of adjustment of levels. There's a little bit of a disparity there. I'll try and get that sorted out. There we go.

[Nick] So yeah. But, I mean, it's been a fun week.

[Nick] I guess the it's cooled down a bit here, which is nice. It's sort of feeling a little bit less

[Nick] end of days. Certainly around here, I'm sure there are still lots of

[Nick] fires and and droughts and all that sort of thing, but we see we have a couple of days of it cooling down. This room's cooled down a bit. In fact, I've taken the plunge, and I've phoned an air conditioning consultant

[Nick] and asked them to come and have a look with a with a view to putting some air conditioning in this room

[Nick] for next year. Obviously, this year, there's absolutely no point because there's there's no

[Nick] there's no supplies. You know, everybody's everybody's used them all up.

[Nick] So yeah. So so, Tim, I get I guess, what what we should let well, actually, let's start with a couple of things. Let's start with a

[Nick] with a with a an Amuse Bouche. I think I quite like this one because it's been a long time since I anyone remember Compass Point?

[Nick] You know, Compass Point was the eighties

[Nick] the pinnacle of eighties ostentatious

[Nick] studio hire in The Bahamas where you'd go and record your Yeah. Your your first album after a massive advance, and you'd hire Sly and Robbie as your drum drum and bass section. You know, that was sort of thing. So there's a new studio in town or certainly on the coast.

[Nick] This is I think it's called

[Nick] I don't know how you pronounce it, recording.

[Nick] It's on the Kunda Island.

[Nick] It's

[Nick] Kasjoglu

[Nick] and Ozlem Kasjoglu,

[Nick] and they've got five studio rooms,

[Nick] a whole bunch of twelve twelve guest rooms just on the Aegean Coast.

[Nick] I love the Aegean. I think the Aegean is my favorite of oceans. It's so blue. And it

[Nick] just looks like

[Nick] wouldn't it be nice? I can't imagine

[Nick] many of us could afford this, but it's something to dream of. And much like we couldn't afford Compass Point. But I just thought what a lovely what a lovely thing that this I mean, it must have cost absolutely millions to make.

[Nick] The the the the I don't know if they're brothers or related. I'm not sure. I'm all married. I I I I have to make some suppositions.

[Nick] But they

[Nick] they are have got together and opened this relatively recently,

[Nick] and it just looks like one of those sort of destination studio. I can't think of many of those. It's that one that Brad Pitt owns in the South Of France, but I can't think of many others. I don't know. And it's the sort of thing that even though most of us are just working in our rooms on laptops with mice and headphones,

[Nick] one day, it wouldn't be fun. One day, maybe we'll get invited to an open day or something to this. I don't know. Tim, I mean, you you must have been to a few big studios in your sort of

[Nick] career past. Anything on the scale of sort of residential luxe kind of beachside property? Did you ever make it out to any of these? Montserrat possibly?

[Tim] No.

[Tim] No.

[Tim] I mean, the the the most sort of

[Tim] I mean, I've been to Abbey Road a bunch of times, but but that's that's more

[Tim] because, I mean, they're very active in the kind of London music and tech scene. I've I've been to a top list. I've been to

[Tim] but I haven't

[Tim] been to that many big studios.

[Tim] The the one if I was to pick

[Tim] one studio to get to go to, it would probably be

[Tim] real oh, was that real one? That's the the Peter Peter Gabriel one, the one in box. Yeah. I actually used to live near there.

[Tim] In terms of sort of big fancy studio complexes, that that would be that would be my pick. And it does seem with with these big fancy ones that it's more like

[Tim] it's more for billionaires who just want to

[Tim] who I don't know. I I can't I can't

[Tim] I I

[Tim] I can't imagine

[Tim] that, you know, the economy being the way it is, that there's gonna be that that many people who are actually making decent music who are

[Tim] gonna have the budget and,

[Tim] you know, look at that budget and go like, oh,

[Tim] we need to go here to get the best results.

[Tim] It sounds

[Nick] Yeah. I don't know. That maybe that maybe that's a little bit Well, that that's fair. I mean, I think I think I think for some of these place I mean, the thing about real I've I've spent quite a lot of time in Real World because it's around the corner, and I've done loads of sessions there and sort of worked there for a long time as on the CD ROMs back in the day.

[Nick] And it's beautiful. It's no longer as big as it used to be, but one of its big selling points is that massive control room and large live area. These are the sort of things that you can't you know, because you things can be mixed anywhere. I mean, you know, Yohad's got a fantastic mix room. It's just you know, it's not massive. It's not part of a studio complex. You can mix extreme you know, it's it's all about the personnel there and maybe some of the gear. But, ultimately, this would be more about, I guess, the creative space. It might be where you would record an entire band or if you've got maybe there's if you're doing a big album when you've got multiple producers and they're all songwriting together and collaborating ideas, they might have a studio each. And then you you know, I could see that, you know, your your your Katy Perry or your, you know, your your your

[Nick] you know, that that sort of level or Madonna or somebody like that. You could imagine that sort of thing working. But, I mean, I don't know how expensive these things are. But, I mean, yes, it does feel like extremely luxurious.

[Nick] But you also get to have a holiday, and they at the same time, sort of.

[Nick] I don't know how that would work. I mean, because you couldn't really if you have the family there, it's very hard to to to use to be in studio time

[Nick] and keep keep

[Nick] keep time with, you know, kids and and partners and things, you know, that other need attention as well. It's quite an immersive process, I suppose. So I'm not sure. I don't know, Steve. Have you been anywhere

[Nick] any anywhere luxe must have been the dub days?

[Steve] Well, yeah, in the dubstar days, we also had spent quite a lot of time in real world,

[Steve] which I I thoroughly

[Steve] enjoyed. Because by the time

[Steve] that we got to that studio,

[Steve] I'd essentially done pretty much all all my work in advance in my place back in Jessamine in Newcastle. So I've done the writing, all the programming. It was just a question of recording

[Steve] onto Stephen Hague's

[Steve] big digital multitrack,

[Steve] and then I'd be on holiday for a month. So I actually did have

[Steve] my my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife,

[Steve] essentially move in with me at Real World.

[Steve] And she completed her master's

[Steve] degree at Real World with the engineers running around looking after her, which I I I think she,

[Steve] to this day, talks about this time with such a, you know, sort of amazement that all these people were were sort of waiting on her hand and foot at at such a great studio. Yeah. Another place that we we we went to, which

[Steve] I thoroughly enjoyed, was Rack Studios. So it's not so much of a luxury decks destination like this Turkish place, but they had

[Steve] they still do.

[Steve] An entire

[Steve] house

[Steve] next door to the studio that you could live in. And once again, I essentially had, like, a month's

[Steve] holiday in Central London in a flat where the the bath was the size of a small swimming pool. So if you if you can imagine spending most of your days in a hot swimming pool whilst your hit's being recorded next door,

[Steve] and there's a sauna upstairs. I don't wanna get bored of that. Camden's just around the corner as well.

[Steve] You know Wow. I I I actually

[Steve] yeah. It was those are the days, I suppose. One of the things that I I I

[Steve] I don't know whether we'll ever will will ever come back, but was a real luxury of that time, which justified the existence of those studios, was the fact that

[Steve] the record companies were paying for the studio time. Although, ultimately, it would end up the the cost of it would end up on your debit balance. So you would, in in some ways, owe that money. Ultimately,

[Steve] if somebody else was paying for your luxury time in these studios,

[Steve] and it wasn't a a big concern like it would be today because you knew that the your actual

[Steve] path to riches was not likely to come from

[Steve] the record company or come from your publisher, which which is something we might talk about in a moment.

[Steve] So it meant that you could just relax,

[Steve] be in a studio where somebody else is spending $3 a day on your behalf and and live in a in a swimming pool for a month. You know? Bring it on.

[Nick] Yeah. I mean, I suppose you're right. I mean, it's quite rarefied, isn't it? I mean, I love that this exists.

[Nick] I also recognize that it's a it is such a rarity. I mean, as Compass Point's gone, I don't know if I think MonsterArt's probably gone because didn't MonsterArt get evacuated because of the

[Nick] because of the volcano? So there was a there was a studio, a similar kind of

[Nick] desert island type studio there. So there aren't really many. I mean, I think most of these places are probably now

[Nick] people's private studios. So people who maybe have made their living

[Nick] in the past when you could and have just Yeah. You know, moved their studio to a nice place in the woods or on a you know, somewhere

[Nick] in the South Of France or whatever. It seems

[Nick] but it just feels such a shame that it can't be it can't support this kind of thing.

[Steve] I I I it is a shame. You're absolutely right. But I do know

[Steve] there's one studio that I revisited

[Steve] earlier this year for a writing camp called Chapel, which is up in Lincolnshire.

[Steve] And the studio is still running, but the accommodation

[Steve] and one of the other studios has been repurposed

[Steve] as a place that you can hire for

[Steve] conferences

[Steve] and parties and that kind of thing. So the the big soundproof rooms, or one of them, well, I should say, is now a cinema, and the the another room is essentially a kind of party area. It's it's fantastic. So so in a sense, the spirit of rock and roll

[Steve] lives on just, I suppose, in a in a different form.

[Nick] Yeah. I guess so. Rented by the night rather than by the hour.

[Nick] That sounds wrong somehow, doesn't it? I don't know. Well, maybe I'll It sounds terrific. That doesn't sound right somewhere, does it? Yeah. It sounds like a motel in Downtown LA, doesn't it? That's not kind of what I was what I was thinking of at all. Anyway, if you've if you're in the I mean, the the prices aren't aren't published, but I'm really glad this thing exists. And it sort of it feel it's a good you know, I hope it succeeds enough to be able to keep going. I mean, it looks like it's the sort of thing that could be repurposed into some sort of resort based thing. Because if you've got 12 apartments, if you can't rent the studio, you can probably rent the apartments.

[Nick] So it's a good hedge, I suppose, in many ways.

[Nick] And they probably do other events and things like that, but I just thought it was a kind of nice

[Nick] a nice good time good time story to start with, I suppose, in many ways. Yeah. I think what I'll do I think because I wanted to talk with you, Tim, about cast actually, but perhaps before we get onto the publishing matters

[Nick] because we're likely to we're likely to get a bit controversial. So I'll just I'll just throw this ad in. We've got an ad from Cherry Audio. Instantly, if anyone is looking for a slot, we do have a spare slot on Sonic Talk. It's very

[Nick] hard to come by, actually. They don't come come up that often. So do get in touch if it's something of interest. Back after the

[Nick] And we're back. I just wanna do a quick shout out. Nice to see Technomatic,

[Nick] Hiltonious in there, Rich Hilton, the boos,

[Nick] Jet Jervis. We got a whole bunch of other YouTubers in there. They've come here to,

[Nick] I don't know, maybe tell us how to do it or maybe get some tips. I don't know. I think that's very unlikely because they all have their own fantastic

[Nick] outputs that they don't need any tips from the likes of me doing their own good things. So do check that out, Jack Jervis, and all of the or get get Jervis. Sorry. Yeah. Anyway,

[Nick] so, Tim,

[Nick] did it. I think I've got a I've got a little video I could play because you just posted a new one, which was

[Nick] just a sort of a new function on it. So I'll start with that, and then we can talk a little bit about cast. And just I I'm really interested,

[Nick] especially

[Nick] about how it came about and how it's how it's worked. Anyway, back after this. I'm

[Nick] not playing all of this. Obviously, it's not a minute, but this is just a few of your features. This is your new I guess this is a beta. Right?

[Tim] Yeah.

[Tim] Yeah, this is this is the the the the motion feature

[Tim] that

[Tim] basically, you you can you can animate. You build a system, then you build up these scenes along along the top. You can see those dots in a row.

[Tim] You sort of build you you build things up. You can build the system at the same time as building up a library material with it.

[Tim] And then what shipped just a couple of days ago is the motion feature. You can then just hit this motion button, and it then wanders around

[Tim] kind of interpolating

[Tim] between those snapshots. Interesting. Yeah. It sort of finds new

[Tim] kind of latent spaces,

[Tim] I guess,

[Tim] ish

[Tim] in between the stuff that you've made.

[Tim] I mean, that yeah. This is the this is the first motion feature. I've got a bunch of others planned, including, at some point, actually a full sequencer where you can really lay them out on the sequencer, but

[Tim] that's all down the line. There's a lot to be done.

[Tim] Oh, you've got you muted Nick.

[Nick] Will you mute me for me? I I'm unmuted now. It's alright. I just wanted to say, I suppose you should rewind. I mean, cast, it seems to be because you posted something, what, about six months ago, which was a kind of pre like a a precursor to this that was prototyped in reactor. And now this is gonna be something that's hand coded. At the moment, your your the environment runs from within the web browser. Is that correct? And so this is a sort of journey through to being a final

[Nick] desktop or plug in application that is essentially allows you to build your own devices and

[Nick] to a certain amount generate

[Nick] musical ideas,

[Nick] but obviously with plenty of human interaction. And it's not AI based. Right?

[Tim] Correct. Yeah. So,

[Tim] I mean, the reason it it came about

[Tim] so, yeah, correct. I I I built this prototype in in Reactor.

[Tim] I went to great lengths. In fact, partly I mean, it was always my plan to kind of build this as its own platform, but I thought I would be

[Tim] getting some way with Reactor first. But, basically, a conversation with an engineer friend. I was telling him

[Tim] all the

[Tim] the sort of functions that I had to build inside reactor.

[Tim] And he was just like, mate, you you've built c plus plus inside reactor.

[Tim] You should just go and build this in c plus plus because you don't have to actually build an entire programming language before you can actually build the thing you want to build. So that's that's kinda how how it how it came about.

[Tim] And,

[Tim] yeah, the reason it's browser first, I mean, it's an it's an odd

[Tim] at first glance, it's an odd first touch point

[Tim] to to launch in the browser, but the there's a very specific reason.

[Tim] I I wanted to build this thing cross platform because

[Tim] I,

[Tim] well,

[Tim] if for anyone here that knows my work, I'm I'm just really into music as music

[Tim] as a verb, you know, something we do, something that's alive.

[Tim] And I think that that's the sort of thread that's run through everything I've done.

[Tim] And I

[Tim] wanted to build this platform where

[Tim] you could build a system as a kind of composition

[Tim] and then

[Tim] share these compositions with the world. And that's that's probably the big feature that is gonna come hopefully in the next month or so,

[Tim] which is, you know, build your own system,

[Tim] use some of the off the shelf instruments or even build your own instruments from scratch in the node editor,

[Tim] but then

[Tim] hit a share button,

[Tim] and then you can share

[Tim] this system with the world

[Tim] in a way that you share a a SoundCloud link or a bank Bandcamp link, you know, something that is a playable thing that will hopefully

[Tim] run on I see. A smartphone. Yeah. That's that's that's the idea. That's the that's the big idea.

[Tim] But then, of course, it's gonna

[Tim] I I've been developing it.

[Tim] So I've got a a standalone Juice app that builds and runs right now, but I

[Tim] I wanna get it running as a plug in before I release all of that. And, of course, going through all the App Store things that it you know, to to launch all of that all at once

[Tim] would have delayed things. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah.

[Nick] So are you able to give the browser version

[Nick] the same level of functionality as you could do on a desktop thing? I mean, because I presume it's running on a is it running in the browser, or is it running on a server and serving to the browser?

[Tim] It runs in the browser. So it's

[Tim] WebAssembly,

[Tim] Wasm, for for for any web nerds out there.

[Tim] So, yeah, it's it's a it's a Wasm audio engine, which is basically it's built the audio engine is built as headless c plus plus.

[Tim] It compiles to WASM,

[Tim] compiles to Mac, Windows, Linux,

[Tim] potentially system on chip, system on module.

[Tim] That's the thing. I wanted to, you know, make the core engine can run anywhere.

[Tim] And

[Tim] yeah. And and then there's a there's a whole bunch of cloud infrastructure, but that's more for kind of database

[Tim] syncing

[Tim] Yeah. Sure. That kind of stuff. It's

[Nick] really interesting. I mean, because I was talking to you just before the show about how I've been using a lot of Claude code stuff just to sort of help with things that I need to get done, but I haven't got time to explain it to a programmer or pay for a programmer because I couldn't afford it anyway. And I'm guessing this is probably do you think that this is something like this new technology has enabled

[Nick] you to just be able to be it's not unfettered, but less there's less breaks on you because you could just do it rather than

[Tim] Yeah. The the the the fetters are different. But, I mean, yeah, with

[Tim] without a doubt, there's there's no way that I could have built all of this hand you know, manually

[Tim] writing each line of code. So so, yeah, lean heavily on on on Claude's

[Tim] code and a bit of codecs as well.

[Tim] But, I I mean, the

[Tim] thing I mean, it definitely the the process did not feel like vibe coding in in the least. Yeah.

[Nick] Basically, you know, I went into There there aren't exactly a lot of examples that it can say, oh, I know what you mean. It's just like this. No. It's not. There isn't anything like this.

[Tim] Exactly.

[Tim] So so you have to

[Tim] I mean, my my maxim for the whole thing well, for sort of generally for use of AI is if you use it, it's a very powerful translator,

[Tim] and it can cosplay at autocomplete.

[Tim] But if you lean on it for autocomplete,

[Tim] you you're into two bad worlds. One world is just outright theft, and the other one is just a world of pain where it it'll build systems and make decisions about architecture

[Tim] for you that you don't understand, and you'll end up you'll end up paying for that.

[Tim] So, I mean, I I guess I I was lucky in a way to have built,

[Tim] you know, quite a deep, well defined architecture beforehand that I could just sort of go

[Tim] go in and take you these

[Tim] know, I I was literally feeding it

[Tim] screenshots of of React, like all the modules, how it was dealing with, you know, shared memory and registering parameters and all of the functions. So

[Tim] so, yeah, I mean, if you if you go to it with a very

[Tim] well defined idea, it's incredibly powerful.

[Tim] But if you don't, you can get into a world of pain very quickly.

[Tim] And even even if you do, you still get there are many worlds of pain

[Nick] along the way. Well, exactly. I mean, this is a I mean, it's a complex thing that you're building. I mean, I I'm kind of in a way, I'm so I'm so glad that you've been able to do this because we've spoken in the past where it's like, well, I've I build this prototype, then I have to either learn how to make it from scratch or I go to somebody else and explain what I mean, have them dedicate,

[Nick] you know, six, three, eight months, whatever it may be to build it for me. Then I've got to debug it, then I've got to do this. So in in in many ways, it's a very it's an interesting modern workflow.

[Nick] Or and but it's also a modern workflow for the end user as well. So the idea is that people can can build their own very unique

[Nick] audio system. I mean, are you designing it to do you

[Nick] are you hoping that people will be repeatable as well so people might use it as part of their compositional process rather than more of

[Nick] not a toy. I'm not saying toy, but something to pass the time and enjoy,

[Nick] whereas you might not get a sort of finished result out of it. Is the plan to be able to use it for finished results, I suppose, is the is

[Nick] the short Yeah. Version of that question?

[Tim] Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's I I guess the whole thing is, to some extent, a a kind of a merge to the the joy of system building and and everything that comes with that. And I think the yeah. For me, the big thing that I've always missed is I've I've wanted to build things and share them with people as just kind of pieces of art.

[Tim] And none of the digital mods today are really set up for that. They're more here's

[Tim] a way here's an interesting way that you can build a plug in.

[Tim] And,

[Tim] you know, that's that's very cool. And it's

[Tim] you know, a lot of really interesting scenes have grown up around, you know, reactor and Maximus p and

[Tim] Super Collider and VCV rack and all of these things.

[Tim] But yeah. So that's the that's the the the different thing is wouldn't it be great if you can build these systems and share them with people as the systems themselves as as art?

[Tim] But then also

[Tim] take these into in into your DAW

[Tim] as a as a plug in and,

[Tim] yeah, have have ways to kind of enjoy the process of building a system,

[Tim] but then enjoy using that system inside whatever your workflow

[Tim] is, you know, how however you record what

[Nick] where Yeah. And I I I suppose in a way I mean, I don't know. You Steve, you might wanna chip in here. But in a way, you know, when when one starts a project, often one will take

[Nick] a selection of sounds, you know, a kind of a sonic world, maybe a collection of samples, certain effects, certain things that you will then use as a palette to work within. So you could

[Nick] is cast something that could do that as well? So you're building essentially a small environment that could be used

[Nick] for composition across multiple

[Nick] multiple things, which may be a link by the concept for an album or writing songs with a specific person. I'm just curious about it because it's that's an interesting byproduct, I think, possibly.

[Tim] Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I mean,

[Tim] it's

[Tim] I've designed it as quite an open canvas, and and you can use it in many

[Tim] many different ways.

[Tim] I think the

[Tim] well, another unique thing about it for for me is the

[Tim] the way it approaches control. So you've got these quite standardized controls. You've got these 24 macros,

[Tim] and every every system will be controlled by the same macro.

[Tim] So so you can

[Tim] yeah. You could you could develop a bunch of themes. Those themes could be little instruments, and then they could work their way into lots of different systems that could

[Tim] flow into each other and

[Tim] generate different ideas to be used in in different context. I mean, for one thing, I I always like the idea of just interactive anything.

[Tim] I like the idea that someday someone might

[Tim] make an album

[Tim] with with using cast heavily.

[Tim] And then as part of the release of that album is actually the release of the systems themselves. So you can that you you could go to a web browser and load up the system that was used to compose this track and actually have a,

[Tim] you know, a playable

[Nick] interactive experience of that idea. Pace. That's

[Nick] a really interesting idea. Yeah. I thought about that. And so it becomes yeah. Sorry, Steve. Did you have

[Steve] I I I was just gonna ask Tim, ask you a question. I you said that at the moment, the the system runs within the browser.

[Steve] And

[Steve] this system, I've been playing with it. It's it's fascinating. I've been really enjoying myself with it. And I'm spending a lot of time at the moment developing

[Steve] my own live setup. I've got some shows coming up. And I'm just wondering,

[Steve] will the browser version of this system work offline?

[Steve] Because I've yet to find a venue where I can rely on their Internet connection. It's it's been a problem for decades.

[Tim] I I had a I had a mildly embarrassing baptism of fire last week. So I launched a cast Tuesday last week, and then on Thursday, had a show in Sheffield with

[Tim] with Alex McLean,

[Tim] who the originator of Tidal Cycles and Strudel.

[Tim] And that whole thing is, you know, live coding on stage. So I'm I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go for it. I'm gonna do a show with cast.

[Tim] And

[Tim] the Internet was super flaky. Basically, it wasn't working. And, yeah, the app kept on crashing in the browser.

[Tim] It it should it's just it's just it should work

[Tim] offline in the browser, but it didn't work then. But but it's I mean, that's a matter of fixing some fixing some bugs. But, yeah, the system is being designed

[Tim] primarily

[Tim] for for

[Tim] you know, it sort of defaults to offline. And if if it can get online, then it'll try to sync up with stuff. But it yeah.

[Steve] That's a good That sounds great.

[Nick] So I I I mean, in a way in a way that you would take maybe sessions from an album and able to live them so that you could then play

[Nick] out live with certain things running from disc and certainly. Is is cast the sort of is there an equivalence within cast or plans for it to be able to do the same thing so you can sort of build your you know, if you've got the vocal, you put the vocal in there, but there could be something that you would apply to that that might actually do something that makes it a little bit different than just a straight payback system and that so it can develop into a a live interpretation

[Nick] of of the thing you made and released.

[Tim] Exactly. I mean, this is, yeah, this is a a really great use case for it. And there's one and there's still a few very important

[Tim] building blocks aren't in there yet. Like, you can't you can't load samples in. And that would that's be that's very specifically because I want to I I don't want it just be able to load a sample into RAM. I want it to be that if you load a sample into RAM,

[Tim] it then

[Tim] serializes to to disk and uploads it to the cloud and has all these fallbacks for the various different say situations when someone downloads that sample in a low bandwidth environment.

[Tim] Anyway, sorry. That's my engineering brain.

[Tim] But but that means that

[Tim] once

[Tim] once sample loading and sharing

[Tim] is in, then, yeah, you could totally make a sort of interactive

[Tim] yeah. Yeah. You could sort of do the cast equivalent of Ableton Live icing

[Tim] a piece

[Tim] and then

[Tim] create a shareable link where someone can then go and

[Tim] explore

[Tim] the

[Tim] the system that you built around,

[Tim] you know, what was a static composition.

[Nick] Interesting.

[Steve] That's fantastic. Tim, can I may I ask, is there any are there any plans to make this system

[Steve] syncable to external

[Steve] equipment or external systems like Ableton Link, that kind of thing?

[Tim] Oh, yeah. Definitely. Ableton Link.

[Tim] I haven't actually because you you have to

[Tim] go through the whole licensing thing. I I haven't done that yet for the standalone app. But this yeah. The standalone and the standalone

[Tim] app will have link. The plug in, obviously, will sync to the transport of your DAW.

[Tim] And

[Tim] there's also

[Tim] all the kind of MIDI control

[Tim] and then audio inputs and outputs

[Tim] and, you know, potentially,

[Tim] you know, DC DC coupled outputs so you could integrate

[Tim] your rack modules, for example, inside a system.

[Tim] And then also hosting hosting plug ins inside

[Tim] cast. So, you know, that there would be an plug in hosting instrument,

[Tim] which you could drop inside the system and then say,

[Tim] know, use use it use all the generative

[Nick] power. Wow. Okay. There there must be a limitation. I mean, at at some point, the browser based version of this is gonna is it likely to have to diverge because there are only certain things that you can do

[Nick] with native code that that you might not be able to to do in the browser? Yes. So there's I mean, all the all the features

[Tim] are

[Tim] sort of touchpoint gated.

[Tim] So so, obviously, it's not I mean, you can't I mean, some

[Tim] companies some people have tried

[Tim] ways to get plug ins working with things that run-in the browser, but they're so kind of convoluted and arcane that I I don't really see the point in it. I'd much rather, you know, offer a great experience in the browser, which is all very much you know, it's gonna be quite a walled garden because, you know, a browser tab is basically a little it's a little virtual machine that's a it's a highly walled garden.

[Tim] And I think you you benefit from

[Tim] doing all the stuff that you can do inside that walled garden. And then for the stuff that needs access to, you know, direct access to your sound card,

[Tim] to MIDI devices,

[Tim] to, you know, plug in plug in APIs, etcetera,

[Tim] then that that will all be reserved for the standalone app.

[Nick] Well, it sounds like it's gonna be a real I mean, you know, it's moving on at a pace, and, obviously, you're in the thick of it now. So you're kind of just heads down. I mean, lucky to have you really even

[Nick] though it's holiday time. I guess you're I is it are you at that stage where you're just literally

[Nick] you still got the whole thing in your head, and so it's very you know, you've gotta you've gotta kind of develop while it's while it's in RAM as it were. I know that's a sort of Yeah. I I mean, I have you know, as the projects got more and more complicated,

[Tim] I I have

[Tim] got more and more disciplined

[Tim] with,

[Tim] you know, writing writing documents and writing road maps

[Tim] and, you know, being a lot more disciplined with Git and

[Tim] WorkTrees and branches and and and all of that.

[Tim] But it's always I I mean, I I got I think I got a lot of experience of

[Tim] developing a product like this,

[Tim] you know, when the rubber hits a road with endless,

[Tim] you know, all the all the litany of mistakes that I made there.

[Tim] And

[Tim] so so I know that, you know, plans

[Tim] plans have to stay fluid. And you it's yeah. It's finding the the sort of eutectic point between

[Tim] discipline discipline and fluidity.

[Tim] Right.

[Tim] I mean, I keep on getting it wrong, but every time you get it wrong, you learn

[Tim] something.

[Nick] You learn something else. No. Fantastic. Well, people can actually get involved

[Nick] at cast dot systems.

[Nick] And have you got I did look to see for timxr.com

[Nick] didn't seem to link to it. So cast.systems,

[Nick] which is just one of the new domain names, I think. So they can check that there. Right?

[Tim] Yes. Yes. Is. I was I was lucky because castsystems

[Tim] are it's a geological lens. And I

[Tim] mean, I've I've you've been I've had way too much airtime on this already, so I won't go on a rabbit hole about why I called it cast systems. But

[Nick] There it is. So go there. You can get a hold of it, and you're you're offering kind of beta access for a fixed amount to support the project early while it continues to develop. Right? That's the plan. Yeah. Your your your support is is, yeah, is much appreciated. It's kind of

[Tim] yeah. I mean,

[Tim] it's the whole thing is a bit of a wing and a prayer because the, you know, the reality of the situation, the NI insolvency know that news

[Tim] was really I mean, basically, business was built on Reactor,

[Tim] and the the winds sort of went out the sails there. I'm, you know, I'm I'm sorry to say it, and it it was sad for everyone involved. But

[Tim] so, yeah, the last few months have been like

[Tim] yeah. It's sort of dicey few months.

[Tim] And slightly existential. Yeah.

[Tim] Yeah. Anyway,

[Nick] thank you. Well, that yeah. With one of the news items today was that that, yeah, the Sync Anatomy got the scoop on the no plans for anything further than native Reactor seven. It just seems like that that's the official line for now. It just seems like that would be a a a sad a sad day, particularly for you. You've got a bunch of instruments in there, and it's a very useful thing. I didn't use it so much myself. I don't know about you,

[Nick] Steve. Did you get into Reaktor programming? It was always a bit too Oh, yeah. A bit too dense for me. Yeah.

[Steve] No. I did back in the early days of Reaktor, and then I I kind of just got distracted by making music.

[Steve] But I I Tim, I I I I'm hoping I don't know whether this is on your to do this, but some of the instruments

[Steve] that you developed for Reactor I thought were fantastic and I use all the time, including, for example, the finger,

[Steve] which is one of my faves. And and I'm just is are there any is there any way or are there any plans to make, let's say, the finger exist outside of the React world?

[Tim] Well, Cast I I I mean, the Native Instruments owns the

[Tim] well, actually, own the name.

[Tim] But they don't nest I don't know. They don't own the own the tech. But I mean, long and short of it, yes. The you know, I built cast specifically

[Tim] to be able to build

[Tim] in fact, very specifically instruments where well, effects that are MIDI triggered that that respond to triggers. That's something that's, like, really kind of built into the substrate. So, yes, very much.

[Tim] Nice. I look forward to getting my teeth into it.

[Steve] Me too.

[Nick] Okay. Well, let let let's move on. Let's move on a little bit. I mean, there were we did allude to this other topic, which was I think it's kind of

[Nick] fairly

[Nick] well, actually, I'm gonna save it. Let's do let's do the thirty years of VST because I saw that. And by any stretch, thirty years makes something

[Nick] vintage,

[Nick] possibly even antique depending on your definition of it. So this is this

[Nick] is the amazing Dodsegala. So thirty years of VST. This is the freebies of

[Nick] that they've released, which are l m seven,

[Nick] c s 40, neon,

[Nick] v b one base instrument, carlet, vintage tape delay.

[Nick] He's riffing on this. I don't if that's his actual screen or he's just overdone that. Oh, yes. He's overdone it. So they've released these for free, which you could grab yourself, but also those updates for Halion has been around for twenty five years. I mean, it just absolutely blew my mind. Was thinking, wow. This is vintage digital. I mean, is kind of

[Nick] we're almost into the the stage same way as, you know, we saw that Cherry Audio and the ESQ one, you know, advertiser on the show. But that, again, I mean, that's that's older vintage digital, but it's not that much older. So this level of vintage digital is quite astonishing, really. And the the fact that VSTs

[Nick] well, certainly on Windows, I don't know about

[Nick] maybe maybe not the switch to 32 bit, but, you know, there was a there there was a point where they would run and run and run. I think I think Steinberg have probably updated these, so they'll run on regular 32 bit systems. I don't know. But it's an astonishing testimony. I would argue that VST virtual

[Nick] is as important as MIDI was in many ways. It's got such a powerful thing.

[Nick] And, you know, for many of us, it's enabled

[Nick] you know, it enables in the box. I mean, it's it's you know, I don't know what you think about that, Steve. I mean, it's the the amount that we use now, AU, I mean, the it's the bedrock of sort of pretty much everything we use in software to create and modify sound. Right?

[Steve] Well, yeah, that's absolutely true. And although I I have a

[Steve] a fair amount of hardware here, truth is my day to day

[Steve] music working life is entirely in the box.

[Steve] It's and I I if we were to go back,

[Steve] I don't know, twenty five years,

[Steve] you could make

[Steve] an argument that that you would you were sort of missing out sonically by not having a a selection of of preamps,

[Steve] that kind of thing. Where we live now, I I I don't think that's an issue anymore. I really don't. But going back to the vintage digital thing, I I sometimes kind of reflects on

[Steve] having grown up with the Yamaha d x seven and d x 11. People were criticizing the sound of FM as being cold and brittle and all that kind of thing.

[Steve] All you have to do, I think, is just

[Steve] skip forward five or ten years,

[Steve] and another generation comes along and discovers

[Steve] those technologies. And they view it in a very different way. And so where where the d x seven was,

[Steve] you know, the Whitney Houston keyboard.

[Steve] Now, it it was just as much about what you would hear on pretty much every dance floor in Europe for the last thirty years. It that it's reassessed.

[Steve] And if you listen to the the old

[Steve] Steinberg stuff,

[Steve] there's one thing that I I I really would love that for them to make free again. I my one of my first plugins was the Steinberg

[Steve] Mastering

[Steve] Edition. I don't I don't know if anyone remembers that. And it was a suite of five plug ins, but it had two things that I never fully

[Steve] found again, and I certainly can't use it now. There was a loudness maximizer

[Steve] that sounded great,

[Steve] and it didn't have that sort of

[Steve] brittleness that the other maximizers had around sort of like twenty five years ago. And also, there was a a piece of technology which we're all very familiar with now, but I think this was at least one of the first things. It was an EQ

[Steve] that could learn

[Steve] the

[Steve] spread of energy

[Steve] over frequencies of another

[Steve] piece of another audio input. That's it. Yeah. Precisely. And match it to what you were using. And that was fantastic.

[Steve] Especially

[Steve] at the time, I was working.

[Steve] I wasn't working in a studio. I was working in a back room in a flat overlooking the sea in Brighton.

[Steve] And so my my monitoring

[Steve] was

[Steve] suboptimal.

[Steve] And along came Steinberg and really helped essentially is what I'm saying. I I look back on these plug ins really

[Steve] with a lot of a lot of affection.

[Steve] And if anybody knows how to get that loudness maximizer running on a 2026

[Steve] Mac, please let me know.

[Nick] That'd be interesting.

[Nick] I know, Tim, it's really interesting. This is I mean, we we sort of forget just how hard it is to create an industry standard

[Nick] these days, especially when everybody wants to own their own standard. They want to own it. But Steinberg did that. I mean, and that is a that is a pretty amazing accomplishment in itself, you know, much as MIDI was and much as there are other standards. But VST

[Nick] has become you know, was the beginning of all of that.

[Tim] Yeah. Absolutely. I I mean, that's I I think you're you're absolutely right with the comparison with with MIDI.

[Tim] I think I always

[Tim] that's probably that feels a little bit sort of sorry for Steinberg in a way in that that they

[Tim] they sort of trod this you know, they gave us some the VST format was this incredible thing.

[Tim] And they they were basically well, they were the first people to

[Tim] for you know, Cubase was the first DAW to to get audio recording, you know, native. You know, Pro Tools was doing it before then, but they had always it was all external and very expensive.

[Tim] And, you know, my first experience of chopping up audio on a PC was with a cracked version of Cubase.

[Tim] And, you know, they sort of stole a march on the whole thing and they were really leading the industry. And I I I sort of feel a little bit sad that,

[Tim] you know, in my in my mind, if if

[Tim] if the world was right then Cubase would be the number one

[Tim] DAW.

[Tim] Because, yeah, just because what

[Tim] they brought the

[Tim] standards they set, the path,

[Tim] the the sort of way that they shone for everyone

[Tim] has just been so seismic.

[Nick] So yeah. Yeah. No. So I suppose we we can't forget that that that many

[Nick] of these large software entity software houses had a period of very poor upgrade and licensing structural kind of times. You know? I mean, Pro Tools had it.

[Nick] Steinberg had it for a short period of time, but it really blew a lot of goodwill that there was at the time, which I think is now totally rebuilt. But I think it may may maybe very much affected

[Nick] them at a certain period. I can't give you the exact, but I just do remember there were lots of people because it was so prevalent,

[Nick] and then they did they they had they had Nuendo. They had Cuba, and they're always different flavors, and it got really complicated. And people just got a bit kind of

[Nick] I guess they got a bit miffed about it, and it maybe cost them a bit of goodwill at a certain point. I mean, I think now they are still one of the the more innovative DAWs.

[Nick] Even after all this time, you know, they still have features that others follow and emulate. I mean, as with all, you know, there are several like, Live will introduce something. Bitwill introduce something. Hubes will introduce something. Logical introduce something, and they all sort of it it pushes forward the language of DAWness.

[Nick] Yeah. I I might I'm gonna write that down as a title. The language of DAWs. Well, it does it does look like the

[Tim] Cubase might be the

[Tim] the first DAW to

[Tim] ship full kind of auto mixing

[Tim] in

[Tim] inside

[Tim] because that seems to be the next the next new thing is, like, you know, a d DAW will actually mix your tracks.

[Tim] And I think Cubase has got an interesting solution for this that looks quite

[Tim] quite mature. We're interested to see that

[Tim] come along.

[Nick] Yeah. Interesting. Anyway, just just thought it's worth marking that particular auspicious

[Nick] that

[Nick] auspicious date. So nineteen ninety six two thousand and twenty six.

[Nick] Congratulations.

[Nick] And and, you know, doff of the hat on all of those things. So,

[Nick] yeah, there was this other topic, which is also, I think, interesting,

[Nick] and this is news. This this this was actually on gear news. So I'm just gonna run this up because

[Nick] this was

[Nick] I can't read what it says, actually. I'm sorry. I should have written down who who wrote who wrote the actual

[Nick] Marron Schmull,

[Nick] I think it is. So wrote wrote a piece about so, I mean, basic essentially, the news is that Suno, who have become a bit of a sort of pariah, one of of all the generative music things, they are kind of the worst because of their CEO who said, you know, nobody enjoys making music, and it's just like you idiot.

[Nick] And they still I still get emails from them saying, hey. Would you like to collaborate on a video? We'd love to sort of have you introduce Sooner to your audience. And I I always write back and go, I can't possibly do that. Your CEO said this. It would be like me you know, I I just be just we'd become as much of a pariah as you are, essentially. Until you sort that stuff out, we're not gonna we can't really do anything. But and in this case, a German court, which again is a limited jurisdiction.

[Nick] So g g e m a, which I think is German music association,

[Nick] sued over a couple of tracks.

[Nick] One of which is Mambo number five, which was funny because that's so massively sampled. It's kind of like isn't it Tito Puente? It's like, I

[Nick] mean, anyway, they agreed that they were stored in Sune's metal and reproduced near identically.

[Nick] The legal basis, it's basically said that AI training isn't covered. You you Remedy Suna must disclose infringement related revenue and pay damages amount to be determined. And it also subsequently has come out that they they are there's a paper trail of them essentially training on

[Nick] stuff they just scraped from all over the place with no licensing in place, theft, essentially. I know Battery Operated Orchestra, they they feel strongly about this, and I think they've found some of their stuff, you know, even it's being referenced in these things.

[Nick] So this this is the first European ruling

[Nick] to explicitly require licensing for AI music. So it's bad news for Suno, Udeo,

[Nick] excuse me, and all of those. And and and I guess this is in many ways, this feels like probably the right thing because this

[Nick] they if if it's punitive and it causes them to to kind of have to rethink their business model and pay up, then happy days as far as I'm concerned because I don't really appreciate

[Nick] this whole notion of, hey. Just you know, you don't need to know anything. Just make any old trap. I do also understand that some of these things were I mean, I've been speaking to Mark Tinley,

[Nick] who's had who's got thousands and thousands of half finished song ideas, and he's been using some of these generative

[Nick] processes as part of that to finish them because it just goes, oh, here's a better baseline. Here's something. And and I can get that collaboratively, but that's not just making it. Anyway, thoughts, Steve, I'm guessing you probably have thoughts on this. You DJ. You know, there are you're on the coalface where you're producing. Do you I mean,

[Nick] do you know if you play AI created music to an audience that appreciate it? I mean, as a DJ, as are you aware of this sort of stuff? Or does it not do you shy away from, or does this make any difference? No. I'd I'd I'd

[Steve] I'd I'm not really sure, to be honest, but I but I do

[Steve] I do shy away from it myself. Yeah. I I do have some thoughts about this, and I'm trying being trying to collect my thoughts without going down the rabbit hole of of getting really excited about the morality

[Steve] too much. And I thought I would just, like,

[Steve] mention a few things about this on a sort of business level.

[Steve] First of all, the ruling in

[Steve] Munich, which is obviously in Germany, was that the judge had agreed

[Steve] that

[Steve] that Suno

[Steve] was reproducing

[Steve] the music as opposed to simply analyzing

[Steve] it. And that's and and to do that,

[Steve] under the the law, as I understand it in Germany, you need to have a license,

[Steve] you see. So we

[Steve] it seems that Jeeva's

[Steve] position

[Steve] is that they want to set a precedent and and sort of scale it out across Europe, hopefully.

[Steve] The it's no longer a free for all for companies to just come on and use any kind of training Yeah.

[Steve] Just help themselves. And so there would have to be a license for it. Now

[Steve] that could lead us to a really interesting, quite peculiar place,

[Steve] which I'll come on to in a moment. But there's actually an even more important case coming up

[Steve] or very, very soon in Massachusetts in The US where Sony and I think Universal

[Steve] are also

[Steve] suing

[Steve] Suno

[Steve] in a similar

[Steve] way.

[Steve] Their argument, as I understand it, is that they're saying that the the what how Suno has trained their data does not qualify for fair use.

[Steve] We don't have that concept in The UK. We don't really have that concept in in Europe at all. But in The US, they do. So if the major publishers

[Steve] can

[Steve] get the Massachusetts court to determine that there is no

[Steve] fair usage happening here at Sony, and it requires a license.

[Steve] As you said, Nick, it means that their business model has to completely change. Done for. Yeah. And yeah. Well, it would mean, for

[Steve] one thing, that it would become much,

[Steve] much more expensive. And I

[Steve] sort of feel that if there's any

[Steve] or rather one of the main appeals

[Steve] of generative anything

[Steve] is that it's very cheap.

[Steve] You don't use the same kind of quality assessment with something that's really cheap and abundant

[Steve] that that you would if you were paying £30 a time for a generation. I mean, for

[Steve] a start, if you did that,

[Steve] it would mean

[Steve] you would lose almost all of your

[Steve] customer base in one go. But just one other thing. I think where we might land here, which is very interesting,

[Steve] if the Massachusetts case rules in Suno's favor,

[Steve] But if the German Bavarian court case and also there's another one being

[Steve] pursued by the Danish collection agency.

[Steve] If they win that and Europe

[Steve] says you need to have license

[Steve] for

[Steve] training

[Steve] a model of this nature.

[Steve] You could have a situation where it's not possible to distribute

[Steve] AI generated music

[Steve] in Europe,

[Steve] but it is in The US. Yay. And that yeah.

[Steve] Now that that could be really

[Steve] that's a very interesting situation.

[Steve] And

[Steve] I I don't know where that lands us, but I think where it may land us is it could be that this side of the Atlantic

[Steve] is championing

[Steve] the creators as opposed to the tech firms

[Steve] and the or the big tech firms of this of this nature. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

[Steve] That's something that we we do know that the lawmakers

[Steve] and their amazing president in The US,

[Steve] they don't want that. They don't want control over the tech places. So so I I think although I'm

[Steve] I'm kind of conflicted in some ways about

[Steve] the use of generative music,

[Steve] What what Jeebo has done, I think, is fascinating,

[Steve] and I do think it's hugely significant.

[Nick] Yeah. No. Very interesting. Well, thanks for that summary. You obviously know a lot more about it than I do, so I appreciate you filling that. But it's interesting. I mean so let's assume

[Nick] I know, Tim. I mean, you know, assume they get clobbered.

[Nick] What about all the people who've been writing 200 songs a month and uploading them to Spotify? What happens to their revenue? You know, this this I mean, it would surely not exist. I mean and and as we know, that sort of legislation,

[Nick] those sort of restraints just don't exist in The US on these kind of companies. They're just allowed to do what they like. So it's gonna be an interesting sort of

[Nick] tectonic kind of shift. I mean, the European

[Nick] huge landmass of of European creativity against the landmass of US tech, I suppose.

[Tim] Yeah. I

[Tim] mean, I think the

[Tim] you know, there there's this whole kind of grifty

[Tim] grifty angle to to the whole thing. And so, yeah, going back to my point earlier, I mean, obviously,

[Tim] you know, I I I use LLMs a lot.

[Tim] But, you know, my

[Tim] well, for for me, I don't know that, you know, it's a very hot topic and everyone's got different takes on it. But for me, it's very much

[Tim] yeah. Using them for translation,

[Tim] it is

[Tim] is legitimate. Using them for autocomplete is is sort of not. Well, it's certainly not legitimate unless

[Tim] there's a very clear way that the people who,

[Tim] yeah, who who created the training set that is used for the autocomplete,

[Tim] they need to they need to be compensated.

[Tim] I mean, that that's it's clear that is clear cut to me.

[Tim] But

[Tim] I think what yeah. What is tricky because there is, you know, there's this massive front. I don't know what the numbers are now, but they're they're it's kinda eye watering. The the numbers of the percentage of daily daily music uploaded to streaming

[Tim] services, Spotify, etcetera,

[Tim] is, like, a huge in the double digits of percent, I think,

[Tim] is is AI generated.

[Tim] And I know that there are these,

[Tim] you know, these sort of Reddit

[Tim] subreddits where

[Tim] people are kind of developing these playbooks for, you know, how you can generate songs and boost them up,

[Tim] you know, boost yeah. Run

[Tim] ads in really cheap territories to get clicks that then boost the numbers and

[Tim] to get Spotify.

[Tim] Shucks. Yeah. To get Spotify revenue,

[Tim] which is very much this this sort of sort of barrel It's not power. Scraping. Well, yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's got

[Tim] it's

[Tim] got that

[Tim] it's got this sort of, like, grifty, polymarkety,

[Tim] shitcoiny

[Tim] flavor to it, the whole

[Nick] the the whole thing. And I I just The whole thing is a scam. Yeah.

[Tim] And it yeah. It is a scam, but I think it's the the saddest thing. You know, I will not weave it. I will not shed a tear for

[Tim] the Zuno CEO or or any of their funders.

[Tim] But I think, you know, the

[Tim] this sort of new disenfranchised

[Tim] Gen z generation who are economically,

[Tim] you know, face

[Tim] huge challenges

[Tim] and who are offered these,

[Tim] you know, get get rich quick kind of schemes and, you know, the sort of generate music on the Suno, try to get a hit on Spotify, get Spotify

[Tim] revenue is one of is one of these hacks. And I I feel I feel bad for those people who

[Tim] might have bought into that.

[Tim] They're going to get rogged out legitimately,

[Tim] but I think it's sad that they got pulled into that in the first place.

[Steve] If I could just add one further thing on this. Yes. Sorry.

[Steve] Just one other thing I just wanted to throw in on this. I think that

[Steve] we need to remember that all of these

[Steve] generative

[Steve] AI systems, the LLMs,

[Steve] they're

[Steve] only as good as the data that they're trained on.

[Steve] And the data that this one is trained on, I think, pretty much all of them, was made by people.

[Steve] There is no there's not a creativity going on here. This is a it's almost like a kind of enormous multidimensional

[Steve] decision tree

[Steve] when you get a result from any kind of generative AI. And behind all that is the labor of the creatives or just the human beings that created the data that the model was trained on. And I think Yes. Very true. Without getting without getting on my high horse too much here, because I do tend to fall off quite a lot, we

[Steve] need to remember that. Who is gonna get paid here? Who is

[Steve] who is controlling the value of that labor?

[Steve] And I think this is something that, as a society, we do need to reflect on.

[Steve] And,

[Steve] yeah, I I think that's basically just remember, folks, that behind all this stuff, there is no artificial intelligence. This is not a sentient thing in in terms of human sentience.

[Steve] We are just representing

[Steve] human endeavor, human creativity,

[Steve] human labor

[Steve] in an

[Steve] in a slightly modified form.

[Nick] Okay. Well, on a positive note, I mean because I think I I think this is good news, this court case, and I also think on a positive note, there are there's a trend

[Nick] worldwide amongst

[Nick] youth, certainly happening in Europe and certainly in The US. It's been spotted that people just don't want

[Nick] this stuff. The kids don't want it. They don't wanna be on their phones. They wanna do real things. And I think that ultimately will will do for it all because, I mean, I you know, if there's no audience coming up that wants it, then it's got nowhere to be sold to. So it's a complete you know, it's it's it's it's like there is no future.

[Nick] So I'm hoping that that's the case because, I mean, as a society, we just sort of maybe we it's like when you suddenly think I really need to eat some spinach. You know? It's like you suddenly have the sense that, oh, I I want some fresh pineapple, and it's your body telling you what you need. And I think there's a certain amount of that happening

[Nick] at a cultural level amongst amongst the whole strata, a whole generation of people. I don't want all of this stuff. I want real things. You know, there's this just sort of sense that this this is gonna be better for me. So I'm hoping that that will that feels like a positive move and a positive thing. And I think the EU, although they can be, you know, overly

[Nick] overly

[Nick] administrative and

[Nick] running a lot of rules,

[Nick] the

[Nick] hearts are probably in the right place. It's standing up for citizens rather than big business where I think that's the thing that's happening elsewhere in the world is just standing at is is money generation,

[Nick] and it's, you know, it's this big seven companies in in The US and, you know, and and whatnot. So, anyway, I think that's a positive thing. Maybe that is that a positive thing to end on? It feels like it's positive. I think that's generally a good a good one. So, you know, Tim, your daughters will probably not spend as much time on their phones as as, you know, my daughter did when she quit because they're gonna be younger, you know, etcetera, etcetera. You know? Even and without your parenting, it's just it's actually something they will

[Nick] sort of just instinctively not want to do. That's what I'm hoping.

[Tim] If I will. I yeah. I I hope I hope they spend less time on screens than than I do.

[Tim] I I I wouldn't hold myself up as an example to my daughters in terms of my you know, how I how fragmented my attention is. So, yeah, I mean, I hope I hope we can build a world that is

[Tim] but, I mean, you know, we do we do our best. We're selling to a Montessori nursery school, you know, trying trying

[Tim] to do all those all those things.

[Tim] Yeah.

[Nick] We hope. Well, that's good. I mean, those are all good things. And I think, I mean, I think we've just gotta be careful. I mean, obviously, there's lots of proliferations of data centers being built. And what worries me a little bit is the ability for us to have our own hardware, our own laptops, our own things that aren't just smart terminals

[Nick] is gonna be taken away for us because we can't afford the RAM. We can't afford the storage. We can't afford the processes because

[Nick] it's the interests of

[Nick] the the data center builders to to remove this from the general population because then we have no choice other than to rent

[Nick] data space off their massive, you know, bit barns, bite barns, or whatever they call them these days. Anyway, I don't want so you resist somehow.

[Nick] Yeah. Yeah. Anyway

[Nick] or yeah. Right.

[Nick] I think we'll we'll cut things there. Steve, what's up what's next for you? Isn't it is it DJ season? Are you gonna be off around the around the world doing your doing your gigs? Yeah.

[Steve] Well, next up is Italy.

[Nick] Oh, lovely. The

[Steve] yeah. Yeah. Although average

[Steve] temperature where I'm going of 40 degrees.

[Steve] So I'm I'm gonna bring my own air con system with me, I think. Yeah.

[Steve] And and really help out the world with that environment changer. But in the meantime,

[Steve] yeah, we just had Pride, which was obviously a huge event down here in Brighton. That was very good fun. So and and then I've got a couple of shows

[Steve] in and around Brighton when I get back from Italy, I'm which kinda looking forward to.

[Steve] So, yeah, it is it is busy. I'm I'm hoping to get some a little bit of time in in Tuscany

[Steve] out just which is just South Of Florence where I'm going. And

[Steve] and, yeah, spend some more time in a swimming pool the size of a bedroom.

[Steve] How about that? Yeah.

[Nick] No. That sounds lovely. It sounds sounds

[Nick] sounds fantastic.

[Nick] I wish I was doing the same. I'm trying to get away to South Of France, but we're probably gonna leave it a little bit till it cools down a bit and stops burning. I think it's probably the idea.

[Nick] Tim, I'm guessing you've got summer holidays. You're just full steam ahead on the car systems in every available moment, I imagine. Right? Yeah. No summer holidays for me.

[Tim] I'm hoping I'm I'm hoping for next year

[Tim] to be in a position to take some holiday.

[Tim] So, yeah, just yeah.

[Tim] Pedal to the metal knows the grindstone.

[Tim] Lot lots of things to be to be shipping. I mean, I'm I'm excited about this,

[Tim] you know, being able to build a system and then share it out on a on a link for people to just enjoy. I think that

[Tim] that excites me.

[Tim] And, of course, does, you know, the the standalone app and the plug in.

[Tim] Those those will be coming later this year.

[Tim] And then and that that sort of takes cast out of this, oh, that's a that's an interesting thing you're doing in the browser to actually well, here's an interesting thing that you can really if you want to use it in your productions, you can. So so, yeah, that's that's what's next up for me,

[Nick] and I'm very excited for it. Well, I'm very grateful for you having me on here. Thank you. Well, you're you're welcome, Tim. Thank you very much for coming on. And thanks to our chat. I seem to have there's a lot of people getting a bit hot under the collar, but, you know, these are things that as creative people, we do have to kind of wrestle with these things. This is this is what's in the world now, and this is a new technology show. So it all has

[Nick] it all has ramifications,

[Nick] and we do have to think about how we deal with them. But, anyway, I hope you have a lovely rest of the week. All you folks, thanks again to our chatties. Thanks again to our guests. That was Sonic Talk nine zero three.

[Nick] The nine zero three a, of course, as I said, was the Moog random voltage generator,

[Nick] which wasn't actually a terribly

[Nick] exciting looking thing. Let me see. That's what it looks like. It's basically two in, two out, and a and a

[Nick] a logo. But, hey. You know, I'm I'm sure it's I'm sure it sounds fantastic.

[Nick] Anyway, as I said, thank you very much, everybody. That was Sonic Talk. See you next time. Take care. Bye bye now.