Most work in AI music generation focused on audio, which has seen limited use in the music production industry due to its rigidity. To maximize flexibility while assuming only textual instructions from producers, we are among the first to tackle symbolic music editing. We circumvent the known challenge of lack of labeled data by proving that LLMs with zero-shot prompting can effectively edit drum grooves. The recipe of success is a creatively designed format that interfaces LLMs and music, while we facilitate evaluation by providing an evaluation dataset with annotated unit tests that highly aligns with musicians' judgment.

Every year, we learn about new companies from brilliant people with big ideas. They come from every corner of the planet to provide us with cool innovations to write about and nerd out over. However, it's not often that we give an award to a company that's been around for 401 years. Our category award winner this year, Zildjian, was founded in 1623. It has an extensive archive of its historic cymbals, which played a huge role in the development of its now award-winning electronic drumset.

In 1988, we launched the Best of What's New Awards. The original list highlighted "the very things that make our lives more comfortable, more rewarding, more exciting, and more fun," to quote then-Publisher Grant A. Burnett. Now, in 2024, we continue our decades-old tradition of honoring big ideas. We even see hints of our original honorees in this year's list: Sea-Doo and Ford made both lists, 36 years apart. We're proud to bring you promising innovations--from things that make life at home easier to literal out-of-this-world explorations. This is the Best of What's New 2024. Had you asked me at the beginning of 2024 what our best gadgets list would look like, I'd have guessed it would be filled with quirky AI-driven devices like the rabbit R1 or the Humane Ai Pin. "Now with AI" is a phrase that has dominated consumer electronics in the 2020s. These devices promised unadulterated access to the power of neural networks in ways that would seamlessly integrate into our lives without relying on phones or smart fridges. Then, the devices came out. The software is slow and buggy, and the hardware is clunky. Maybe the stand-alone AI device will still have its year, and we'll look back and chuckle at these humble beginnings. In reality, 2024's big breakthrough came from Apple in the form of its long-rumored Vision Pro headset. The device has its own hurdles to clear, but after just a few minutes of using it, it was clear that it's something different, important, and honestly pretty amazing. The list also includes Sony's innovative pro-grade camera, the most accessible drone we've ever used, and a no-fun phone--no fun in a good way, of course. Credible rumors of Apple's VR bounced around the gadget blogs and tech sites for nearly a decade. It was consumer tech's sasquatch in that people claimed to have seen it, but no one knew if it even existed. Then, the Vision Pro emerged from the proverbial forest in February with a surprising design and a massive 3,500 price tag. It also came toting a new R-series chip and a dedicated OS meant for spatial computing.

You can find better rivals for just a few dollars more, but if you've got an extremely tight budget, these will do well enough for movies, music, and calls. Run a search for computer speakers under $20, and you'll find plenty of options--but not many will give you much bang for your buck. A rare exception is the Creative Pebble, one of our current top picks for budget PC speakers, but most cheap speakers are unremarkable offerings tied to unknown brands. Meanwhile, Cyber Acoustics keeps steadily producing extremely affordable, if basic, speakers. You won't brag about to friends about buying a set, but they perform well for their price.