A bit of an instabuy for me this on the basis of the slightly laid back demo my algorithm fed me this afternoon. Will report back on the reality. But interface and concept is super cool and for an early release of a product all feels very slick.
I get that it’s just a fancy graphic wrapper around a hobbled DAW experience. But it’s a good take on it. Given the low intro price $29, it seems a cheap way to compensate for TE’s scandalous embrace of UNDO on the OP-1F. Even before you get to the bundled effects, etc. Takes me right back to being an 80s/90s kid messing around cutting demos in studios.
Well tbh I’d have been happy with a virtual 8 track. Was enough when I was 18 with an attitude. But the UI does fit perfectly on a 13" MacBook Air screen. Whatever vibe coded slop might be going on behind the scenes it looks and feels very nice indeed. Going to spend the bank holiday weekend messing around with it and getting increasingly frustrated by not getting my takes right first time. Well that and whatever inevitable lag it hides behind its pretty graphics.
Oooooh. I usually just record stereo 2-buss live but I happen to have 16 channels of tube preamps in my rack piped ADAT into a MOTU 8M which would marry pretty perfectly with this so gonna give it a go. Thnx for the head’s up!
I use Ableton like this already though for the most part and wouldn’t personally feel the need for more limitations to get that kind of feel, simply recording to audio is enough for me.
This is what I had wanted for so long! A virtual “portastudio” on the computer. It seems like the coding agents really shine here, allowing the dev to bring his vision forwards in a clear way. The interface and functions are well thought-out (way beyond what an LLM can do), and follow the “don’t make me think” mantra. This is the essence of the tape workflow: it should be really intuitive. Still early days, but if the dev keeps it up, it could become my main daw. I still did not figure how to do stareo with plugins though.
I gave it a go today w/ 12 tracks of hardware/FX routed into it. Being DAW adverse (much prefer making music w/ hardware) and old (), I really enjoyed using it. Everything was simple to setup and use, and just a bit less limited than my usual 2-buss recording M.O. - it was nice to do some minor mixing after the fact.
You can’t edit anything, no automation, no working with loops or clips or fragments of audio. Setup your inputs and hit record then…REWIND. It was a trip waiting for it to do so but you can hold shift and it will at 10x speed - a nice QOL touch. One nice thing is never having to save - it does so as you work.
So after recording a little test jam, I decided to try and do a quick master within the program. I added a bit of its tape saturation and smidge of wow and flutter. You get 3 plugin slots on the master channel so I loaded up Pro-Q3, BX Masterdesk, and a meter. Boom done.
The program was solid - no hangs, crashes, etc.
First impression is that for me, I like the serious limitations and quick “is what it is” workflow, but for those that like the endless possibilities of modern DAWs, this isn’t for you.
Edit: what I haven’t tested yet but am interested in trying is hooking up two Launch Control 3 XLs to it and riding the faders during realtime mix down (a feature it has). Would be pretty great if that works
FWIW, you can setup your inputs and whatnot and save as a project template. Being able to reorder plugins would be nice. They have a feature request form on their website - will make a request
I noticed that, and the development is close to completion imo. I could in fact run two stereo instances of the same plugin for left and right and set it up once and save it as a template, but double the plugins is twice the necessary load on processors and you have to match settings on both VST instances for every minor tweak.
Only stereo mix, but you could mute tracks and render 1 at a time. Would take a while tho as it only renders in real time currently as far as I could tell
Minimum Requirements:
macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
Apple Silicon M1 or newer
16 GB RAM minimum (recommended for larger sessions)
Internet connection for license activation and updates
Ironic that this requires a beast of a computer (and internet connection) to do what hard disk recorders 25 years ago were able to do on calculator CPUs. Have we completely forgotten about the notion of proper resource management? This should be able to run on a Raspberry Pi without breaking a sweat but instead it’s obviously bloated to fuck which leads me to suspect it’s yet another vibe coded project.
yeah it’s obviously vibecoded. just another person trying to cash in on people who get wooed by a nice interface and don’t know any better. meanwhile people who put in actual effort to make quality software (like Fors and his recently released groovebox thing) gets drowned out by the thousands of slop projects like these, it’s sad.
I’d bet money it’s running some sort of LLMified version of the (GPLv3 licensed) CHOW tape model too, ugh.
also, I’m suspicious of the amount of views on the video in the OP. 90k in a short amount of time for a niche thing like this? a lot of the youtube comments seem very much like bots, but maybe that’s normal?
Suspicious marketing tactics too. It’s like everywhere and the designer isn’t responding on the corresponding YT channel, which is odd if this is a one man/women project in beta phase.
My guess all AI agents and bots and tricks are used. That said, if it ends up working nicely and with satisfied customers.
), I really enjoyed using it. Everything was simple to setup and use, and just a bit less limited than my usual 2-buss recording M.O. - it was nice to do some minor mixing after the fact.
