Weβve long wanted to capture the essence of this electro-mechanical classic - and by essence, we mean all the mechanical clicks, noises, and beautiful imperfections of a machine over 50 years old.
At first, we saw it as a natural evolution of our Cassette series, taken few steps further: 16 dynamic layers, release and mechanical samples - all still passed through tape in the end. Then, out of curiosity, we loaded the raw samples into the Tapes engine and started playing around - and it quickly became clear how we should shape its final form.
The result? A deeply sampled, expressive instrument - a playground of evolving textures, all housed in a sound engine built for discovery and experimentation.
Just the way we like it.
While
themkI builds on the engine introduced in
Tapes.01, itβs not meant to be version 2. Instead, it takes things in a different direction, better suited to the sampled material.
Animated mode (known as Swarm mode in Tapes) now features polyphonic modulation, with each layer running on its own independent engine (which also makes it MPE compatible). This setup allows you to combine standard polyphonic playback (Single mode) with sequenced / granular, two Single modes or two sequenced / granular.
Weβve also introduced a system of instrument modes, 16 at the moment, designed to keep things simple and fun while still encouraging deep sound exploration.