The Complete Manual

What's new

Everything added since the deck first shipped, newest first. The features themselves are documented in full further down.

A take, start to finish

1. Plug in and pick your input. Tap the input line at the top to choose the interface. Arm a track with ARM.
2. Set the level. Tap that track's VU to open the Level Lab, and set gain on the interface until you're near −18 LUFS with peaks under −6 dBFS.
3. Dial the sound. Open FX, load a factory preset or build a chain, and listen live with DIRECT on. Then hit REC.
4. Build it up. STOP parks the tape; the next REC continues the same take. Arm an empty track to overdub against what you've got.
5. Finish it. SAVE prints whatever the session's switches ask for — a stereo mixdown, a stem split, or both — then SHARE sends the files anywhere.

The deck, control by control

1. Counter Tape position. The lamp beside it burns orange while recording.
2. Input line Tap to choose the capture device. While armed it reports the format the hardware actually opened — rate, channels, encoding.
3. Project display Tap to name the project; the name becomes its folder on disk. Tap the badge above it for the About page.
4. IN meter An analog VU on the summed master input. Tap it to open the Level Lab.
5. The reel Spins with the tape, one turn per eight seconds. Drag it like a jog wheel to scrub, flick it to coast.
6. Reel skins The small reel in the corner opens the wardrobe — twelve looks.
7. Transport REC · RW · PLAY · STOP · NEW · SHARE. Hold NEW to undo the last take.
8. Input patch Tap to route inputs 1–8 or summed stereo pairs. Hold it to name the track.
9. VU / waveform Tap for the Level Lab. Hold to swap between the needle and the track's waveform.
10. Fader and LEDs Mix level, with a post-fader meter beside it.
11. Pan Places the track in the stereo field. Centre keeps unity gain and has a gentle detent.
12. Arm · Mute · Erase Enable for recording, silence in the mix, wipe the track — erase always asks first.
13. Side panel Master and monitor level, DIRECT monitoring, recording quality, tape length.
14. Bounce · Import · Split Stereo mixdown, load audio in, separate into stems.
15. ON SAVE + SAVE Per-project switches, and the key that runs them.
16. Recordings Every project and take, ready to share or load back in.

Tape logic & files

STOP is pause. Stopping never ends a take — the next REC continues exactly where the tape parked. Nothing is overwritten behind your back: audio only disappears when you erase a track, load over it, or pull the last take back, and all three ask first.

RAW is the truth. Every take writes an untouched capture. The FX chain prints to its own separate file, so the clean version always exists beside the processed one.

What lands in a project folder

Recording quality

16-bit is fine for sketches, 24-bit is the studio default, and 32-float shines with interfaces that output float. Keep the setting steady inside a project — if the format changes between takes, that track has to start fresh and the deck will tell you.

The FX rack

Six units per track, each racked in its own walnut surround with an IN switch. The knobs work live while the tape rolls — an FX print is itself a performance. Nothing here ever touches the RAW file.

Presets

The PRESETS button at the top of the rack holds two shelves: factory chains that ship with the deck, and your own saved below them. Recalling one resets the DSP, so nothing rings over from the chain before it.

Save the current chain under any name and it becomes available on every track, in every project.

The Level Lab

Tap any VU — a channel's or the master IN meter — and it expands into the testing window. The analog needle stays on top. The DIGITAL screen adds the numbers.

Metering is K-weighted, the same weighting broadcast uses, and it always reads the raw pre-FX input — so the numbers stay honest with a full rack engaged. FX BYPASS in the corner pulls the rack out of your monitor path so your ears hear what the meter sees; it never touches a recording, and it releases itself when you close the Lab.

Levelling a guitar modeler

Helix, Quad Cortex, FM9, GP-5 — the perennial question of how loud a preset should be. Arm its track, open the Lab, and pick a target. The verdict line tells you the exact move: "RAISE INPUT +3.2 dB", "TOO HOT −2.1 dB", or a green all-clear.

Mix & bounce

The mix bus is true stereo: per-track pan with a balance law that keeps centre at unity, per-track width from D'Master, and a master level over the top. All of it is live — move a fader or a pan mid-playback and you hear it immediately.

BOUNCE renders faders, mutes, pans, width and master offline into MIXDOWN.wav — 24-bit stereo, full length, in seconds. It's also the cleanest thing to hand the stem splitter.

Import & stems

Loading audio in

Any take in the recordings browser can be loaded onto any track — including takes from other projects, and stems. IMPORT brings in audio from outside the app, converted to the deck's rate and quality so append and overdub keep working on top of it. Loading over a track that already has audio always asks first.

The stem splitter

SPLIT separates any recording into four files in the project's SPLIT folder:

It runs entirely on the phone in seconds, with nothing downloaded and nothing sent anywhere.

Stems load straight back onto tracks — so you can split a reference song, mute its vocal, and sing over the rest.

Save, and when things run

Your audio is never waiting to be saved. Every take streams to disk as you record, and the moment STOP parks the tape the files are finalised. SAVE is not a rescue button — it's the button that runs the finishing work.

The ON SAVE switches

Two analog switches sit under the mixer beside the SAVE key, and they belong to this project — a voice-over session can auto-bounce while a band demo auto-splits. With both on, SAVE bounces first and then splits the fresh mixdown, which is the order you want.

So when does splitting actually happen?

Never on its own, and never while the tape is rolling — separation is heavy work and it would fight the recorder for the processor. It runs only when you ask: by tapping SPLIT on a recording, or automatically at the end of SAVE when that switch is on. Both refuse politely mid-transport, and SAVE stops the tape for you first. Loading, bouncing and splitting all show a labelled progress bar, and monitoring stays live throughout.

Reel skins

Tap the small reel at the corner of the deck to open the wardrobe — twelve finishes from the classic grey through walnut, ebony, ivory, sunburst and brushed steel. Wood finishes wear a brass hub, the rest get steel. Your pick is remembered per device.

Hardware

What the deck can pull from an interface depends on the interface, and on the phone. None of this is a fault in the app — it's how the devices behave.

Channel counts

iOS delivers every channel a class-compliant interface offers. Many Android phones cap USB capture at two channels no matter what's plugged in — the Note 10+ is one of them. The deck negotiates rate, channel count and encoding automatically, including 24-bit packed and 32-float modes, and verifies the route before trusting it.

Monitoring latency runs about 50–150 ms on the Android path. The SYNC knob trims overdubs back into place.

Troubleshooting

Version history