One sample, five engines, resampled back into itself.
v0.1.0 · VST3 · AU · Standalone · macOS 11.0+ · Apple Silicon · 5 presets
after Torso S-4 · Elektron Digitone II
Why it exists.
i4 takes one sample, or sixteen, runs them through a series of sculpting engines, lets you modulate any of it, and resamples the result straight back into the instrument.
Tape is the master clip and the sixteen pads sum in immediately after it, so every pad runs through the full chain too. Nothing bypasses what follows.
Built to be performed: granular textures, resonant tones, destruction and space, all under a four-slot modulation matrix.
01
The chain
Tape is a varispeed player. Scrub start and length, rotate the loop, glide between speeds, reverse, freeze the playhead, keylock the pitch, and layer sound-on-sound. The sixteen pads trigger from MIDI or on screen and sum in right after it.
Mosaic is the granular cloud: rate, size, contour, spray, warp and detune, with grain pitch quantized to a scale. Ring is a 48-band resonator bank with cutoff, resonance, decay, pitch, detune, tilt and tone, plus noise injection, for harmonic, bell-like or vocal resonances.
Deform handles destruction and dynamics: drive, compression, bit crush, spectral tilt, a noise layer with its own decay and colour, and a gate. Vast is time and space in one, a synced delay and reverb sharing feedback, spread, damp, decay and size, with an infinite freeze.
02
Modulation and performance
Four slots, each a Wave LFO, a Random source or an ADSR, with multiple routes per slot into around fifty destinations and tempo-syncable rates. Right-click any knob to assign it.
Beat Repeat replaces the output rather than mixing into it, which is what makes the stutter resample exactly as heard. Tape Stop does the turntable spin-down. The Master Filter morphs low-pass to bypass to high-pass on one knob.
The Loop Recorder closes the circle: capture up to thirty seconds of post-effect stereo and drop it onto a pad, where it re-enters the chain from the top.
03
Where it is
v0.1 and in active development. It is the largest of the three codebases and the youngest: seven pages, seventy-six automatable parameters, five factory presets and three UI themes.
Two gaps worth naming. The build is not yet configured for a universal binary the way akaBleep and Enzyme are, so it currently targets the architecture it is built on. And the factory sample library it expects is not in the repository yet.
Signature features.
6 featuresTape
A varispeed master clip: scrub, rotate, glide, reverse, freeze, keylock and sound-on-sound layering.
Mosaic
A granular cloud with rate, size, contour, spray, warp and detune, grain pitch quantized to a scale.
Ring
A 48-band resonator bank with noise injection, for harmonic, bell-like or vocal resonances.
Deform and Vast
Drive, compression, bit crush, spectral tilt and a gate, then a synced delay and reverb with infinite freeze.
Four-slot mod matrix
Wave LFO, Random and ADSR into around fifty destinations. Right-click any knob to assign it.
The resampling loop
Beat Repeat replaces the output, and the Loop Recorder drops thirty seconds of post-effect stereo onto a pad.
Signal flow.
from the repo ┌──────────────── Mod Matrix · 4 slots ────────────────┐
│ Wave LFO · Random · ADSR → ~50 targets │
▼ ▼
Tape + 16 Pads ─▶ Mosaic ─▶ Ring ─▶ Deform ─▶ Vast ─▶ Beat Repeat ─▶ Master Filter ─▶ out
(source) (granular)(reson.) (deform) (space) (stutter) │
└▶ Loop Recorder ─▶ new PadPresets.
5 factoryA starting set, expanding as the engines settle.
Specifications.
from a531653- Version
- v0.1.0
- Loads as
- i4
- Formats
- VST3 · AU · Standalone
- Category
- Instrument · Sampler
- Platform
- macOS 11.0+ · Apple Silicon
- Pages
- 7 (Tape, Mosaic, Ring, Deform, Vast, Mods, Live)
- Pads
- 16, post-Tape
- Resonator
- 48 bands
- Parameters
- 76 automatable
- Engine
- JUCE 8 · C++17
- Bundle ID
- com.akaieuan.i4
- Plugin code
- Akae / Ak4i
Version, formats, codes and platform are read from the plugin’s own CMakeLists at the commit above, not retyped here.
Where it is.
Shipping
- Tape, Mosaic, Ring, Deform and Vast
- Four-slot modulation matrix into ~50 destinations
- Beat Repeat, Tape Stop and the Loop Recorder
Next
- A universal binary build, matching the other two
- The factory sample library
- More than five factory presets