What it does

Microwave is modeled after a cheap 90s cassette recorder that we extensively modeled: the tape, the built-in mic, the tiny speaker, the hiss and motor whine, and a headphone jack that was wired wrong. Set DRIVE, WOBBLE and NOISE to noon and that’s the real machine. Push past noon and it starts to fall apart, in all the ways a cheap tape deck falls apart. I reach for it on drums when a loop is too clean, on vocals when I want a voicemail or an old demo, on synths and samples that need some dust, and on a mix bus when the whole song should sound like it was bounced to a cassette in 1994. Automate it and you can hear the tape die in real time.

• DRIVE pushes the tape until it saturates and breaks up
• WOBBLE: real wow and flutter that drifts like a worn-out deck
• NOISE: hiss and motor whine, with noon set to the real machine
• MIC records through the built-in mic, SPEAKER plays back through the tiny speaker, and they stack
• WILD goes off the rails in stereo and disappears in mono, on purpose
• MIX, INPUT and OUTPUT with LINK, undo, A/B, presets, MIDI learn

Specs