Subtractive groovebox

4TRAX

Three oscillators and a noise source per track, through two filters — series or parallel, 12 or 24 dB — into an amp with its own envelope. Three envelopes, two LFOs and a ten-slot mod matrix on every track. Four of them play at once, each on its own MIDI channel, each with its own pattern, rate and length.

In the workshop · Spring 2027

4TRAX DX

The same four-track chassis with the oscillators torn out and a six-operator FM engine dropped in their place — the one from 1983, rebuilt by measuring the real thing rather than copying somebody else's approximation of it.

Thirty-two algorithms. Envelopes that bite. That electric piano, that bass, that bell you have heard on a thousand records. It reads the old patch cartridges, so decades of sounds open in a browser tab — if you know, you know.

And because it lives in the 4TRAX chassis, it arrives with the sequencer, the parameter locks and the effects already bolted on. Not finished. Getting there.

On the bench