TapeDesk: 4-Track Tape Studio

TapeDesk is a 4-track tape recorder for iPhone & iPad. Open it, hit record, and the take is there. There's a tape, a playhead, and a record button. No arming, no setup, no menus to learn.

It also runs as an AUv3 plugin, so the same tape works inside AUM, Logic and others. It records what the host plays and follows its transport and tempo, and your projects move between the app and the plugin.

Drag the speed, the pitch follows

Real varispeed from 0.25x to 2x across the whole tape. Slow it down and the sound sinks, speed it up and it climbs, the way old cassette decks did. There's no "keep pitch" switch, that's the point. Record at a bent speed and it's printed into the take. You can scrub and scratch the tape like vinyl.

Loop on, and it's a live looper

Play a part, then play another over it. The layers stack while you listen, sound on sound. Commit when it sounds right.

Four tracks, one machine

Record, overdub, bounce. Cut at the playhead, join (it heals the cut), trim, move, duplicate, reverse a block, or punch in to redo a single section. Import an audio file onto the tape, or clear a whole track in one tap. Everything is non-destructive, with one undo history, and it all survives a relaunch. Underneath there's a real mixer: fader, meter, pan, input level, two effect sends and mute per track. Merge two tracks into one to free a lane.

With a USB interface you can record up to 12 inputs at once. Each track can be one input or a mix of several.

Seven effects, written in C++

The effects run inside the engine, not licensed from anyone:

- TapeSat, magnetic-tape saturation

- Delay, a tape delay that wavers the way real tape did

- Reverb, an 8-line room rather than a sample of someone's hall

- CRUSH, HAZE, WOBBLE and SHIMMER for when you want to push things further. SHIMMER rises an octave and blooms in slowly.

They print into the take, so what you hear is what you bounce, with no separate render that comes out different. You can also load third-party AUv3 effects into the chain.

Eject a finished mix

Export the master or per-track stems, WAV or M4A, the whole tape or a single loop cycle, straight to the share sheet.

Locks to your room

Ableton Link or MIDI Clock. Start your gear and TapeDesk falls into step. Tap tempo, time signature, metronome, count-in.

Bought once, not rented

No subscription. No accounts, no sign-ups, no ads, no tracking. The privacy label says Data Not Collected, and your recordings stay on the phone.

Native Swift with a C++ audio engine, so it stays solid: no latency you can feel, no hitches, no dropouts. Dark mode (light, dark or automatic), haptic transport, lock-screen and Control Center control, double-tap any control to reset it, and crash recovery. Available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese, with four app icons.