Porchlight

An eight-track tape recorder for your Mac. This is everything on the deck, and how it works.

Recording

Pick what you record from and what you listen on at the bottom right of the deck. Porchlight records at 48 kHz, 24-bit.

Each track has a round red button. Lit means armed: the next take goes on that track. Pick its input with the small menu beside the fader. Press Rec (or R) to record and Stop (or Space) to stop.

There are eight tracks and no more. When the tape fills up, bounce some of it down.

Sound on sound

The Recording switch sets what happens to what's already on a track. Replace records over it, like normal tape. Layer mixes the new pass in, and what was there loses a generation, coming back a little quieter and darker, with a little hiss. Stack enough passes and the oldest ones recede.

The tape

Speed

The big cream knob runs the tape slower or faster, about two semitones either way. Speed and pitch move together, like a tape motor, and so does the tone: slow tape gets darker and a little fuller in the low end, fast tape gets brighter and thinner. At 0 it's exactly flat. Double-click the knob to get back there.

Recording off normal speed is where it gets useful. Record at −6% and the part comes back faster and higher at normal speed. Sing a part a semitone down where it's comfortable, play a fast run slowly, or tune the whole song to a piano you can't retune. The red marks on the dial are whole and half steps.

Tape speed

Half runs the tape at half speed: an octave down, and darker. A part recorded at half speed comes back an octave up, and the other way round. Try a drone at normal speed, then play it at half.

Direction

Rev runs the tape backwards: the paper scrolls the other way and the counter runs down. Record like that, switch back to Fwd, and the new part plays reversed, still in the right place. That's the backwards guitar swell. Exports always play forwards.

Bounce

Pick tracks on the From row and one on the To row, then press Bounce. Porchlight plays the From tracks onto the To track, at their levels and pans. The After bounce switch decides what happens to the originals: Mute keeps them, silent; Free wipes them back to blank tape so you can record on them again. Undo brings them back either way.

To file

With nothing picked on the From row, To file saves the whole mix as a 24-bit WAV. With tracks picked, it saves each one as its own WAV, all from the start of the tape so they line up in another app. Speed and the tape tone go into the file, so it sounds like what you heard.

Mixing

Each track has a pan knob, a fader and a Drive knob. Drive is how hard the track hits the tape: warmer as you turn it up, then squashed. The small lamp beside it glows with the amount and flares when the track is working hard. Drive only changes what you hear. Your recording stays as it was, so you can turn Drive down any time.

Effects

Each track has four effect slots, for the Audio Unit effects installed on your Mac. The narrow window beside a track's name shows its four slots, top to bottom: a bar glows in the effect's colour when it's on, dims when it's bypassed, stays dark when the slot is empty, and shows red if an effect couldn't load (usually because it isn't installed on this Mac).

Press FX on a track and its rack rises into the tape window, one unit per effect, each painted the colour of the effect's own window and labelled with its name. On turns an effect on and off; Open (or a double-click) shows its controls. Right-click a unit to replace it, move it, repaint it or take it out. Add effect on an empty panel brings out the index card: type part of a name, a maker, or a kind of effect like reverb, then use the arrow keys and Return. Star the ones you use most to keep them near the top. Esc puts the card away, then the rack.

Effects come after the tape and before the fader, in order from the top. They're heard live and go into bounces and files the same way. Effects with a delay of their own (lookahead limiters, some EQs) are lined up automatically, so the track stays in time with the others. Each effect's settings are saved with the session.

The tape counter and the paper both run from the start of the tape. Drag regions to move them; they snap to each other when Snap is on (hold Cmd to move freely).

A, B, loop and punch

The keys under the tape counter mark two places on the tape. Hold A (or B) to set it where the tape is now; tap it to go back there. The first tap sets it if it isn't set yet. Their flags show on the ruler, and right-clicking a key clears it.

Loop plays from A to B over and over, for working on one part. Punch is for fixing a line: press Rec and the tape plays in from two seconds before A so you can find your place, records only from A to B, then stops. The take is cropped to exactly A to B, with the rest of what you played kept in the file in case you need it.

Tuner

Tune turns the left meter into a tuner for the armed track's input: the nearest note in the middle, flat to the left, sharp to the right, and the lamp goes green when you're in tune. Press it again for the meter.

Your work is kept

Porchlight saves as you go; there's no need to press Save to keep working. A new session you haven't saved yet is kept too: if you quit, or Porchlight or your Mac stops unexpectedly, it opens again next time with everything in it. Closing its window asks whether to save it, keep it for later, or move it to the Trash.

A backup of each session is kept every couple of minutes while you work. File > Revert to Backup lists them by time; picking one puts the session back as it was then, and Cmd Z brings you forward again. Recordings are never deleted, so every backup still plays.

Keys

Trial and license

You can try everything for 14 days of use. A day counts only when you open Porchlight, so time away doesn't use up the trial. After that, your sessions still open and play; recording, bouncing and exporting wait for a license. Buy one at the website, then paste the key into Porchlight > License. A key works on up to three Macs, and once it's activated Porchlight works offline. To move to a new Mac, deactivate the old one in the same window.

Sessions are .tape files. Each one is a folder with your recordings inside, as plain audio files, so nothing you make is ever locked up in Porchlight.