Kinotone Ribbons

Stereo Magnetic Tape Emulator

You can think of Ribbons like a build-your-own tape machine. It gives you a high degree of control to dial in sounds ranging from pristine and hi-fi, to warbley, aged and haunting.

Most of its parameters are tape inspired, but you’ll also find nods to other imperfect mediums, like crackling vinyl, skipping CDs, and lo-fi telecom systems.

We wanted Ribbons to be a playful and powerful tool all on its own, so it’s packed with other features too, including a stereo reverb, some wild Touch Modes, a four-track looper, and a sine wave synth. All parameters are fully controllable via MIDI or CV.

Lo-Fi Emulation
• Tape modulation effects (Wow, Flutter, Crinkle, Dropouts) carefully modeled after spectral and waveform data collected from all kinds of different tape players.
• Dedicated dry/wet mix knob to dial in complex vibrato and chorus sounds.
• 24dB/octave four-pole virtual analog low-pass and high-pass filters, modeled after the filter of a classic 1970’s synthesizer.
• Compression inspired by a vinyl simulator found in a famous sampler from the early 2000’s.
• Option to swap Compression parameter for Saturation.
• Static hiss and clicks & pops.

Reverb
• A beautiful stereo reverb designed from scratch, with controls for dry/wet mix, decay time, and where the reverb goes in your signal chain (before or after the other effects).
• Capable of infinite sustain.

Touch Modes
• 6 playful modes that can be activated momentarily or latched, and interact with all of the tape effects:
• Magnetic Dance – Creates a drone of sound using a micro-loop. Tune it to chords; play it forward or backwards.
• Tape Stop – Slows down and bends the pitch of your audio in real-time, then picks it back up, with separate controls for stop and start times up to 10 seconds.
• Broken Machine – Makes a garbled mess of your incoming audio. Use it subtly for some added tape modulation or at extreme settings for rewind effects.
• Repeater – Captures a small slice of audio and divides into tiny subdivisions for glitchy effects. Synchronizable via MIDI clock. Includes a resampling option that can sample new audio by detecting transients.
• Crushed Cassette – Provides continuously variable sample rate reduction as well as bit depth reduction down to 4 bits with µ-law companding.
• Disintegration Loop – A looper with controls for loop decay, speed, and direction. Each time your loop repeats, it gets re-run through all of the tape effects.

Four-Track Looper
• Allows up to 4 separate stereo loops.
• Length per loop: 40 seconds at 0.5x speed, 20 seconds at 1x speed, 10 seconds at 2x speed.
• Each loop has separate controls for: playback direction (forward or backwards), playback speed (continuously variable from 0.5x to 2x), track volume, and track speed scale (quantization).
• Overdub infinitely on any track.
• Overdubbing possible at any speed.
• Looped sounds can be processed by the tape effects.
• Synchronizable via MIDI clock.

Presets, MIDI Control, CV
• Use 8 onboard preset slots to save your settings, or queue them up using a preset device.
• All parameters are fully controllable via MIDI, CV, or an expression pedal.
• Directly compatible with all of your favorite MIDI controllers – no external MIDI box required.
• Internal jumpers available to switch between TRS MIDI A (standard), B, or CBA.
• CV control up to 500Hz.
• Download our Max for Live devices to control Ribbons with MIDI using Ableton.

Four-Voice Sine Wave Synthesizer
• Connect to a MIDI keyboard and start playing.
• +/- 5 semitone pitch bending.
• Includes controls for attack and release.
• Synth voices can be modified by the tape effects and used with the four-track looper.

Specs
• DSP: 480Mhz ARM processor
• Processing: 32-bit floating point
• Ultra low-noise audio codec: 24 bit, 48kHz, >110dB dynamic range
• Max Input Level: +2dBu
• Max Output Level: +5dBu
• Latency: 1 msec
• Power: +9VDC, 2.1mm, negative tip PSU
• Power Supply Protection:
• Reverse polarity protection down to -20VDC
• Over voltage protection up to +20VDC
• Current Draw: 160mA
• Frequency Response: 24Hz to 20kHz

https://kinotoneaudio.com/products/ribbons/