S1988

S1988 is a vintage sampler emulation inspired by late-1980s 16-bit hardware samplers. It captures the warm, slightly gritty character of early digital sampling, with 18 dB/octave filters, preamp saturation and sample-rate and bit-depth reduction, and adds modern creative tools on top: a granular time-stretch engine and a tape loop that captures, slows, stops, reverses, overdubs and resamples whatever you feed it. Whether you're adding retro character to drums and samples, building lo-fi textures or turning loops into new material, S1988 delivers the late-80s sampler sound with modern flexibility.

Features

• 18 dB/Octave Sampler Filters: A resonant low-pass filter (200 Hz to 20 kHz) modeled after classic sampler topology and a high-pass filter (20 Hz to 2 kHz), both cascaded to 18 dB/octave and stable at high resonance, with post-filter drive for extra grit.
• Warm Preamp and Auto Gain: A saturation stage ahead of the filters adds harmonics and soft clipping with automatic gain compensation, and Auto Gain keeps the output level consistent as Preamp, Filter Drive and Resonance go up.
• Lo-Fi Degradation: Sample rate reduction from 44.1 kHz down to 4 kHz and bit depth from 16 down to 4 bits take the sound from clean late-80s 16-bit to crunchy 8-bit and fully destroyed, with DC blocking to keep the output clean at extreme settings.
• Granular Time Stretch: Time Factor from 25% to 400% with grain sizes from 2 to 200 ms. Pitch Comp switches Time Factor between stretching time at the same pitch and shifting pitch at the same timing, Transpose (±24 semitones) moves pitch and speed together like a varispeed, and Reverse plays the stretch and the loop backwards.
• Tape Loop: Capture the next loop length, or loop the audio you just heard straight away, free (10 ms to 4 s) or synced to host tempo from 1/1 to 1/128. Loop Speed runs from -200% to +200%, so the loop slows down, stops and reverses like tape.
• Overdub and Resample: Overdub records onto the held loop, with Feedback setting how fast older layers fade, and Resample prints what you hear, effects included, back into the loop, generation after generation. Turn an effect up, press Resample, turn it back down, and the effect stays in the loop.
• Warble and Loop Order: Warble adds random tape wow of up to about half a semitone, and Loop Order either loops the stretched sound or puts the loop first, so the stretch works on the held loop live.
• Flexible Output: An equal-power dry/wet mix for parallel processing, output gain with safety limiting, mono or stereo processing, and zero-latency operation.
• Clear Interface: Controls grouped by function in signal-flow order, controls that do nothing in the current state dimmed but still adjustable, and a hint line that explains every control on hover.