“The experimental effects box and sample mangler you didn't know you wanted… but it's not quite finished”: Torso Electronics S-4 review

What is it?

Torso Electronics S-4 is a 'Sculpting Sampler', a compact and well-built multitrack sampler, polyphonic sample player and multi-effects box all in one.

It instantly transforms any audio you record or play through it into wonderful abstract ambiences, swirling pads, f*cked up beats, distorted basslines, and detuned loops; you can build entire tunes with four tracks of tape-style recording, or simply use it as an instant multi-effect.

It's a piece of hardware you didn't know you needed, as you could easily fall in love with its off-kilter sound and experimental attitude, but you might want to wait until its final firmware update before you turn that love into a transaction for its not inconsiderable asking price.

Performance

S-4 has a built-in 4GB flash drive with plenty of factory content in folders like 'Harmonic', 'Rhythmic' and 'Field Recordings'. It allows you to capture external audio via an on-board microphone or a pair of stereo (or two mono) inputs around the back.

You can simply play audio through it or load in a factory sound and use its five 'devices' as a real-time multi-effect, which is great fun to do on its own.

These devices start with Material which has Tape, Poly and Bypass options and is your main setup option. Tape allows you to record audio over four tracks and Poly lets you play samples via a MIDI keyboard in polyphonic mode (up to eight voices).

Once selected – as with all devices – whichever device you select has up to eight parameters that become editable via the rotary knobs above on the top right of the unit. You can see what each of these does via the fantastic screen which has all eight rotaries mapped onto it and shows the corresponding values as you rotate each knob.

Tape, for example, has Start (sample start), Length, Tempo, Speed, Rotate (reverse), and Xfade (sample start and end crossfade) options via these dials. The final Material option, Bypass, simply allows you to play audio via the unit's inputs through the remaining four effect devices.

The first of these is Granular which features a time and pitch-shifting granular processor called Mosaic. Mosaic, has Pitch, Rate, Warp, and Spray options, among others, mapped to the eight rotaries for messing with your grains. All of these yield pretty dramatic results and you are not required to have a degree in granular processing to understand it; it's very much a case of experimenting, making something sound fantastic (99% of the time), and either saving the project when you get something good (which is always wise) or even recording the audio you create as a new sample or track of a complete song.

The next device slot is Filter, a 48-band tuned filter bank with the usual Cutoff and Resonance options plus Decay, Pitch, Slope, Tone, Scale and Wet options to twist. The screen comes into its own again here with the filter shape and any edits you make gloriously displayed. And that gets even better with the final two device slots: Color and Space. These focus on distortion, delay and reverb effects and both feature distinctive graphics – the reverb has a 3D box, for example – which alter as you change parameters; not essential for your editing but very cool nonetheless.

The last main event is the modulation area on S-4 which is pretty simple to use. You hit the Mod button, select a track and can then choose up to four modulators – with editable Wave, Random or ADSR envelope options – to act upon up to any destinations with an unlimited number per track. It's easy to implement and you can very quickly turn that sample – that you've already obliterated, turned into a pad or the filthiest of basslines – into a pulsating, rhythmic beast of audio. The modulation feature is one of the many great strings in S-4's bow.

As to that sound, well, by now you'll have guessed that we're talking experimental, degraded audio, incredibly intricate pads, and atmosphere by the bucketload. You could, should you wish, simply use S-4 as a four-track sample player/recorder without any effects and come up with completely dry, 'normal' tunes, but that would be totally missing the point. S-4's raison d'être is to mess with your audio and create something unworldly, something incredible and do it all in a matter of minutes in real time.

And that's what it does very well, but here's the rub. We love the sound and those of an experimental disposition will too, but while S-4 is a brilliant concept and has some amazing sonic potential, it's a software update or two away from perfection. There's the odd bug; we sometimes experienced a tweak on power up where it went to the wrong mode in certain menus, and the end sample point sometimes got stuck. More seriously some of the features – namely Temp, Perform and Scene in the performance section – were simply unavailable with the OS we were using (v1.04). These aren't in the latest 1.2.2 version either, which we updated to, although that update does iron out some bugs, particularly with loading and saving projects. We asked Torso Electronics about when the new features will be implemented and the company says that Perform and another function, Copy, will be in v1.5, while Temp and Scene will be in v2, although dates for those updates have not been specified.

That leaves us and you in a quandary. At present, as amazing as S-4 is as a multi-effect and audio mangler, it's not quite finished. While you could still get on board early and enjoy its experimental approach, it is a fair amount of cash to shell out for a product with some quite major features yet to be included. However, with those promised updates, it will very probably be worth the wait in the coming months, so look out for an update review just as soon as we can get the v2 firmware installed.

MusicRadar verdict: S-4 is the experimental effects box and sample mangler you didn't know you wanted, but you might want to wait until all the features are implemented and bugs completely ironed out before you part with its considerable asking price.

Hands-on demos

torso electronics

Introducing S-4 sculpting sampler - YouTube

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Specifications

• Virtual tape machine, effects box and MIDI controlled 8-voice sampler with wi-fi.
• 21 RGB buttons, nine endless encoders.
• Audio engine with five devices: Material (sampler/tape recorder), Granular, Filter, Color and Space.
• Modulation system with four configurable modulators that can be mapped to any parameter.
• 4GB flash memory.
• 24-bit/48 kHz stereo audio in and out.
• Connectivity: 2 line inputs, 2 line outputs, built-in mic, headphone out, MIDI in/out, analogue sync in/out, USB-C.
• Dimensions: (W x D x H) 242 x 156 x 39mm.
• Weight: 0.82kg.
• CONTACT: Torso Electronics