Fantastic Voyage, A Virtual 4-Track Portastudio With Flexible Audio Routing For MacOS

March 28, 2020 Synth Anatomy DAW, News, Software 0

Fantastic Voyage, a recording software based on Tascam Portastudios expanded with effects and other clever functionalities.

Music technology from the past is still popular in 2020. From old analog synthesizers that come back onto the market as clones or emulations, reissued effects or workstations. Portastudios, the mobile tape recorders from the past also count and are in greater demand than ever on the second-hand market. The developer Giorgio Sancristoforo is so enthusiastic about these iconic devices that he decided to develop a virtual Portastudio.

The final result is called Fantastic Voyage and is a little Tascam Porta-inspired workstation with built-in effects, looper, and a 4 (stereo) tracks recorder. Fantastic Voyage is not a plugin but works as a standalone application for macOS but can be integrated into DAWs using any virtual driver (Blackhole, Soundflower…)

A Little Nostalgia For Your Mac

This application is designed with a modular approach and made to process & store any external sound, like guitars, microphones, synthesizers. Unlike his former great software developments (Gleetchlab or Berna), it doesn’t offer internal generators. The modular concept is implemented here with a matrix with which you can connect the various sections of the software in any way you want. So like a modular mixer. More precisely, there isn’t a fixed signal path and so the possibilities of signal processing and re-processing are impressive.

Fantastic Voyage can be used as a live performance to as well as a portable studio that does not require any other software to run. DAWless, working without a DAW is very popular these days. However, since you are not using a classic DAW here, can this be called soft-DAWless? Unfortunately it is not a new Portastudio in hardware but only software but one that has been implemented very nicely.