P–16 · Pocket sampler $9.99 · Beta testing

Not just
sixteen
pads.

The pads play the instant you land, and as loud as you hit. The pattern catches what you play, the link strings patterns into a song — and the tape has been rolling since the app opened, so the take you didn't plan is already on it.

Join the beta testing Why it exists

The pads below are a real kit — kick, snare, hats, the rest. You know what to do.

HIT A PAD ▾ A1 · KEPT 00
FERRIC UNIT NO. ···· P–16

Tap something at 2 a.m. — the morning will judge it fairly.

01Why it exists

Inspired by the 404. Built to work alongside it.

P–16 is drawn from the Roland SP-404 MKII and pared down to one screen — same process, same page order, same vocabulary. Pads, banks, START/END, PITCH/SPEED, chop, real-time pattern recording: moving between the P–16 and the 404 feels like one instrument.

They make a pair. Build the sounds on your 16 wherever the idea happens — the bus, the couch, the desert — then export the kit to your 404 and take it to the stage or the studio: every pad rendered with trim, envelope and character baked in, ready for the SD card.

It arrives deliberately unfinished: no factory-finished songs, no tabs, no settings page, no save button. The kits start empty because they're yours.

“One screen, faceplate order, top to bottom. No tabs, no settings page, no save button — everything keeps itself.”

— the P–16 field manual
02Heritage

In the spirit of the 404

INSPIRED BYRoland SP-404 MKIITHE LINEAGE RUNS TO 2005

The 404 is the ancestor and the partner. The page order matches so moving between them feels like one process — build the sounds on your 16, play them on your 404 — and the SD card is the bridge between the two.

WHAT STAYS
  • The pads, the banks, and the page order — START/END, PITCH/SPEED, ENVELOPE, CHOP
  • TR-REC step programming and real-time pattern recording
  • The workflow vocabulary: trim first, then chop
WHAT THE PHONE ADDS
  • Real velocity on glass — contact patch plus the jolt through the motion sensor
  • A tape that has been rolling since the app opened
  • The family clock, the crate, and the library's shelf
  • Kit export straight back to the 404's SD card

Not a re-creation — a continuation. If you love the hardware, you'll feel at home here; learn here, and the hardware will feel like home too.

03The field manual

Hit. Loop. Link. Keep.

Hit

Real velocity on glass. Glass cannot weigh a finger, so P–16 calls two witnesses — the contact patch, and the jolt the strike puts through the phone's motion sensor. The hit fires the instant you touch down; nothing waits to measure.

Loop

Two ways to build a pattern: tap cells on the TR-REC grid — rows are pads, cells are 16th notes — or hit ● and play. ● arms and waits; the first pad you hit starts the loop and is the one. Play the kick in time and the tempo comes to you.

Link

Eight pattern slots per kit. Selecting a slot is loading it; holding one copies. Light the LINK and your patterns play as a song — every filled slot in order, each keeping its own length, then around again.

Keep

The tape has been rolling since the app opened — the last four minutes of the master bus, held in a ring. Drag back, set IN and OUT, and export writes everything it knows: the WAV, the MIDI, a stem that says who · what · when.

The whole manual ships inside the app — tap the wordmark. Cards run in the 404's own page order, so what you learn here works over there.

04How it's used

Sample to song, one thumb

  1. SAMPLERecord off the mic or the plug, or pull a file from Files. An empty pad opens straight into the picker.
  2. SHAPETrim on the live waveform — zoom ×1024, deep enough to pull one kick out of a whole song. Pitch, speed, envelope, character. Chop into 4–16 equal slices, instantly.
  3. PLAYPads fire on touch-down with velocity. Gate, loop and reverse belong to the pad, and the pad wears its arming.
  4. LOOP + LINKRecord patterns live or program them TR-REC. Chain the slots and the patterns play as a song.
  5. KEEPExport the keeper from the always-rolling tape — or send it out the crate to the family deck.
05In the kit

The family's drummer

THE CLOCK

P–16 broadcasts MIDI clock, counted in samples so it cannot drift. Light the antenna and the J–17 falls in step, the T–6 rolls with the transport.

THE CRATE

One key sends a cut straight to the tape machine — it lands on T–6's FROM P–16 shelf before you get there.

THE SHELF

The same cut can file onto the library's SOUNDS shelf — find it next month, on any device, in L–1.

THE HARDWARE

Build on the 16, play on the 404 — the kit exporter renders every pad to 48 kHz WAV for its SD card, and the sample picker reads WAVs straight back off the card. One pair, two stages.

Also an Audio Unit — aumu · p16i — the pad grid in a plugin window, mirroring the kit you're on.

$9.99. Bought once, yours for good.

$9.99 on the App Store buys the instrument for iPhone and iPad. On the desk it’s $29.99 for the Mac app and AUv3 — or $79 for the whole Rack. No subscription, no unlocks, nothing expires. What you pay builds the next machine.

$9.99 ON THE APP STORE
IPHONE IPAD
Bought once. No subscription, no unlocks, nothing expires.
$29.99 ON THE DESK
MAC APP AUv3
Buy it on its own, or all four in the Rack for $79. What's in the Rack →

$9.99 at release. Free to test right now — leave your email and we'll send you a build.

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Next on the bench J–17 Poly synth One oscillator, four voices, and chorus thick enough to swim in.