While our PC cousins enjoy Sonic Foundry’s Acid, we Mac users have seen few applications that allow us to arrange and mix multitrack songs quickly and easily based on sampled grooves and sounds of varying tempos. Search no more. BitHeadz introduces Phrazer 1.0, a multitrack loop sequencer that does just that. While not without flaws, this application offers some extremely useful tools for the beat doctor in us all.
Phrazer allows you to build, arrange, and mix sample-based songs. You construct songs by auditioning and importing samples and loops to tracks and by placing track information (events, in Phrazer-speak) — volume, pan, effects settings, and so on — in the track. The application synchronizes sampled grooves of varying tempos without requiring time-consuming beat matching. Phrazer also includes a sample editor, effects, live play and record options, a track mixer, and groovy companion sounds. It supports most audio and MIDI software and interface options for the Mac: Rewire, Direct Connect, Direct I/O, ASIO, Sound Manager, MAS, FreeMIDI, and OMS. It reads WAV, AIFF, and Sound Designer files and imports Unity DS-1, Acid, and CD audio files. It’s optimized for Velocity Engine, too.
Phrazer has a straightforward architecture. You can access nearly all controls from the main window. We started building a song at 126 beats per minute (bpm), auditioning sounds without having to stop the sequence. This awesome ability let us hear new sounds relative to the overall auditioning in a vacuum, and hoping for the best. To investigate Phrazer's autosync ability, we chose very slow grooves (75 to 80 bpm), because in our experience, most beat-matching applications are less successful when there’s a great difference between source and target tempos. The results impressed us. Phrazer matched nearly every sound to 126 bpm with little sample degradation. In minutes, it had the rhythm tracks up and closely synced. However, the lack of zooming short-cut keys and the inability to scroll the selector beyond the viewable area hampered the arranging process.
We needed to fine-tune some samples in the sample editor, which is useful and navigation friendly but has a major pitfall. Since Phrazer reads from the hard drive, you must save changes made to a sample before they take effect in the arrangement. When you save them (using the lifesaver icon), Phrazer instantly and permanently overwrites the original sample. To avoid this we had to exit the software, copy the sample in the Finder, and use the copy from the start. As a workaround, this sucks. We quickly and effortlessly destroyed a few samples by mistakenly clicking the lifesaver.
Phrazer boasts that you can assign tracks key numbers and trigger them via MIDI and ASCII for live play. We used a MIDI controller, and the results Impressed us. In most sequencers, MIDI triggers actually replay the sample — Phrazer’s triggers mute the track’s audio output volume, much as a conventional mixing board would do. While the trigger turns the volume on and off, the sample continues playing in realtime, rather than restarting every time you press the key. The result is expressive, aggressive performance, making this a viable live option.
We recorded a live performance to the hard drive, creating a 16-bit stereo file. (Phrazer lacks a 24-bit recording option.) Overall, Phrazer has serious potential as a creative tool for Mac musicians. It’s an easy-to-use, timesaving program. This first version has its flaws and isn’t exactly cheap, but its innovative approach to loop sequencing and performance makes it well worth considering.
Field, Andrew. (March 2001). Phrazer 1.0. MacAddict. (pg. 48).
Bitheadz
Applications
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2014-04-14 / 
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bitheadz_phrazer_1.0_k.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
