A retro music player for the Mac, machine room included

Four machines, full window

Pick a machine and the whole window becomes it: a reel-to-reel with twin VU meters and a tape counter; a turntable whose record carries your album's artwork on its label; a cassette deck with a J-card that prints what is playing and the six cassette shells; a disc player with a live spectrum across its display. Each is drawn to the last screw and behaves like the thing it is.

The desk

Pull the desk forward from under the machine: drive, wow, flutter, crackle, rumble, width, sub and tone knobs; five EQ faders; switches for analog, EQ, 8D and slowed; and a readout. Fourteen factory programmes, three memory slots (hold PGM to store), and varispeed. The Mac remembers the sound you gave each machine. See the analog chain.

Thirteen rooms

Each machine has its own photographed room with lamps that breathe on the beat, plus a synth floor, falling light, neon tubing around the frame, an orbiting spectrum, embers and more, all driven by what is playing. The lamp colour behind the keys is yours to pick. See the visualizer.

Stickers

Twenty-four come with it and you can bring your own; the background is cut for you on import. Stick them where the machine has room. On a reel or a record they turn with the part they are stuck to, and they stay where you put them.

It behaves like a Mac app

Now Playing and the media keys work. The Touch Bar gets its own transport with a live spectrum in your lamp colour and a heart that lights when the track is loved. There is a menu-bar mini player, and a floating deck you can leave on top of your work. The top chips hide when the mouse is still.

Your folder, in place

Point MP95 at a folder and it reads it there. Nothing is copied, converted or uploaded. mp3, m4a (AAC and ALAC), flac, wav, aiff and caf. Albums come back as sleeves, boxes and cases, with songs, artists, folders, playlists, favourites and smart lists; search on the Albums tab finds every record an artist appears on.

Free and Pro

The cassette deck is free forever with your whole library. The other machines play for a free preview; MP95 Pro opens them, the full chain, the rooms and the stickers. One purchase covers Mac, iPhone and iPad. Requires macOS 12 or later. See MP95 for Mac.