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Pocket Operator PO-32 Tonic

Design PO-32 Drum Sounds and Patterns on Your Computer

Completely free. No licence, trial or paywall. If you'd like to support it, there's an optional tip jar.

A free app for designing drum sounds and patterns for the PO-32 Tonic, and moving them to and from the hardware over its own acoustic transfer. Also sends drum sounds to the PO-35 Speak's built-in Tonic channel. Built on the open-source libpo32 engine.

Download PO-PatchStudio

Google Play has version 1.0.3 for now, without the redesigned phone Studio or the tip jar. The APK has the latest version.

Free, no account needed. See the install guide for system requirements and per-platform steps.

The PO-PatchStudio Studio view: a transport bar, the PO-32 faceplate with its sixteen pads, the four-lane step sequencer beside it and the voice editor below.

The Studio: transport, faceplate, four-lane sequencer and voice editor in one workspace.

What it does

The full Tonic voice, on screen

Every one of the PO-32’s 21 drum-voice parameters gets a real control: envelope faders, waveform and filter switches, and the mix. Drag the A/B morph fader to pick which side of a sound you are editing, and hear each change as the pattern plays.

Previews are rendered by the open-source libpo32 synth, so they are close but not bit-identical. Anything you transfer plays through the PO-32’s own engine and sounds correct on the hardware.

The voice editor with Voice 3 selected, showing oscillator, noise, mixing and velocity controls and an A/B morph fader.
Write mode in the Studio: the PO-32 faceplate with lit step LEDs on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13, and the same steps highlighted in the sequencer grid beside it.

A sequencer that plays like the hardware

The grid models the PO-32’s four monophonic voices as four lanes. Press write and the faceplate works like the device: tap pads to set steps, and their LEDs light up as the playhead runs. Add accent, fill and per-step morph, chain patterns into a longer arrangement, and bounce the result down.

Transfer over audio, not USB

The PO-32 has no USB data connection. It moves patches as sound. PO-PatchStudio builds the transfer, plays it into the PO-32’s microphone, and can record the device’s data dump back and decode it into your kit. Backup and restore work the same acoustic way.

The Transfer and Import view: a Send to PO-32 panel offering kit, voice or pattern, a Play transfer button and an Export WAV button.

Put the PO-32 into receive mode, play the transfer, and it lands on the device. Prefer to do it later? Export a WAV instead. Full steps are in the transfer guide.

On your phone too

The same app runs on iPhone, iPad and Android, laid out for your thumbs. Expand the faceplate to play the PO-32 full screen, and send the transfer straight from the phone you are holding next to it.

One place for your kits

Save a kit, a single voice, a pattern or a full device backup as a library item. Search and tag them, mark favourites, audition them and load any of them back into the Studio.

The Library view listing a saved kit, pattern and voice with type badges, search, a tag filter and Load in Studio actions.

On the roadmap

Today PO-PatchStudio supports the PO-32 Tonic. Fuller support for the PO-33 K.O! and PO-35 Speak (their samples, speech sounds and backups) is on the roadmap. Their data transfer format isn't solved yet, so the likely route is recording them over line-in. I am not promising a date.

Free, and built on open source

PO-PatchStudio is free, with no licence, trial or paywall. There's an optional tip jar if you'd like to support it, and every feature stays free. It builds on the community’s reverse-engineering work, in particular libpo32 (MIT) by Eric Lewis, which provides the PO-32 transfer stack and drum synth. Thanks also to Sonic Charge Microtonic (the synth whose sounds it imports), schollz/supertonic and the wider Pocket Operator reverse-engineering community.

Read the docsDownload for macOS

Found a bug or want a feature? Email me at support@squarewave.studio or ask on Discord.

Developed independently for interoperability. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Teenage Engineering AB or Sonic Charge / NuEdge Development AB. Pocket Operator, PO-32 and Tonic are trademarks of Teenage Engineering AB, used nominatively.