software · In development
SpaceAge by Sample Squad
A composition-centered microDAW for turning musical ideas into arranged songs.
SpaceAge is a production environment built around composition. Pads, sequencing, arrangement, mixing, instruments, effects, automation, and libraries live in one focused application, so an idea can grow into a finished arrangement without leaving the room.
What’s inside
SpaceAge is a composer’s workbench. The Chord Engine offers theory-aware chord choices and marks chords as you go, the Piano Roll handles notes, arpeggios, and performance controls, and the Arranger lays clips out in lanes and named sections, so a sketch can grow into a whole song without a lot of setup.
Gallery
Screenshots
These are early screenshots of a few of the workspaces in the app. Everything is very much in alpha stage at this point in terms of the UI, but one can finish music in SpaceAge, even now.
Each lane in the Arranger owns its instrument, mixer channel, and MIDI channel, which keeps a large arrangement predictable. MIDI clips stay ordinary musical data, and the lane channels carry through when you export. Sounds come from SpaceAge’s own engines (subtractive, wavetable, FM, spectral, granular, physical modeling, and drum synthesis), from your own samples and SoundFonts, and from multisample instruments you can build inside the program. A mixer with shared effects and whole-song rendering means you can finish a piece here if you want to.
That makes it useful in two ways. On its own, the standalone app is a self-contained place to work out harmony and structure, then render the song or take the MIDI and stems into another DAW. It also builds as a VST3 plug-in, so a composer who works in a larger host can run SpaceAge inside it. An automated host test confirms that the plug-in loads, makes sound, saves and restores its state, and opens its editor. Testing across real hosts is still part of the beta.
SpaceAge is pre-beta and runs on Windows for now. Its MIDI foundation is broad, but real-hardware testing is still under way, and it doesn’t host third-party plug-ins or support MPE or MIDI 2.0 yet. Capsule, SpaceAge’s own plug-in format, is partly built: nine effects run as Capsules in each channel’s signal chain, in any order, in series or in parallel. There is no public SDK yet, so for now they are all made in-house.
SpaceAge is in active development, built as part of the Sample Squad family. It has occupied much of my time since June 2026, utilizing both Codex and Claude Code.
#music #software #daw #sample-squad
