Most MPE news concerns hardware: keyboards, grids and strings that sense finger movement. Astra Creative Audio takes a different route with Tesseracto 4D, a macOS wavetable synth released on October 12, 2026 that can turn your webcam into an expressive controller. KVR Audio describes it as a synth that "can be played in the air."
Camera hand control
The headline feature is a companion app called Tesseracto CAM. It tracks both hands through your Mac's camera, or through an iPhone using Continuity Camera, and converts what it sees into per-note MPE data. According to the developer, hand height, tilt and whether a hand is open or closed are mapped to expression. Hand tracking runs on your computer, and an internet connection is needed only once, to activate the licence.
Camera control will not replace a good keyboard or a LinnStrument for precise melodic playing, but it opens interesting territory. Think of slow, evolving textures, live visuals-and-sound installations, or teaching situations where you want to show students what "expression" means without any hardware at all.
A wavetable engine with four axes
Underneath, the oscillator travels through its wavetable in four dimensions, labelled X, Y, Z and W. A 4D modulation matrix with 3D LFOs and chaos sources can move through that space, and the synth also includes a filter, envelopes, unison, glide, an arpeggiator and a "4D path" feature. A Hyper-FX rack of seven effects can be arranged in series, in parallel or in a feedback loop. There are 80 presets spread over 10 categories.
Real MPE, not just a gimmick
Importantly, Tesseracto is not tied to the camera. Each finger controls its own pitch, pressure and slide when you use a hardware MPE controller, and it also works with a regular keyboard. That matters because it means the instrument is useful whether or not you ever point a camera at yourself. If you are choosing hardware to go with it, our MPE controller price ladder compares the current options.
Price, formats and requirements
Tesseracto 4D costs €99, taxes included, and the price includes Tesseracto CAM plus a lifetime licence for two computers. It ships as version 1.0.0 in VST3 and Audio Unit formats, as a universal binary for Intel and Apple Silicon, and requires macOS 13 or later. The announcement does not list a Windows version, so Windows users will need to watch the official site for news.
What this says about the MPE ecosystem
MPE is a protocol, not a piece of hardware, and Tesseracto is a good illustration. Anything that can generate per-note pitch bend, channel pressure and slide on separate MIDI channels can drive an MPE instrument, whether that source is a rubber keybed, a touch surface, a MIDI guitar or a camera. As more developers explore alternative inputs, the number of ways to get expressive control into a DAW keeps growing. The protocol itself is documented by the MIDI Association.
Who it is for
Tesseracto looks best suited to sound designers and ambient or experimental producers who want rich, moving wavetable textures and are curious about gestural control. Players who already own an expressive keyboard or touch surface can treat the camera as an optional extra, while those without MPE hardware get a low-cost way to experience per-note expression for the first time. Since the licence covers two computers, it also suits a studio-and-laptop workflow.
Practical tips if you try it
Camera tracking is sensitive to lighting and background, so start in a well-lit room and keep your hands within the frame. Expect some latency compared with a physical controller, which is fine for pads and drones but less ideal for fast runs. Finally, remember that MPE recordings produce data on several channels, so check that your DAW records and replays them properly; our guide to how four DAWs handle MPE differently is a useful reference.
For expressive sound design with a genuinely novel way to play, Tesseracto 4D is one of the more adventurous releases of the autumn.