Hi everyone,
I’m looking for high-quality refillable soap bottles made of glass, ideally with a really durable dispenser/pump as well. Most of the ones I’ve tried either have cheap plastic pumps that break quickly or glass that feels too thin/lightweight.
Does anyone now a shop where to get something like this?
I recently came across another user’s exit interview about the Torso S-1, and I thought it was a really nice idea. It feels like a good way to reflect on the experience and maybe something worth establishing more in this community, so I wanted to write my own about the S-4 as well.
Overall, my experience with the S-4 has been mixed — there’s a lot to like, but also some frustrations that were hard to ignore.
On the positive side, what stood out most is how simple it is to use. It doesn’t feel like something you constantly have to fight against or spend endless time figuring out. It’s easy to get into a creative flow with it, and it often produces genuinely nice results without needing huge amounts of setup or tweaking.
Also, credit where it’s due: the newer updates have improved things a lot. Audio clicks and other hearable artifacts that used to be a regular issue are now mostly gone, and the whole experience feels much more polished than it did earlier on.
That said, it took a very long time to get there. For a large part of its life, it was barely usable in any serious context because of lags, glitches, audio pops, and general instability. It often felt like the hardware had huge potential, but the software just wasn’t ready yet.
And for me, the biggest unresolved issue is clocking.
The S-4 is basically unclockable in any setup where timing matters. It picks up analog clock very poorly, freezes via MIDI often enough to break trust in a live setup, and when sending analog clock itself, the signal is insanely unstable — almost rhythmic in how inconsistent it is. That makes it hard to rely on as part of a larger synchronized system, which is a pretty major weakness for a device like this.
That’s what makes my final impression so mixed.
As a standalone instrument, or in more ambient and freeform contexts where precise clocking doesn’t matter, it’s genuinely fun to play with. It’s inspiring, immediate, and often produces beautiful results.
I’m also aware that it’s marketed (and often praised) as a strong live processing tool, and in that regard it definitely has its strengths. But at the same time, there are comparable devices out there that offer similar or even broader functionality for less money, which makes the value proposition a bit harder to justify.
Overall, I’d personally rate it around a 7/10 based on creative potential and usability. But factoring in the price and the remaining technical limitations, that drops closer to a 5–6/10 in practical terms.
So I’m left feeling that the S-4 is a creatively inspiring and thoughtfully designed instrument that has improved a lot over time, but still falls short in some pretty fundamental technical areas.
Reading someone else’s reflections made me realize how valuable it is to document these experiences, since everyone approaches and uses the S-4 differently.
Curious how others feel after spending real time with it. Has your experience been similar, or totally different?