Introducing AirMotion Neo — a new era of expressive breath control
From neckset to headset, from breath to vibrato — AirMotion Neo is Papritech's most expressive MIDI controller yet, bringing wind instrument techniques like vibrato, flutter tongue, and growl into electronic music for the first time.
When we launched AirMotion Pro, our goal was simple: give musicians hands-free expressive control over their sound through breath and motion. Thousands of performers, producers, and composers around the world have since used it to play dynamics, sweeps, and modulation in ways that simply weren't possible before.
Today, we're announcing AirMotion Neo — and we've raised the bar considerably.
A new shape, built for how musicians actually play
AirMotion Pro set the foundation — a neckset controller that gave musicians genuine breath and motion expression for the first time. With Neo, we asked ourselves: how do we take that experience even further?
AirMotion Neo is a headset. It sits over the ear with a lightweight, adjustable frame, and positions the breath sensor via a flexible gooseneck arm near your mouth. The result is a device that feels secure and natural whether you're recording a four-hour session, performing live, or teaching. You stop thinking about the hardware — and focus entirely on the music.
The sensors have been upgraded across the board too, delivering smoother, higher-resolution MIDI data with less latency. Every note responds exactly the way your body intended.
Three techniques, now in MIDI
The biggest leap in AirMotion Neo is what it can hear in your breath. Real acoustic wind instruments are extraordinarily expressive because the player's body is the instrument — vibrato, flutter tongue, and growl all come from subtle physical gestures that change the character of the sound in real time. Until now, electronic musicians had no equivalent.
AirMotion Neo changes that with three new detection engines, each designed to recognise a specific breath technique and map it directly to MIDI — in real time, wirelessly, with no extra hardware.
Vibrato — breath as an oscillator
Saxophone players, flutists, and oboists all create vibrato the same way: by rhythmically pulsing breath pressure from the diaphragm. It is one of the most nuanced and personal expressions a musician can produce. AirMotion Neo's vibrato engine detects this modulation pattern and outputs two separate MIDI streams — one for vibrato depth and one for vibrato rate — both in real time.
Map depth to a vibrato amount parameter in your VST. Map rate to an LFO speed. Play a note, add breath modulation, and watch your plugin respond as if a real player were in the room.
Flutter tongue — a technique finally captured
Flutter tongue — the rapid rolling of the tongue against the palate — creates a buzzing, stuttered articulation that is one of the most recognisable extended techniques in wind playing. No controller has been able to detect it before. AirMotion Neo's sensor picks up the rapid pressure oscillations it produces and maps their intensity to a MIDI CC.
Set the Strength parameter to match how hard you flutter — Light, Medium, or Strong — and dial in Sensitivity to taste. The result can drive a tremolo, a gate, a bit-crusher, or anything else in your signal chain.
Growl — push past the threshold
Growl automation works like an expressive gate: you set a breath pressure Threshold, and any time you push past it, the growl MIDI output activates. Below the threshold, your tone is clean. Above it, the effect kicks in — as aggressively or as gently as you choose, controlled by the Intensity setting (Slow, Medium, or Fast).
The practical result is that you can switch seamlessly between clean and growl tones simply by breathing harder — the same way a saxophonist does it acoustically.
How Neo compares to Pro
| Feature | AirMotion Pro | AirMotion Neo |
|---|---|---|
| Form factor | Neckset | Over-ear Headset |
| Sensor quality | Standard | Upgraded — smoother & higher resolution |
| Breath control (CC) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Head motion MIDI | ✓ | ✓ |
| Growl automation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vibrato depth & rate detection | ✕ | ✓ |
| Flutter tongue detection | ✕ | ✓ |
| Attack / Release / Min Threshold | ✓ | ✓ |
| BLE Dongle, USB MIDI, Built-in BLE | ✓ | ✓ |
The breath sensor, refined
Beyond the new expressive features, we've improved the core breath sensor experience for everyone. Neo adds three new parameters that Pro did not have: Minimum Threshold eliminates unwanted signal from tiny ambient puffs of air. Attack Time controls how quickly the sensor responds when you start breathing. Release Time controls how quickly it decays when you stop.
Together, these give you precise, natural-feeling breath response without any noise floor to fight against.
Available now
AirMotion Neo is available today at papritech.com. It ships worldwide with the BLE USB Dongle and our protective EVA carry case. Full documentation is available in the AirMotion app and on our website.
If you are an existing AirMotion Pro user, your app presets and workflow carry over directly — Neo uses the same connection modes and MIDI architecture you already know.
We can't wait to hear what you create with it.
— The Papritech Team papritech.com · contact@papritech.com
