Tralfamadorian 4-Dimensional Looping Tremolo Delay
Or T4-DLTD for short. It isn’t just a mouthful, it’s two independent stereo delays fed and monitored by sine-driven crossfaders.
Incoming audio is dispatched by a sine-LFO-driven crossfeeder to two stereo delays, each with its own time control. The delay outputs are then crossfaded back together by a separate quadrature pair of sine wave LFO’s. Unlike a typical echo that plays back audio in all its boring linearity, sounds running through the T4-DLTD will become unstuck in time, with moments overlapping each other in undulating cycles of temporal confabulation. Read off a series of numbers and they’ll come out the other end in an unpredictable order. Play a simple scale and shifting melodies will emerge. Or record important voice memos, only to find them infuriatingly shuffled and useless upon playback.
Requirements
Befaco/Rebel Tech Lich, Pure Data
Documentation
Knobs A and B set the times for each delay from roughly 100 milliseconds to 5 seconds.
Knob C controls the feedback for both delays. Feedback gain is 1.2x at the fully clockwise position, allowing you to gradually boost the amplitude of looping audio when needed. Tanh limiters are placed in the feedback paths to keep things from getting too crazy, but if you want to preserve a loop for a long time without it slowly fading or building into mud then use the looping button.
Knob D sets the frequency of the LFO driving the output crossfader. The frequency can range from 4 seconds to 8Hz. The resulting tremolo is a bug, not a feature, but I’ll call it a feature anyway, that’s why it’s in the name. Quadrature oscillator pairs are used here at the output rather than the 180° out-of-phase signals at the input, and they help to diminish the effect of the tremolo a bit.
Button/Gate 1 act as a tap tempo/clock for the input crossfeeder LFO, which also oscillates as slow as 4 seconds. The frequency of this LFO is indicated by the Gate Out Light.
Button 2 sets the feedback amplitude to 1x gain, putting the delays into a stable looping state. This is a toggled function, and you will need to press the button again to return to manual feedback control.
CV1 and CV2 OUTPUTS will pass the LFO’s that drive each crossfader.
Gate Out is a square wave output of the crossfeeder LFO.
Download
v1.0.1 - OWL Patch Library – Rebel Technology
- the issue with CV1 out has been fixed.
