Step Echo - independent delay effect

[evesira]

Hello folks!

I've taken a few days to learn Flowstone and develop this effect, because I've needed something like this but nothing seems to exist on the market that fills this exact role.

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Basic Description

Basically, this effect plugin is a delay effect that let's you manually (independently) set the levels, pans, filters, etc. of each echo, up to 8 echos. Most delays have a feedback such that any modification to the signal is compounded on each pass through the loop. This lets you design more complex echo effects more easily.

Reason

I need this because I've often found myself trying to design interesting/complex echo effects, and having trouble getting things exactly the way I want. Maybe I'll like how loud the first echo is, but the rest of them continue on way too long and muddy the sound. Maybe I'll be chaining together delays in sequence, and when I try to adjust one feedback level, it throws off the balance of the whole thing. It can be finnicky to control traditional delays to get exactly what you want, especially in chains. This plugin is meant to make "designing" echos simple and straightforward.

Explanation

Each of the 8 echos is independent of each other. That is, if you want a slowly fading out echo, your volume faders should slope downward. If the faders are all set to 50%, you will get your original signal at full volume, then your signal at (roughly) half volume 8 times in a row. The only thing that "carries through" across the 8 echos is the delay number. So each echo will happen that amount longer after the previous echo. For each echo, the signal modifiers are processed in the order that their controls appear in the GUI, from top to bottom.

Controls

The controls of the plugin should be pretty self explanatory from the UI, I hope.

The delay text boxes are in units of beats.

The mix switch is whether the L/R signals are mixed when panning or not. The flip switch is whether the L/R signals are swapped.

The volume sliders work in a logarithmic fashion with a custom curve that felt good to me (0.0 0.08 0.23 0.50 1.0 at 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% respectively). The filter frequency knobs also work on a custom log curve that felt good (20hz 1000hz 22000hz at 0% 50% 100% respectively). What felt good to me is largely based on what I'm used to in the controls in FL Studio.

Desired Feature

I would LOVE to be able to add a pitch up/down effect to each echo. If I could do that, I wouldn't ever need to use any other echo. I already made a topic asking how to do this, so if you know how to, please post an answer!

Suggestions?

Please, if you have time, look through all the modules and see if you can catch any n00b mistakes I am making that might lead to crashes, slowdowns, audio glitches, or whatever! There were some things I had to do to make this that I felt uneasy about:
--- An in-code delay to increase the tiny 262144 sample limit of the built in delay component (only 6 seconds worth!) up to 1048576 samples (23 seconds)
--- An in-code edit text box I got from the forum somewhere.
--- A modified L/R mix module with more than a -3db reduction factor. From 0.707 (I think?) to 0.5, because I thought it kept each channel at a more consistent loudness when hard panned left or right.

I would love to have a better GUI, but I can't invest anymore time in it at the moment. Would like to have something other than the stock GUI sliders and knobs. Maybe compact the interface a little using tabs. Maybe have a bar graph for the volumes that you can just drag across and make a contour. Same thing with the pans...

Let me know what you think!

[Spogg]

Hi evesira!

Well, so you made that after just a few days with Flowstone? I'm so impressed! I'm trying to imagine the great stuff to follow after a few weeks

I really like it so far just as it is but may I suggest a few things?

You might be better off using a menu selector (drop-box or similar) for your beat fractions. This means you can pre-define a range of parameters and it's easier for the user to choose what's wanted.

Preset management requires every control element within a module to have a unique name. One way to reduce the work involved is to segregate the repeating circuits into their own modules. Set the names of the controls in your initial module, insert a Preset Properties module then copy and paste this whole module as many times as you need. You then simply need to name each newly pasted module in its Preset Properties module. The Preset Manager will then append the new modules' names to give each control a unique name which includes its "path". Saves a lot of work. That's what I do anyway. In your example each delay stage or channel would be a module.

I've provided a FSM below that contains this Preset Properties module and also a pitch shifter, an alternative log knob module and an optimised delay. If you look inside the delay code the author has noted which numbers you have to change to determine the maximium delay. None of this stuff is authored by me BTW.

Finally you might like to look at my Quilcom Snake which uses the above delay modified to be longer, and also at BobF's Long Time delay which includes a pitch shifter.

Good luck and I hope to see more of your projects soon. Beware of addiction!

stuff to help maybe.fsm

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viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3893

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3846&p=21183&hilit=snake#p21176

Cheers

Spogg