Punch-in FX

Effects sit on the white keys and act on the whole mix, after the input/loop mix and before the master compressor and the output gain. The looper records the input before the effects, so an effect is never printed into a loop.

Effects that are off cost (almost) no processing time, but the ones that are on do. Some heavy combinations (the shifter and the crusher with a loop playing and the master compressor working hard, for example) can need more time than there is, which is heard as crackles; switching one of them off clears it.

The keys run in signal order, left to right:

freezer -> shifter -> folder -> crusher -> filter -> flanger -> slicer -> wow & flutter
           |<------------------- resonator loop ------------------->|
  -> tape stop -> delay -> reverb

The inserts fill the first 10 white keys, the 11th is free, the delay and reverb are the 12th and 13th, the 14th is free again and the 15th, the last, is the master compressor’s. The free keys set the inserts, the sends and the compressor apart. (The delay and reverb used to sit on the 11th and 12th keys, the compressor on the 14th, and the last key was the randomizer’s, which is gone.)

Inserts (freezer, shifter, folder, crusher, filter, flanger, slicer): replace the signal while on and stop the moment they’re off. The freezer comes first, so it captures the clean sound and everything after it works on the repeats. The folder folds the clean signal and the crusher grinds the folds; the filter sweeps both, and the flanger sweeps what they made. The slicer chops everything, including the resonator’s ringing.
Tape (wow & flutter, tape stop): the last two inserts, so they bend everything before them, the resonator’s ringing too. They come before the sends: a tape stop slows the music to a halt while the echoes and the reverb ring on. The tape stop doesn’t end the moment it’s off: it spins back up first.
Resonator (7th white key): a comb feedback loop. While on, it taps the signal after the flanger and feeds it back in after the freezer, so it rings through the shifter, folder, crusher, filter and flanger whenever they’re on.
Sends (delay, reverb): the key opens the effect’s input, and its output is added to the signal, so tails ring out after the key is released. The delay’s tail rings out as plain echoes: its random events only start while its key is on. The delay gets the inserts’ output; the reverb gets that plus the delay’s echoes, so the echoes are reverberated while both are on.

Control	Function
Hold an FX key	Effect on while held
Hold an FX key, then SHIFT	Latch on / off; a latched effect stays on after release. The key goes down first, then SHIFT. The latch is settled when you let go of the key: holding an FX key and using SHIFT for something else (a coarse turn, tap tempo, the mix, selecting another effect) doesn’t latch it. Hold several FX keys, then SHIFT, to latch them all
SHIFT, then an FX key	Select: the knobs now edit that effect, without hearing it. It stays off (or latched, if it was), and letting go of the key does nothing, also after letting go of SHIFT first. The key flashes (white, or dark while it’s already nearly white). (Before, SHIFT first latched too: now only the key first does)
FX key on a latched effect	Clears the latch; the effect stays on until the key is released
Knobs 1-4	The parameters of the most recently pressed or selected FX key, 1% per detent; stepped ones (shifter shift, filter LFO and delay divisions, freezer length and roll, slicer pattern and stereo, tape stop and spin-up times) move one step per 3 detents
SHIFT + knobs 1-4	Coarse: jumps to the next point of the parameter’s grid per detent (see below)
SHIFT + press knobs 1-4	Resets that parameter to its default
Press knobs 1-4	Nothing yet (kept free for a second parameter page). Like the 11th and 14th white keys and the two upper dark keys left of the scene functions, it doesn’t cancel a SHIFT combo either

The FX keys are dimly lit in their effect’s colour while off and at full brightness while on, where the audio coming out of the effect pushes the colour towards white, from -30 dBFS up, the peaks most. The delay and reverb keys follow their returns, so after release they glow with the tail, fading from full back to dim. A selected key flashes white, or dark while a loud effect already lights it nearly white. The knob LEDs show the parameter values in the effect’s colours; a knob the effect doesn’t use is dark and does nothing. Values reset at power-off unless they’re saved in a scene.

The knobs do the same kind of job on every effect, so you can find a setting without looking it up:

Knob	Role	Where an effect has none
1	The main control: length, pitch, drive, rate, cutoff, pattern, wow, stop time, division, decay	—
2	Feedback (the filter’s resonance)	its second main control: shape, bits, decay, flutter, spin-up time, diffusion
3	Tone or colour: tone, roll, swoop, amount, LFO depth, chance, curve, random	—
4	Stereo, or level on the delay and reverb	its odd one out: symmetry, XOR, LFO division

Every effect starts silent or nearly so: the knob that brings it in (shifter shift, folder drive, crusher rate and bits, filter cutoff, flanger amount, resonator feedback, wow and flutter, delay and reverb level) starts at off, the others at a setting that sounds good, so one turn brings the effect in. Three can’t be silent: the freezer starts at 1 bar, so a shorter press only hears the live signal; the slicer at every step on with the longest decay, a slight pump; and the tape stop stops on every press, over 1/2 bar. SHIFT + press on a knob takes it back there.

Key	Effect	Knob 1	Knob 2	Knob 3	Knob 4
1st white	Freezer: Kastle 2 FX Wizard’s, as a beat repeat	Length: 1/16, 1/8T, 1/8, 1/4T, 1/4, 1/2T, 1/2, 1 bar (default 1 bar)	Feedback: the input overdubbed into the repeats (default 0, pure repeat)	Roll: the loop halves as it repeats, down to 1/64 bar: off, slow, … fast, one step per 3 detents (default off)	Stereo: the left loop up to 45 ms longer (default off)
2nd white	Shifter: a two-tap pitch shifter, with Kastle 2 FX Wizard’s swoop and feedback	Shift in semitones, -12 to +12, one step per 3 detents; centre off (default 0, off)	Feedback: the shifted sound spirals (default off)	Swoop: on the key press, the shift pushes up to 2 octaves further and falls back over 1 s (default off)	Stereo: the right channel up to a semitone higher (default off)
3rd white	Folder: a sine-to-triangle wavefolder, antialiased and level-matched	Drive: 1x up to 32x, from barely folding to many folds (default 1x)	Shape: sine (smooth) to triangle (bright) (default sine)	Tone, lowpass 200 Hz to open (default open)	Symmetry: a bias for uneven folds and even harmonics (default off)
4th white	Crusher: TEMPO’s sample-rate reducer plus bit reduction	Rate, 21.6 kHz down to 480 Hz, halving every 18% of the knob (default 21.6 kHz)	Bits, 16 down to 2 (default 16 bits)	Tone, lowpass 200 Hz to open (default open)	XOR: flips bits of every sample for a digital buzz, from Kastle 2 FX Wizard’s crusher (default off)
5th white	Filter: the DJ filter from TAPE, TEMPO and WAVE (WAVE’s copy)	Cutoff: lowpass left of centre, highpass right, flat at centre (default centre, flat)	Resonance (default 50%)	LFO depth (default off)	LFO division: 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 bar, 2 bars, 4 bars (default 1 bar)
6th white	Flanger: Kastle 2 FX Wizard’s	Rate, 0.02 Hz to 50 Hz (default 0.55 Hz)	Feedback, up to 85% (default 50%)	Amount: sweep depth and mix together, the top is pure vibrato (default 0, dry)	Stereo: the right LFO runs free and detuned (default off)
7th white	Resonator: the comb Kastle 2 FX Wizard runs around every mode	Pitch, 22 Hz to 880 Hz (default 110 Hz)	Feedback, up to 98% (default 0, off)	Tone: the loop’s lowpass, 1 kHz to 15 kHz (default 6.6 kHz)	Stereo: the right channel up to 12 semitones higher (default off)
8th white	Slicer: Kastle 2 FX Wizard’s rhythmic gate	Pattern, 8 steps of 16ths: `x.......`, `x...x...`, `..x...x.`, `x....x..`, `x..x..x.`, `x.x.x.x.`, `x.x.xx..`, `xxxxxxxx` (default `xxxxxxxx`)	Decay, 10 ms to 1 s (default 1 s)	Chance: each step flipped at random, up to 90% (default off)	Stereo: the left channel plays a pattern up the list, the right one down, 0-7 apart (default off)
9th white	Wow & flutter: TAPE’s warble, plus flutter	Wow: TAPE’s warble knob, how often the pitch drifts and how much of it you hear, together (default off)	Flutter: a fast, shallow wobble, up to 1.4% of pitch; real tape’s 0.1-0.5% is the lower half (default off)	Tone, lowpass 200 Hz to open (default open)	Stereo: the right channel drifts on its own and wobbles out of step (default off)
10th white	Tape stop	Stop time: 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 bar, 2 bars (default 1/2)	Spin-up time on release: off, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 bar (default 1/4)	Curve: linear to a brake, fast at first then dragging (default linear)	—
12th white	Delay: TEMPO’s tempo-synced delay	Division: 1/8, 1/4T, 1/4, 1/2T, 1/4., 1/2, 1/2., 1 bar, 2 bars (default 1/4)	Feedback (default 40%)	Random: left of centre retrigger / reverse / pitch events, right octave-up shimmer with random pan, centre off (default off)	Level (default 0)
13th white	Reverb (TEMPO’s / WAVE’s)	Decay (default 60%)	Diffusion (default 60%)	Tone, dark to open (default 60%)	Level (default 0)

SHIFT + turn moves one point of a fixed grid per detent, always to the next point in the direction you turn, so a value set finely snaps onto the grid with the first coarse move:

Parameter	Coarse grid
Resonator pitch	The notes at A440 (110 Hz is A2), F#0 to A5
Shifter shift	-12, -7, -5, 0, +5, +7, +12 semitones (octaves, fifths, fourths)
Shifter stereo	Quarter semitones
Crusher rate	48 kHz divided by 4, 8, 16, 32, 64: 12 kHz, 6 kHz, 3 kHz, 1.5 kHz, 750 Hz
Crusher bits	Whole bits
Folder drive	Doublings: 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x
Folder and crusher tone	Octaves down from open: 20 kHz, 10 kHz, 5 kHz … 312 Hz
Resonator tone	Octaves down from 15 kHz: 7.5 kHz, 3.75 kHz, 1.9 kHz
Wow & flutter tone	Octaves down from open, as the folder’s and crusher’s
Stepped parameters (freezer length and roll, filter LFO and delay divisions, slicer pattern and stereo, tape stop and spin-up times)	One step per detent instead of per 3
Everything else, filter cutoff included	10% steps

Filter details:

LFO: a triangle on the cutoff, like WAVE’s filter LFO but synced to the same tempo as the delay. At full depth it sweeps half the cutoff knob either way, so from the centre it goes all the way from lowpass to highpass. It’s at the centre of the cutoff on the beat and rises towards highpass first. Like the delay’s events, the beat is counted from the loop’s start, or without a loop from when the clock locked, not from the DAW’s beat 1.
LEDs: the key is pink; the knobs go pink (0%) through white to light blue (100%).

Freezer details:

Capture: pressing the key waits for the next 16th, then records. The first pass is the live signal, so there’s no gap; after one length it repeats. Releasing the key goes back to the live signal. Pressed again before the repeats have faded, they play on until the next 16th starts the new capture. It keeps recording past the loop (up to 5 s), so the length can be turned up while repeating; turned past what’s recorded, it plays on through the recording until the length is reached.
Feedback: at 0 the loop repeats unchanged. Turning up mixes the input into it (up to 30% at 75%, 80% at the top, where the loop also fades by 10% per pass).
Roll: a beat repeat’s build-up, which Kastle doesn’t have. The four steps after off halve the loop after 8, 4, 2 or 1 repeats at the starting length, and every stage after that lasts as long as the first: at 1/8 and the slowest step, a bar of 1/8s, a bar of 1/16s, a bar of 1/32s, then 1/64s until release. Each halving repeats the start of the capture, following on from the last repeat through the seam crossfade. Turning it off goes back to the full length.
Lengths follow the delay’s tempo. The loop seam has a 5 ms crossfade (shorter on loops under 20 ms), which Kastle doesn’t have.
LEDs: the key is purple; the knobs go purple through white to light blue.

Slicer details:

Steps are 16ths, counted from the tempo like the filter LFO, so a pattern is half a bar. Each step that’s on retriggers a 10 ms attack and the decay. Pressing the key also triggers it, so the signal doesn’t drop out until the next step.
LEDs: the key is yellow; the knobs go yellow through white to green.

Flanger details:

A ~12 ms delay swept up to its full length either way by a triangle LFO. Like Kastle’s Amount, one knob sets both the depth and the mix: around the middle it flanges and chorus-sweeps, at the top it’s all delayed signal, a vibrato.
Pressing the key restarts the sweep from the centre (Kastle’s trigger input).
Feedback goes through the swept delay, a classic flanger’s resonance. Kastle’s FEEDBACK is a short comb around every mode, at most 8% on the flanger, so this one is stronger.
LEDs: the key is light blue; the knobs go light blue through white to purple.

Shifter details:

Two taps read the input at the shifted speed, each for a 30 ms stretch before it starts over, crossfaded so the level stays even. Where a tap starts over is searched for, within 7.5 ms, so it lines up with the other one: the pitch lands within about a cent of the interval and doesn’t wobble.
Kastle’s shifter was a single tap that faded out and in at every wrap: its pitch knob slid from a slight detune to a buzzing, ring-mod-like tone, too coarse to set an interval. FRIZZ keeps its swoop, feedback and stereo, not the buzz.
Swoop is Kastle’s trigger envelope: 0.1 s up, 1 s back. Kastle tied its depth to TIME; here it has its own knob.
Feedback sends the shifted output back into the delay, so each pass shifts again: a fifth stacks into fifths (Kastle: its comb around every mode).
LEDs: the key is red; the shift knob goes blue (down) through white (off) to red (up).

Folder details:

The fold: past the fold point the signal is mirrored back, again and again as the drive rises, each fold adding harmonics. Drive is the folding: on loud material the folds start low on the knob, on quiet material higher up.
Level: a folder’s output is about full scale whatever goes in, so the output is matched to the input’s level (over ~50 ms, by up to 2x louder): punching in changes the sound, not the loudness.
Symmetry shifts the fold by up to a quarter of its period: at the top, the sine fold becomes a cosine, all even harmonics, an octave-ish edge. The DC the bias adds is blocked.
Aliasing: the sine fold hardly aliases: on a sine below about 1.5 kHz the aliases stay more than 85 dB down at any drive. The triangle’s corners do alias: first-order ADAA takes off 5 to 13 dB, but on bright material high up the drive it still adds some grit, as DaisySP’s Wavefolder (the triangle alone, unfiltered) does more of. (DaisySP’s Fold isn’t a folder: it’s a sample-rate reducer, the crusher’s rate knob.)
In the resonator’s loop, the folder folds the ringing on every trip.
LEDs: the key is magenta; the knobs go magenta through white to orange.

Crusher details:

LEDs: the key is orange; the knobs go yellow through orange to red.
Dive: every press of the key drops the rate up to 10x over 0.1 s and lets it recover over 0.4 s, Kastle’s trigger dive.
XOR flips fixed bits of each sample as 16-bit (Kastle’s constants, up to 4000), a buzz that’s loudest where the signal crosses zero. On its own XOR would turn silence into a constant offset, so what it adds is DC-blocked.
Level: the XOR’s flips and the coarsest bits are a fixed size whatever the signal’s level, so on a quiet sound they’d come out far louder than it. The crusher’s output is held to its input’s level instead: turned down within a couple of milliseconds, never up.

Resonator details:

The loop holds a soft clipper, a lowpass (Tone) and a 50 Hz highpass, as on Kastle, so it saturates rather than runs away, whatever is inside it. On its own it’s a comb on the dry sound; with the inserts inside the loop on, the ringing goes through them on every trip: through the shifter it spirals, through the crusher it turns grainy, and the filter shapes it the way a filter in a dub delay’s feedback does. With the freezer on, it rings the repeats; with the slicer on, the ringing is chopped into bursts.
Like Kastle, it turns the input down as feedback goes up (by half at the most). Kastle’s comb is fixed per mode, 22-440 Hz with about 40% feedback at most; this one is tunable and stronger.
LEDs: the key is lime; the knobs go orange through white to light blue.

Wow & flutter details:

Wow is TAPE’s warble, from its SHIFT menu: a short delay (2-20 ms) that now and then heads for a new length at a random speed, so the pitch drifts like a worn tape’s. The knob sets both how often (0.1 to 30 times a second) and the mix: around the middle the drifting copy blends with the dry sound into a chorus, at the top you hear only the drift.
Flutter is two fast wobbles, at 7.3 Hz and 11.7 Hz, like a capstan’s and a pinch roller’s. It brings the effect in over the first quarter of its knob, so it works without the wow.
Tone darkens what comes off the tape, not the dry sound.
LEDs: the key is teal; the knobs go teal through white to purple.

Tape stop details:

Press: the tape slows to a standstill over the stop time and the pitch falls with it. Below 5% of speed the level fades too, as on a real machine, and while you hold the key it stays stopped and silent.
Release: the tape spins back up from the live signal over the spin-up time, then crossfades (15 ms) back to the live signal once it’s at speed. A spin-up has to start from live: a tape slower than real time falls behind, so it can’t catch up by itself. With the spin-up off, it goes straight back.
Release halfway down spins up from that speed. Press while it spins up and it slows again from there.
Curve: linear slows the tape evenly. Turned up, it brakes: fast at first, then a long drag at the bottom. The spin-up mirrors it, a motor’s quick start and slow settle.
The times follow the tempo, taken when the stop or spin-up starts, so a stop pressed on a beat lands on a beat.
It comes before the delay and reverb, so their tails ring on while the tape stops. A latched tape stop, or a scene that latches one, keeps the whole mix silent, and the sends get nothing new, until it’s unlatched.
LEDs: the key is amber; the knobs go amber through white to red.

Delay details:

Tempo: the tempo: with a loop, its exact tempo, so the echoes stay on its beats; otherwise rounded to whole BPM. Limited to 50-300 BPM so 2 bars fit the 10 s buffer.
Random events are rolled on every 8th note; the knob’s distance from centre is the chance. (TEMPO rolled them on its arpeggiator’s step instead.)
Beat phase: the 8th notes that random events follow are counted from the loop’s start. Without a loop, only the clock’s tempo is used, not MIDI Start / Song Position, so they’re counted from when the clock locked (or from power-on, or the last tap, without clock), not from the DAW’s beat 1. Echo spacing is unaffected.
LEDs: the key is green; division green (short) through white to light blue (long); random green (events) through white to light blue (shimmer).

Reverb details:

LEDs: the key is blue; the knobs go light blue through blue to purple.