Audio Effects

In the present version the Space Toad provides 24 build-in effects. These will appear together with the VST plugin effects in the VST | Load / Unload Effect list and can be used just like their VST relatives.

Reflections

This one simulates the first echoes in a room. It should be put in series before any of the late reverberation simulators for natural sounding reverb.

Room Simulation Reverbs

These reverberation units are the most complex among the build-in reverbs. To emulate the nature of echo build-up in a real room, sound processing runs through two entirely different stages. The first is the 'early reflection' stage which only disperses the sound, the second is the 'late reverb' stage which does the actual reverberation. Note that only the last two reverbs of this series are true stereo, while the first one is not (i.e. left and right channel are boiled down into one mono channel before processing).

Classic Reverbs

These late reverb simulators present the "classic" comb filter design as used in analogue reverb units of old. They sound more dense than the "room simulators" do but also exhibit the metallic tinge typical for vintage reverberators.

The large variety also has:

Matrix Reverbs

These late reverberators do not sound very natural compared to the "room simulators", but have an exceptional high density combined with a low diffusion level which makes them suited for reverberating sounds with a very short duration as e.g. drums. They are all mono.

Delay Effects

These effects are simple echo providers. For convenience the delay times are not expressed in milliseconds but in musical time to allow easy synchronization with the sequencer tempo.

The "Stereo Delay" consists of the two simple delay lines each operating on one stereo channel:

The "Cross Delay" is a little more complex. It consists of four delay lines: The first pair (A+B) is fed by the left and right channel of the input signal, as with the one above. This signal is send to the second pair (C+D), where it is delayed again and then routed back into the A+B pair with swapped channels, so what was originally was on left channel now appears on the right channel and vice versa (hence the name 'cross delay').

Chorus Effects

A "chorus" effect is nothing but a delay whose speed can be controlled used in conjunction with a low-frequency oscillator that permanently keeps changing that speed. This gives rise to a doppler effect inside the delay: As long as the delay speed increases the pitch of the delayed signal appears to be higher because the vibrations are compressed, as long as it decreases, it appears to be lower, because the vibrations are stretched. When used with a suitable modulation depth this combination of original and detuned copies tends to widen the sound as if many voices were playing instead of one. When used with only minute pitch changes a "flanger" effect will appear instead - a kind of hissing sound caused by the extinction of harmonic spectra produced by phase interferences among the different signals.

The "Stereo Chorus" consists of 2 chorus effects in parallel for left and right channel:

"Quadrature Chorus", "Harmonic Chorus" & "Spread Chorus" are chorus units that utilize more than one delay line for an even wider sound. The "Quadrature Chorus" uses 8 delays in parallel arranged at evenly distributed phases. The "Harmonic Chorus" has 4 lines each with an LFO at half the speed of the previous. The "Spread Chorus" consists of 8 lines with LFOs whose speeds are distributed between the "Speed A" and "Speed B" value. Unlike the other ones which keep the LFO speeds at a constant ratio, this last variety may create a lot of strange effects caused by random LFO phase interferences which makes this effect quite unpredictable (but also quite interesting for long drawn sounds), especially when used with a high feedback setting.

Cloud Chorus

The sound of this effect resembles the "cloud of sound" generated by a granular synthesis module although it does not perform granulation in the terms strictest sense. Basically it is an ultra-large chorus delay with 32 delay taps that have controllable amplitude, pitch & pan position. Instead of 32 separate LFOs a cellular automaton with life span counting is used for controlling purposes:

Due to the extreme size of the delay (nearly 12 seconds) this effect may take some time to get going. Try to feed it with heterogeneous material mixed with silence.

Detune

By combining two chorus delays a "constant" pitch shift is effected:

Phaser

A "phaser" effect is quite similar to a "flanger", but produces its effect by phase shifting the signal through filtering rather by detuning it.

The "Automated Phaser" is a 42-stage phaser, where all filters are individually controlled by a cellular automaton instead of one global LFO (see above).

Overdrive

A very simple overdrive simulator.

Distortion

A distortion unit which applies filtering before entering and after leaving the effect.

Decimator

Makes everything sound as if it rendered by a vintage soundcard. Filtering is applied before entering and after leaving the effect.

Stereo

A simple, but effective device for creating a phony stereo image for a mono signal by running the input through a 3-band filter and then providing a seperate pan position and delay for each of the 3 bands.