Effect by effect
Aconite ships twelve effects: Chorus (8 models), Phaser, Delay (3 voicings), Multi-tap delay (with per-tap tempo sync), Reverb (Plate / Room / Hall), Tape, Distortion (5 modes), Bit-crusher, Compressor (4 topologies), Transient shaper, EQ (3 voicings), and Stereo Imager. This chapter covers each one: what it’s for, its key controls, and its hero visualization.
For how the rack chain works as a whole (enabling slots, reordering, insert vs send), see Using the FX rack.
Chorus
Section titled “Chorus”
Eight distinct models, each voiced after a specific classic rather than one generic engine with a relabelled knob. You pick a model and the controls reorganise to show only what suits it: there is no clutter from knobs that don’t apply.
BBD I and BBD II capture bucket-brigade delay character: a soft companding saturation and a warm reconstruction low-pass give repeats a gentle, slightly rounded quality. BBD I+II layers both. Ensemble is a rich, multi-voice string-section style based on classic ensemble chips. Spatial widens the image without obvious pitch modulation. Compact gives you a four-way Dim Mode selector that steps through tonal and depth presets for quick, decisive choices. Clean is a transparent, pristine chorus. Flanger uses a short delay line for a metallic, resonant comb sweep; feedback sharpens it to a hard jet effect.
Both Clean and Flanger add a Feedback knob. All models support tempo sync via a Sync toggle and Division selector.
Key controls: Model, Mix, Width, Tone, Rate, Depth, Feedback (Clean / Flanger), Dim Mode 1–4 (Compact), Sync + Division.
Phaser
Section titled “Phaser”
A cascade of all-pass stages swept by an LFO, summed against the dry signal to produce a comb of moving notches. As the LFO sweeps the notch positions, you hear the characteristic whooshing sweep: silky at low feedback, sharp and nasal with feedback turned up.
Feedback controls how pronounced the notches are: low values give a transparent, wide sweep; high values make the peaks and notches ring out. Stages sets the number of all-pass sections (2, 4, 6, or 8): more stages mean more notch pairs and a deeper, more complex sweep character. Width applies a per-channel LFO phase offset to open the stereo image.
Key controls: Mix, Rate, Depth, Feedback, Stages (2 / 4 / 6 / 8), Width, Sync + Division.
A stereo delay with smooth, pitch-correct time adjustment and three character voicings.
Clean is a transparent digital delay: repeats at exactly the level you set, with no added colour. Tape adds wow and flutter for a drifting, organic quality, applies saturation inside the feedback loop so repeats warm up as they accumulate, and adds a head-bump lift in the low end. BBD models bucket-brigade character: companding compression, dark reconstruction filtering, and a feedback high-pass so repeats thin out as they decay: classic analogue multi-repeat.
When you change the delay time, you choose how it behaves: Slew pitches the repeats up or down as time shifts (the tape-machine pitch glide), while Crossfade changes seamlessly with no pitch artifact. Tone damps the feedback path, darkening repeats as they decay. Ping-pong bounces echoes across the stereo field. Spread sets the stereo width of the echo itself.
Key controls: Mix, Time, Feedback, Tone, Spread, Ping-pong, Character (Clean / Tape / BBD), Sync + Division.
Multi-tap delay
Section titled “Multi-tap delay”
A rhythmic multi-tap delay that reads up to six independent taps off one delay line. Each tap has its own time, level, pan, and three-band EQ, so you can sculpt a complete rhythmic pattern where each repeat lives at its own place in the stereo field with its own tonal character.
A dedicated feedback tap sits separately, with its own time, gain, pan, and EQ. It controls the regeneration independently from the main taps, letting you dial in exactly how the pattern repeats and decays. Feedback can regenerate from the dedicated tap alone or from the summed output of all taps, auto-normalised so adding more taps doesn’t send the feedback runaway.
Per-tap tempo sync works independently: each tap can run free (in milliseconds) or lock to a note division of the host tempo, so a syncopated multi-tap pattern can lock precisely to the grid. Rotate sweeps the pans of all taps together for a spinning, animated stereo image. Delay mod adds subtle pitch drift to the taps. A Direct dry send and Output makeup sit alongside the main mix.
Feedback high-pass thins the feedback path so low-end energy doesn’t accumulate with each repeat, so long regenerating patterns stay open and clear rather than building into a muddy rumble.
The hero visualisation is a semicircular pan graph that plots each tap by its time and pan around a half-disc: you can see the rhythmic pattern and stereo spread at a glance, with per-tap editing rows below.
This effect is insert-only: it cannot run as a send/return.
Key controls: Mix, Taps (1–6), Feedback, Tone, Feedback high-pass, Feedback mode (Tap / Normal), rotate rate/depth, delay-mod rate/depth, Direct, Output; per tap: Time or Sync + Division, Level, Pan, Enable, EQ type / frequency / gain; feedback tap: Time or Sync + Division, Gain, Pan, EQ.
Reverb
Section titled “Reverb”
One reverb with three algorithms, each suited to a different acoustic context.
Plate produces a lush, dense, diffuse tail, the kind of reverb most people hear when they think “reverb.” An input Tone control shapes how bright the signal enters the plate. Room is a feedback-delay-network room with adjustable Mod Depth for tail lushness: more modulation gives the reverb a shimmer. Hall is a large concert-hall wash with prominent early reflections (Er Level) and warm, frequency-dependent decay that naturally darkens at the tail; it is the algorithm the sound takes the longest to decay on.
Near-maximum Decay on any algorithm yields an effectively infinite tail: the reverb becomes a pad in itself, sustaining long past any note you play. Pre-Delay pushes the reverb onset back in time, keeping the dry attack clean before the room opens up.
Key controls: Algorithm (Plate / Room / Hall), Mix, Size, Decay, Damp, Pre-Delay, Tone (Plate), Mod Depth (Room + Hall), Er Level (Hall).
Tape saturation and character, with controls that go well beyond a single warmth knob. The heart of the effect is the Engine switch: Clean applies a fitted soft-clip saturation curve that captures the gentle harmonic profile of tape without modelling every physical detail: ideal when you want warmth without CPU overhead. Authentic engages a hysteresis model and physics-based head loss, which responds more dynamically to transients and captures the way real tape compresses and saturates differently at the core versus the surface.
Speed (7.5, 15, or 30 ips) sets the character of the tape machine: slower speeds produce deeper wow and flutter and a higher hiss floor; faster speeds are cleaner and tighter. Character switches between a gentler or more aggressive saturation curve. The Reproduce EQ applies the standard playback equalization curves: NAB for a warmer, low-end-lifted sound, and IEC for a brighter, more open response. Switching it off leaves the frequency response flat.
Additional controls shape the analogue physics: Bump raises the low-end head resonance, Bias shifts the tape’s operating point for subtle colouration, Wow and Flutter add the pitch drift characteristic of mechanical transport, and Hiss sets the hiss floor. Machine profile selects between voicing presets based on different machine characters.
Key controls: Mix, Drive, Speed (7.5 / 15 / 30 ips), Engine (Clean / Authentic), Character (Gentle / Aggressive), Bump, Bias, Wow, Flutter, Hiss, Reproduce EQ (Off / NAB / IEC), Machine profile.
Distortion
Section titled “Distortion”
A front-and-centre overdrive and distortion unit with five distinct clipping modes. Drive pushes the signal into the mode-selected curve; Tone tames fizz at the top; Output sets the post-distortion level after any makeup.
Each mode has a different harmonic character:
- Tube: warm asymmetric soft-clip, emphasising even harmonics for a thick, musical overdrive reminiscent of a pushed tube amp.
- Transistor: aggressive hard clip, rich in odd harmonics, more abrasive and cutting than Tube.
- Diode: a soft-clip topology in the style of classic overdrive pedals, slightly asymmetric, with a rounded top that retains articulation.
- Fuzz: cascaded high-gain stages that push toward a near-square wave, with the dense harmonic content of a germanium or silicon fuzz.
- Octave: a full-wave rectification that shifts the fundamental up an octave and produces a cocked-wah-style tonal character.
Bias injects a DC offset into the signal before the clipper, which unbalances the positive and negative half-cycles and introduces even harmonics on any mode. Sag models the power supply rail collapsing under load: the amp breathes and compresses dynamically with the signal level, the way an overdriven amp behaves when it runs out of headroom.
The hero visualisation shows a transfer curve that reacts live to Drive and Bias settings, alongside the shaped waveform, so you can see the clipping action as well as hear it.
Key controls: Drive, Mode (Tube / Transistor / Diode / Fuzz / Octave), Tone, Bias, Sag, Output, Mix.
Bit-crusher
Section titled “Bit-crusher”
Two independent lo-fi operations that you can engage separately or together.
Bit-depth reduction uses a mid-tread quantizer to reduce the word length of the signal down to around one bit at the extreme end. The result is a stepped, gritty, aliased texture: subtle at 14–15 bits, obvious and aggressive below 8. An optional Dither toggle adds TPDF noise before quantization, which trades the harsh quantization distortion for a gentler hiss, preserving perceptual detail in quiet passages the way it does in professional digital audio mastering.
Sample-rate reduction is a sample-and-hold decimator that drops the effective sample rate, generating aliasing deliberately for the character. Unlike most anti-aliasing in the signal path, this aliasing is the point: the staircase artefacts and foldback produce the crunchy, digital lo-fi texture of early samplers and video game sound hardware.
A gentle post Tone control rolls off the harshest top end when the aliasing gets too aggressive, so you can keep the crunch without the ice-pick frequencies.
Key controls: Mix, Bits (1–16), Rate, Dither (Off / On), Tone.
Compressor
Section titled “Compressor”
Four selectable compression modes, each a different circuit topology with its own ballistics and colour:
- VCA: clean feed-forward compression with no added harmonics. The fastest and most neutral mode; ideal for transparent bus glue and gain control without changing the sound’s character.
- FET: fast, feed-back compression in the style of the classic 1176 limiter. The gain-reduction circuit introduces saturation that increases with heavier compression, adding brightness and grip as the compressor works harder. Great on transient-heavy material.
- Opto: an opto-coupler style compressor with a fixed ~10 ms attack and a two-stage, program-dependent release. The release responds to the signal itself: it moves quickly for brief peaks, then settles slowly for sustained material. Warm and gentle, flattering on melodic content.
- Grit: a pumping, characterful mode that puts a real waveshaper in the gain path for distortion that varies with how hard the compressor is working. A single Amount knob scales threshold, ratio, drive, and makeup together, making it easy to go from light squeeze to heavily pumped saturation in one move. Tone tilts the compressed signal brighter or darker.
The hero visualisation shows a live gain-reduction meter alongside a transfer-curve plot with a moving dot that follows the operating point as you play, plus a scrolling gain-reduction trace, so you can see compression happening in real time rather than reacting to a static display.
Key controls: Mix, Mode (VCA / FET / Opto / Grit), Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release, Knee, Makeup, Auto/Manual makeup, Amount (Grit), Drive (Grit), Tone (Grit).
Transient shaper
Section titled “Transient shaper”
A threshold-free transient designer that reshapes a sound’s dynamic envelope without any gain-reduction threshold to set. There are only two controls that matter: Attack and Sustain.
Attack controls the onset of the sound: drag it toward punchier and transients sharpen and snap forward; drag it toward softer and the attack becomes more rounded, blending into the texture. Sustain controls the body and tail: longer stretches the decay out, tighter shortens and tightens the body so the sound clears more quickly.
Both channels are processed with the same gain so the stereo image never shifts under compression. An Output level sits at the end for makeup.
The transient shaper works well on plucks, mallets, percussion, and any sound where you want to control how much of the attack vs. sustain reaches the listener without touching EQ or compression thresholds.
Key controls: Mix, Attack (softer ↔ punchier), Sustain (tighter ↔ longer), Output.
Parametric EQ
Section titled “Parametric EQ”
A three-band parametric EQ (low shelf, mid bell, high shelf) plus a single Tilt knob for a whole-patch brighter/darker sweep. Three voicings change how the bands behave:
- Clean: textbook parametric response. The mid bell’s Q is exposed directly, so you set the bandwidth yourself.
- Console: the mid Q is derived from the gain amount rather than set manually. Wide on cuts, tight on boosts. This proportional-Q behaviour matches the feel of classic mixing desk EQs (API, Neve style), where the bandwidth tracks the amount.
- Passive: a summed-shelf voicing. A broad boost pairs with a resonant dip just above it, giving each band a more complex, musical shape. The high band becomes a tube-influenced bell rather than a straight shelf.
Each band has an independent channel selector (Stereo, Mid, or Side), so you can, for example, EQ only the centre of the stereo field without touching the sides, or tilt only the Side content darker to focus the mix.
The hero visualisation is a live spectrum analyser with the EQ response curve overlaid and draggable band nodes: drag a node in the display to move its frequency and gain together, for a direct, visual approach.
Key controls: Mix, Model (Clean / Console / Passive), Low frequency / gain, Mid frequency / gain / Q, High frequency / gain, Tilt, per-band channel (Stereo / Mid / Side).
Stereo imager
Section titled “Stereo imager”
Width and image control for the final output, almost always the last slot in the chain, shaping the finished mix rather than feeding into further effects.
Width narrows or widens the side signal. At centre it is unity; pull it below centre to mono; push it above to exaggerate the stereo spread. Balance shifts energy between the centre (mid) and the sides without changing Width, useful for correcting a mix that is too centred or too diffuse. Mono< is a bass-mono crossover: below the set frequency, the signal is summed to mono, keeping kick and bass centred and solid in mono playback while the top end remains wide.
The hero visualisation is a live goniometer (the classic X–Y stereo scope) with a correlation meter below it. A perfectly mono signal draws a vertical line; a wide stereo signal fills a broad ellipse; out-of-phase content appears as a horizontal smear. The correlation meter gives a quick numeric read of how compatible the signal is with mono playback.
This effect is insert-only: it cannot run as a send/return.
Key controls: Width, Balance, Mono<.
The voice-path waveshaper
Section titled “The voice-path waveshaper”The waveshaper is not a rack effect; it lives inside each voice, in the signal path around the filter, and processes audio per voice before the amp stage. It is documented here because it is the main distortion tool that works at the voice level, distinct from the rack’s Distortion slot (which processes the post-mix stereo bus) and the master-band saturation (which applies to the final output).
The waveshaper adds harmonics by passing the voice signal through a fixed transfer curve, from gentle saturation to hard clipping, wavefolding, and a fully hand-drawn shape.
Placement around the filter. A Place selector sets where in the signal path the shaper sits:
- Pre-filter: the shaper distorts the raw oscillator mix before the filter carves it. Sweeping the filter then sweeps which generated harmonics survive: a bright, aggressive “distort then EQ” placement.
- Post-filter: after the filter (the default). The filter shapes the waveform first, including its resonant peak, then the shaper distorts the result. This makes resonance sing and self-compress, and tames near-self-oscillation, the classic “synth scream” placement.
- Mid-filter: between the two filters in Serial routing. The first filter pre-shapes, the shaper distorts, the second filter post-carves. In routings without a clean between-filter slot it falls back to Post-filter.
Curves. A Curve selector chooses the transfer shape:
| Curve | Character |
|---|---|
| None | Pure passthrough; the shaper is inert and all controls step aside. |
| Soft | Gentle rational soft-clip: subtle warmth and thickening. |
| Tanh | Smooth symmetric saturation: classic overdrive that rounds the peaks. |
| Hard Clip | Brick-wall clip: aggressive, buzzy, rich in odd harmonics. |
| Cubic | Polynomial soft-knee: musical drive between Soft and Hard. |
| Sine | Saturates, then folds once the input passes its peak: hollow, wavefolder-lite, adds upper partials. |
| Fold | Triangle wavefolder: metallic, West-Coast timbres, harmonics that brighten with drive. |
| Asym | Asymmetric curve with a Bias control: even harmonics, tube-like colour. |
| Draw | A fully hand-drawn transfer curve: any shape you draw becomes the waveshaping function. |
Peaks stay level-matched as you push harder, so switching curve or raising drive does not jump the loudness.
Trim is a pre-curve input trim: it sets how hot the signal arrives at the shape before Drive takes over. Because Trim sits ahead of the curve and Drive controls how deep into it you push, you can stage a clean input level for the curve independently of how much harmonic character Drive adds, useful when the incoming oscillator level varies between patches or scenes.
The hard-edged curves (Hard Clip, Cubic, Fold, and any drawn curve) are anti-aliased, and the voice can run at higher quality for extra headroom on extreme settings. The asymmetric and folding curves are DC-cleaned so an offset never builds up, even at high drive levels.
Key controls: Curve, Place (Pre-filter / Post-filter / Mid-filter), Drive, Mix, Trim, Bias (Asym curve only).
The Draw curve. Selecting Draw turns the shaper’s display into an interactive transfer-curve editor. A live waveform preview shows how the curve transforms the signal in real time, and a dot rides the curve to show the input-to-output mapping as audio passes through. You build the curve with breakpoints: add them by clicking, drag them to reshape, double-click to remove. Drawing tools:
- Sym: locks odd symmetry so both halves of the curve mirror each other; you only need to draw one side.
- Spline: smooth curve segments between breakpoints, rather than straight piecewise segments.
- Snap: snaps breakpoints to a grid for clean, deliberate shapes.
- Reset: returns the curve to the identity line (a straight diagonal, no shaping) so you can start fresh.
The drawn shape is saved with the patch and is shared across both scenes. The same drawing interface appears for drawable LFOs, envelope contours, step-sequencer Curve Lanes, and the Performer, so the feel is consistent everywhere a curve can be hand-drawn in Aconite.
String oscillator note. The voice-path waveshaper is separate from the String oscillator’s own in-loop drive. That means a plucked String can be coloured at its source (shaping the attack and the body of the string model itself) and then shaped again downstream by the waveshaper, stacking into a full electric-string chain without the two stages interfering with each other.
The Sympathetic Resonator
Section titled “The Sympathetic Resonator”
The waveshaper’s panel is a two-page deck: a Shaper | Resonator tab strip at the top swaps its control surface between the drawable waveshaper (above) and the Sympathetic Resonator. Both stages keep running; the tab only changes which one you are looking at. The Resonator is a bank of undamped tuned strings that ring in sympathy with the notes you play, the way a real piano’s unplayed strings sing along when you hold the sustain pedal, or a sitar’s drone strings buzz under the melody.
It is worth being clear about what this is not. It is not reverb. A reverb models the room around an instrument (extrinsic space); the Resonator models the instrument’s own undamped strings ringing (intrinsic body). A real piano wants both, and they sit in different places: the Resonator completes a physical-model instrument, adding the “the whole instrument sings” halo that a dry pluck or strike never has, while reverb adds the space it sits in. Used on the String, Modal, or Kick voices it is the last piece that makes a modelled instrument read as real rather than synthetic.
The character knobs.
- Amount: how much the resonator bank rings, from silent (0, the bank is effectively off) up to a rich, blooming sympathetic halo. This is the master control: at 0 the Resonator is inert no matter what else is set.
- Decay: how long the undamped strings ring on, from a short, tight shimmer to a long, singing sustain that hangs under the notes you play.
- Tone: the colour of the ringing, from a dark, woody halo to a bright, metallic one.
Model. A selector picks the tuning of the resonator bank, which is what gives it its character:
- Piano: the undamped strings of a grand piano, the “whole piano sings” pedal-down bloom.
- Duplex: the fine, high, metallic shimmer of a piano’s behind-the-bridge string segments, undamped by design.
- Tanpura: the buzzing sustained drone of the Indian tanpura, a low continuous wash under whatever you play.
- Sitar: the sitar’s bank of sympathetic strings buzzing under the melody line.
- Harp: open, undamped harp strings ringing together.
- Free: instead of a fixed tuning, the bank tracks the notes you are actually holding, exactly like a real piano’s undamped strings. Hold a chord (or the sustain pedal) and those pitches ring in sympathy; release them and they damp. This is the most piano-realistic mode, because the sympathetic set follows your hands.
The send mixer. A five-fader strip (Osc 1, Osc 2, Osc 3, Sub, Noise) sets how much of each source feeds the resonator bank. This is what makes the effect model-coupled rather than a wash across the whole mix: you feed the resonator from the String or Modal oscillator that should be exciting the sympathetic strings, and leave the rest out. Turn up the send from the source you want the bank to listen to.
Tap. A Post-VCA / Pre-filter switch chooses where the bank taps the voice. Post-VCA (the default) is the cleaner, more reverb-like feed taken after the amp. Pre-filter feeds the raw pre-filter signal into the bank, which is the model-coupled placement that most convincingly earns the “the instrument itself is ringing” realism, because the sympathetic strings hear the source the same way the played string does.