Ripple manual

Echo, chorus, flanger and phaser on one delay core. A modulated stereo echo with tape and bucket-brigade character, ping-pong and tempo sync, plus three motion effects. The controls on the plate change with the mode, so every knob you see is one that does something.

Warren Labs · Character line · VST3 · AU · Standalone · macOS

What it's for

Echo is a delay: slapback on a vocal, dotted-eighth repeats on a guitar, dub throws on a snare. Chorus, Flanger and Phaser are the motion effects: width and shimmer, jet-plane sweeps, and a swirling notch sweep.

They share an interpolated-delay core but not their controls. Echo's Time and the motion modes' Rate are different jobs, so instead of relabelling one knob, Ripple swaps which knobs are on the plate when you change mode. Feedback and Mix stay put because they mean the same thing everywhere.

The controls

Mode

Echo · Chorus · Flanger · Phaser, along the bottom of the plate.

Echo mode

Character (Echo only): Clean repeats are exact copies. Tape saturates each pass through the loop, so repeats soften and compress as they decay. BBD, the bucket-brigade chips of analog delay pedals, saturates harder and runs darker.

Ping-Pong (Echo only): repeats alternate left, right, left. Ripple feeds the loop from one side with a mono sum of your input, so the bounce works on a centred vocal or snare, not only on something already panned. The dry signal keeps its original stereo image.

Chorus, Flanger and Phaser modes

• Chorus: a 12 ms delay swept ±8 ms. Thickening and width, no resonance.
• Flanger: a 2 ms delay swept ±2 ms, with Feedback for the jet sweep.
• Phaser: six all-pass stages swept from 300 Hz up to as high as 3 kHz at full Depth. Smoother and less metallic than the flanger.

Sync and Division

With Sync on, the host tempo sets the timing and Division picks the note value: 1/1 to 1/32, with dotted (.) and triplet (T) options. In Echo it sets the delay time (overriding Time); in the motion modes it sets one full sweep per division (overriding Rate). The Time or Rate readout shows the division while Sync is on. With no host tempo, Ripple assumes 120 BPM.

Power

Bypass, with a click-free crossfade.

The display

• Echo: the echo train across a two-second window. The dry hit is at zero, then each repeat is a line whose height shows how loud it is: the dry at 1 − Mix, the first repeat at Mix, and each one after that smaller by Feedback. Turn Feedback up and the train gets longer; shorten Time and the lines crowd together. With Sync on it follows the tempo, and the corner shows the division and the time it works out to.
• Chorus, Flanger, Phaser: the sweep, two full cycles whatever the Rate. The bright line is the left channel and the dim one is the right, offset by Width. Depth sets how tall the sweep is, and the corner says what is being swept (for example 12 ± 3.2 ms, or 300 Hz – 753 Hz for the phaser) and at what rate.

A worked example: a vocal slapback, then a ping-pong throw

1. Mode: Echo, Character: Tape. Time about 110 ms, Feedback 10 %, Mix 20 %. That is a classic slapback: one soft repeat that thickens the voice without sounding like an echo.
2. Too obvious? Lower Mix before you touch anything else.
3. For a throw on the last word of a line, put a second Ripple on a send: Echo, Ping-Pong on, Sync on, Division 1/8. (dotted eighth), Feedback 45 %, Tone 40, Mix 100 %.
4. Automate the send up for that one word and back down after. The repeats bounce left and right and darken as they go.

For a chorused clean guitar: Chorus, Rate 0.8 Hz, Depth 40 %, Width 80 %, Mix 40 %.

Presets

PRESETS saves and recalls every control, including the mode. Files live in ~/Music/Warren Labs/Ripple/Presets/.

Licence

Drag the .wllicense file from your purchase onto the plugin window, or open the About panel (ⓘ, top right) and choose Import License.

Specifications

Warren Labs. Tools that tell the truth. · warrenlabs.com