A question came in regarding the vinyl sound of the Strymon Mobius’s “Destroyer” machine. I’ve made some half-hearted attempts at producing a vinyl sound, but I got into it this time. I figured, though, since I was already doing that portion of “Destroyer,” I might as well add the other elements, so the signal path is bit crusher –> aliaser –> LP/BD filter –> HP filter –> audio balance (mixes with dry signal) –> vinyl effects –> vibrato.

Does it sound exactly like the Destroyer machine? No. But it does cover a lot of the same ground pretty well, I think. (And I’m pretty pleased with the vinyl effects.)

The audio path is stereo throughout.

Controls:

Stompswitches:

Left, latching — turns the bit crusher on and off

Middle, latching — turns the aliaser on and off

Right, latching — turns the vibrato on and off

Front page:

On the left side are two red controls:

Bitcrush — controls the bit crusher, which goes from 32 bits to 4 bits

Sample rate — controls the aliaser, for reducing the sample rate/frequency

In the middle are two pairs of green and yellow controls:

The Destroyer patch utilizes a bunch of different filter presets. 1) I haven’t had a Mobius for a couple of years to do comparison fine-tuning with. 2) Even if I did, programming those presets would be fiddly af (and if I am objecting to something being fiddly af…). Instead, I made a flexible filter section:

Green governs the low-pass/band-pass filter.

LP-BP frequency — controls the frequency of these filters; at .5 the control switches from low-pass to band-pass, with the low frequencies of either setting being at either end (0 and 1). Neutral is .499, when the low-pass filter is completely open and before it has switched over to the band-pass range.

LP-BP Q — controls the resonance of these filters.

Yellow governs the high-pass filter.

HP frequency — neutral is 0. As it is raised, low frequencies are cut off.

HP Q — controls the resonance of the high-pass filter.

On right side are a set of aqua controls:

These control the vibrato, which is set to be ever so slightly different in the left and right channels as to produce a better stereo sound. There is a pixel, which will give some feedback on the rate of the “wow” LFO.

Speed — the speed of the vibrato

Wow depth — controls a mostly standard sine wave vibrato

Flutter depth — controls random pitch variations

On the bottom of the right side are a cluster of red controls. These relate to the vinyl effects.

Vinyl tone — a master filter for the vinyl effects; at extremely low settings it can filter out the “dust” entirely

Dust volume — controls the volume of the “dust” (pops/cracks)

Dust amount — controls the frequency of the “dust” — a little goes a long ways! At higher settings, the sound becomes less convincing.

Wear — controls the volume of the “wear” (a mechanical, grinding sound, like a record spinning on a turntable)

Wear depth — at 0, the wear volume is entirely regulated by the “wow” LFO (so that the warping of the vinyl reflects the condition of the vinyl). As this control is increased, the amount of wear is increasingly unrelated to the LFO.

In the middle of the page, below the filters is a white control. It adjusts the pre-vibrato mix.

Mix — mixes the dry signal with the bit-crushed, aliased, filtered signal path before sending everything to the vibrato. Very useful for dialing a little clarity into a heavily affected sound.

Sound clip:

0:00-0:45 — Begins with a clean sound, introduce bit crushing, then sample rate reduction, then filtering, then vibrato, and finally vinyl effects.

0:46-1:55 — I begin with a more extreme vibrato setting with the “wear” set to not reflect the “wow” LFO. Then, I begin removing effects and increasing the mix control. Changing around the filters, etc.