Lo-fi Bliss (reverb) came first, and then I decided I liked it so much, I’d make it twice (but as a delay, Charm).

The idea is a reverb with highly configurable routing, that you can apply a variety of lo-fi effects to: wow, flutter, degrade (blendable 1×8 lo-fi cab sim), and corrosion, which modulates a VCA with a random module, creating something like noise and sample rate reduction and compression. The reverb can then be routed before or after the lo-fi effects, and you can select whether to have a clean dry path or not. That same flexibility applies to the delay patch (Charm).

The wow and flutter section isn’t quite the same as the one on my Degenerate Gain patch, but they are closely related… except I decided to add a feedback path, inspired by my MF Chorus and the CBA Spectre, that produces weird, metallic whale-sound flanging; on its own, this doesn’t sound that awesome, but when degraded and corroded, the resonances can add an interesting flair to the patch.

With the delay, I decided to draw some inspiration from the DOD Rubberneck, especially the rubbernecking footswitch and the switchable tap division (note: this patch is not tap tempo, because if it was, I wouldn’t be able to manipulate the CV necessary to create these controls). But you can get pretty wild with the delay.

So, these lo-fi effects can be used liberally to really crud up a sound, like a tape that’s been sitting in the sun for a couple years. Or they can be used sparingly to add a little flavor to an otherwise straight forward reverb or delay sound.

The signal path is stereo throughout in both patches.

Controls:

Footswitches:

The right footswitch is the same for both patches:

Right, momentary — this allows you to max out the corrosion, basically obliterating your sound; beside the footswitch is a control to adjust the slew, letting you determine how quickly you garble your audio

Bliss:

Left, momentary — maxes the reverb decay

Middle, momentary — disables the pitch modulation section (wow and flutter) and produces a minor pitch bend while doing so

Charm:

Left, momentary — warp/rubbernecking-style control; there is a depth parameter beside it — negative values will result in faster delay times (and increases in pitch), positive values will produce slower delay times (and drops in pitch); there is also a “Warp speed” control that lets you determine how quickly or slowly the warping occurs

Middle, momentary (changes on release) — switches between long, medium, and short delay times, with fun pitch-shifting artifacts and wonkiness thrown in

Front page:

In the middle are two, white pushbuttons, Pre-Post and Wet-Dry:

Pre/Wet — the reverb or delay is placed before the lo-fi effects
Post/Wet — the reverb or delay is placed after the lo-fi effects
Pre/Dry — as with above but with a dedicated dry signal path
Post/Dry — as with above but with a dedicated dry signal path

Reverb/delay section:

Reverb/delay mix — controls the wet/dry mix of the reverb/delay; when a dedicated dry path is selected via pushbutton, controls the wet/dry mix of the entire wet signal path

The reverb has a control for decay and pre-delay (up to 500 ms, only active when in “Dry” mode)

The delay has a time control and a feedback control

Pitch mod section:

Pink controls are dedicated to the wow control:

Rate, depth — pretty normal

Predictability — at 1, the wow is basically a sine wave modulation but as predictability decreases, the sine wave becomes more randomized

Wow invert — when pressed, both sides of the wow use the same modulation; when off, they use inverted modulation for a wider stereo effect (particularly with chorusing)

The flutter control is magenta and only controls depth; as the depth is increased more flutter distortion occurs.

There are a few controls that pertain to both and are purple:

Feedback — controls a feedback loop; at extremes (i.e. 1.000) it can produce oscillation, but can add a metallic timbre to the sound and resonances

Pitch mod mix — a wet/dry control for the pitch mod section; at 1.000, there is vibrato, below that are various degrees of chorus/flanging

Pitch mod on — an on/off switch for the pitch mod section

The degrade section is mango and it has a mix control to blend in the lo-fi cab sim (this produces a sort of band-pass filtering) and an on/off switch.

The corrosion section is red and has a control for the corrosion amount as well as an on/off switch.