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@maru shared this effect so you can build on it and use it in your DAW.

AvailableEffect

Sparklizer

A stereo delay that bounces, with the bounce drawn.

How to use Sparklizer

Announced release

$39 preorder

View product details

You are in the live demo. Product details and release status are on the product page.

About

A bouncing stereo delay for vocals, percussion and melodic phrases, developed with Jazz Calls Home. Give the left and right echoes different rhythmic divisions, then let them feed each other across the stereo field.

The idea

Sparklizer runs two tempo-synced delay lines, one per side, each on its own note division of the same tempo. Bounce feeds each line into the other, so a repeat born on the left comes back on the right and then on the left again, instead of simply alternating. Because the two sides use different divisions, the pattern is deliberately not symmetric.

Tone filters sit inside the feedback loop, so every repeat comes back a little thinner and darker than the last and recedes behind the lead instead of piling up under it. Duck keeps the echoes out of the way while you sing and lets them bloom in the gaps.

Controls

  • Tempo sets the beat, or Sync follows the host's tempo. Left and Right pick each side's note division, from 1/32 to a whole note.
  • Feedback sets how long the repeats last, and Bounce how much of each repeat crosses to the other side: fully up is a pure bounce, fully down is two independent delays.
  • Seed chooses where the input enters: Left (the default, for a clear left-right-left bounce), Right, or Stereo, which keeps a stereo source's two sides on their own lines.
  • Low Cut and High Cut shape the tone of the repeats.
  • Rate and Depth add Motion: a gentle swirl that grows the longer a repeat lives.
  • Width spreads the echoes, and Bloom adds a short reverb to them. Neither touches your dry signal.
  • Dry, Wet and Duck set the final balance, and Output the level.
  • Reverb, Saturate and Compress follow the delay as optional stages. Click a stage's name to switch it on. Reverb and Saturate have one amount each; Compress has Threshold, Ratio and Makeup.

The Bounce Scope draws the repeat pattern on a beat grid as you set it, so you can see where each echo will land before you hear it. Below it, a stereo display shows the signal as sparkling grains, a trace, or both.

Getting started

Sparklizer processes incoming audio and is at its best on sparse, sustained material: a sung line with gaps, or a dry drum loop. Set the tempo to the track, start with Vocal Bounce, then adjust the divisions and feedback while watching the pattern. Eighth Pong, Quarter Over Half, Near And Far, Swirl Wash, Ducked Slap and Full Chain show other directions.

High feedback can leave long trails; lower Feedback or raise Duck if the repeats crowd the phrase.

Created in partnership

Jazz Calls Home

Experimental pop artist and sound sculptor

Sparklizer recreates an effect stack Jazz often uses in her compositions. She wanted to share a technique she loves for the sense of space it creates, especially around vocals.

Visit Jazz Calls Home (opens in a new tab)

How to use Sparklizer

Start the audio source and pick a preset such as Vocal Bounce. Silent? See Playback, audio and MIDI.

Set the repeats

  1. Set Tempo to your track, or let the host supply it.
  2. Pick different Left and Right divisions for interlocking echoes.
  3. Raise Feedback for a longer trail; Bounce sets how much the two delays feed each other.
  4. Balance Dry and Wet.

Shape the tone

  • Low Cut and High Cut filter the echoes, and keep filtering as they repeat.
  • Motion, Width and Bloom add movement, stereo spread and fullness.
  • Duck pushes the echoes back while you play.
  • Reverb, Saturate and Compress come after the delay; click a stage's name to turn it on.

Downloads are on the Sparklizer product page. The bundle adds the Bounce Room drum loops.

How it works.

Both lines are cut from one grid. `sync.left` and `sync.right` are indices into a division table shortest-first, times are the beat times the division, and anything longer than the four-second line folds down an octave at a time rather than clamping - a whole bar at 40 BPM becomes a half bar, still musical, and the scope badges that it happened instead of hiding it.

Feedback and Bounce are two different questions about one number. Feedback is the gain per pass, capped at 0.95 because with the loop filter in the path this module rains rather than self-oscillates. Bounce splits that gain between re-entering the same line and crossing to the other one, and the split is level-preserving, so moving it changes where the tail travels without changing how long it lasts.

Tone is inside the loop, not after it. A second-order high-pass and low-pass sit before each line, so every pass thins and darkens a little more and the repeats recede behind the lead instead of accumulating under it. The 220 Hz default low cut is the interview's own setting, chosen so repeats never mud the mix.

Motion is a sine LFO on each line's read position, the two sides in quadrature, mapping depth onto up to six milliseconds of swing. Because it modulates inside the loop, a repeat swirls further the longer it has been alive - which is the phaser-like behaviour the producer described, rather than a static chorus on the output.

Width and bloom touch the wet path only, so the dry lead's image is never smeared, and Duck is a sidechain from the dry input onto the wet level - up to 18 dB down with a 220 ms release, so repeats step aside while the vocal is singing and come back up in the gaps. Quadrature phase, bloom-after-width order, the duck timing and the feedback ceiling are fixed by design and are not knobs.

The chain stages sit after the dry and wet paths are summed and before the output trim, in one fixed order: reverb, then saturation, then compression. Reverb and saturation are a toggle and a single amount; compression is a toggle with Threshold, Ratio and Makeup, and it runs last because its makeup gain brings the delay feedback up in volume rather than pushing the lead down. Off skips a stage entirely rather than running it at unity, so with all three off the render is sample-for-sample the one the module produced before the chain existed.

Every derivation - seconds, hertz, linear gains, the feedback split - lives in one `expandParams` function in the plugin's schema, which this page, the panel's scope and the compiled kernel all agree on, so a knob means the same thing in a DAW as it does here and as the scope draws it.

What would you make with Sparklizer?

Describe what you want to make. Build it with the Studio agent.

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