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

AvailableEffect

Tremolo

Periodic amplitude modulation with stereo phase control.

A stage of OSC-1. It works the same on its own page as it does in the chain, same parameters, same paths.

About

A stereo tremolo: the level of the sound rises and falls in a steady rhythm. It is the oldest effect in the book and still one of the quickest ways to turn a held chord into a part.

The idea

A sine wave swings the volume of each channel. Spread is what makes this more than a volume pedal being rocked. With no spread, both sides dip together and the whole sound pulses. At 180 degrees the sides move in opposite directions: as the left dips the right swells, so the overall level stays fairly even and what moves is the stereo position. Settings in between give a pulse that also drifts across the image.

Rate changes the character as much as the speed. Slow settings are heard as rhythm. Past roughly ten cycles a second the dips blur into the tone itself as roughness, closer to a ring modulator's grit than to an amp's throb.

Controls

  • Rate: how fast the level moves, from 0.1 to 20 Hz.
  • Depth: how far it drops at the bottom of each cycle. At full depth the sound is cut to silence every time.
  • Spread: the phase offset between left and right, from 0 to 180 degrees.
  • Mix: the blend of the effect with the dry signal.

The picture in the panel draws one cycle of the volume curve from the current settings. It shows the shape of the effect, not a live reading of the audio.

Getting started

Tremolo is a stereo audio effect: play a guitar, keys or a pad through it. Try Amp Throb for the classic guitar pulse, Slow Swell for a gentle breathing, Rotary Sway for a sound that circles between the speakers, and Chop for a hard on/off rhythm. Ring Edge pushes the rate past rhythm into texture.

How it works.

A sine LFO at Rate scales the signal level between 1 and 1 minus Depth. Spread offsets the right channel's LFO phase, so at 180 degrees the two channels trough alternately and the effect reads as movement across the stereo field rather than pumping.

That spread is a real control rather than a documented intention. The channels are split and given their own gain stage and their own LFO, and the phase offset is baked into each LFO's wavetable rather than applied by delaying one of them, both start at the same instant and stay locked, so the offset survives any rate change. The input is forced to two channels on the way in, which is what makes the spread audible on a mono source instead of collapsing back into plain amplitude modulation.

Ported from the plugin's tremolo, including the pass-through-when-disabled behaviour: the LFO keeps running while the stage is bypassed, so re-enabling it does not restart the cycle from zero.

What would you make with Tremolo?

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

Goes well with.

Prototype

OSC-1

A complete synth built from separate modules.

Building block

Chorus

A short modulated delay that widens one voice.

Prototype

Motion

Phaser and vibrato with independent LFOs.