Throbber

Tiny God Throbber v0.60

LFO Effect Plugin

Throbber: LFO Effect Plugin
Inputs/Outputs: 2 in, 2 out

Parameters:

Parameter Name	Description	Range
Speed	LFO Speed	0.06Hz to 256Hz
Depth	LFO Depth	0 (no LFO effect) to 1 (maximum LFO effect)
Shape	LFO Wave Shape	Ramp (down saw), Saw, Triangle, Square, Sine, Throbbing, Gristle, Chris, Cosey, Sleazy, Genesis
Mode	Operating Mode	VCA, 12dB/octave VCF Lowpass, Highpass, Bandpass, or Notch, 24dB/octave VCF Lowpass, Flanger, Bi-Flanger
Bias	LFO Center Bias	-1 to +1
Effect	VCA Overdrive, VCF Resonance, Flanger Feedback	0 to 1

General Description

Throbber consists of an LFO driving a voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA), multi-mode filter (VCF), or flanger. Its controls should be pretty much self-explanatory. The Mode knob selects among VCA, filter, flanger, and bi-flanger modes. A flanger is fundamentally an LFO-modulated delay mixed with a constant delay; in regular flanger mode the LFO modulates both the left and right channels equally, while in bi-flanger mode the left and right channel modulations are inverted; one channel will "lead" the fixed delay while the other lags behind it. When operating in VCA mode, the Effect knob controls the overdrive distortion of the amplifier. In filter modes, it controls the filter resonance. In flanger modes, it controls the amount of feedback into the flanger delay lines. The Bias control sets the average/center cutoff frequency or gain which is modulated by the LFO. In addition to the usual analog synth waveshapes, Throbber supplies a handful of Nominal Fourier Synthesis waveforms via the Shape control.

Throbber is inspired by the description of the famous Throbbing Gristle "Gristleizer" effect box designed by Chris Carter, but is not intended to be an accurate simulation of it. Further details regarding the original "Gristleizer" can be found at www.throbbing-gristle.com (under reconstruction as I write this). I worked from the description here.

Development Notes, Known Bugs, and Limitations

The overdrive distortion in VCA mode is not bandlimited, so it will produce aliasing noise. The waveshaping is fairly gentle at low Effect settings, and so the alias noise may go unnoticed.

Throbber Revision History

v0.5 - 2002/11/14 Initial Release.

v0.51 - 2002/11/15 Bug Fix.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Throbber working in some VST hosts including Tracktion. I suspect this will fix problems with it in Cubase as well but cannot test at this time.

v0.52 - 2003/3/5 Mono-Stereo Bridging.
- Throbber now cooperates with hosts such as Orion to bridge mono inputs to stereo; this makes it usable as an insert effect with mono synths, for example.

v0.60 - 2003/4/6 Flanger Modes.
- Throbber now offers flanger modes.

Terms

Throbber is free to take and use as you will. If you like it, or if you don't like it, please drop me an e-mail telling me so.

If you make music with it, and make that music available to others, tell me that the music is available. That means if you sell CDs of your stuff, you tell me how to buy a CD; if you let people download MP3s for free, tell me where I can do the same.

This software may contain bugs, errors and other problems that could cause system or other failures and data loss. Consequently, it is provided to you as-is, and I disclaim any warranty or liability obligations of any kind.

If you wish to redistribute the software, please distribute it in its packaged .zip-file form, or another archive format, along with this documentation.

You have the right to decompile, disassemble, reverse-engineer, and modify the software for personal research and for fair-use purposes such as adapting the software for interoperation with other systems. I don't believe that I can legally take this right away from you, though some large companies might try. If you'd like access to the source code, it's possible we can work something out; drop me a line.

You do not have the right to reverse-engineer or modify the program in order to violate my copyright on the software, e.g. to distribute a version with "the serial numbers filed off".

Legals

VST™ is a trademark of Steinberg Soft- und Hardware GmbH.
http://www.steinberg.net/

The Throbbing Gristle trademark probably belongs to the former members of that band. The Gristleizer trademark probably belongs to Chris Carter. In any case, they're musical Elder Gods and it would be foolish to mess with their intellectual property. Thanks Chris!
http://www.throbbing-gristle.com/