Creative Effects
ECHOBRIGADE
An analogue-modelled delay whose repeats get quieter and dirtier at once.
Free 10-day trial. The download is the whole collection, 22 plug-ins in one installer, so you can try every one; start ECHOBRIGADE's trial from inside the plug-in when you are ready. Downloading does not start it, and trying one plug-in does not start the others.
- AU (macOS)
- VST3
- AAX
- macOS Universal
- Windows 64-bit
- v1.0.0
What it does
The colour lives inside the loop.
Most digital delays are linear and time-invariant, which is why their repeats are identical scaled copies, why high feedback rings metallically, and why the tail is the same colour as the source. ECHOBRIGADE breaks all three properties on purpose.
The colour lives inside the feedback loop, so it compounds: a gentle one-pole at −3 dB per pass is −24 dB by the eighth repeat. There is no repeat counter anywhere in the plugin: the loop traverses once per repeat by construction, so every “each repeat gets more of X” behaviour is implemented as “a little X, in the loop.”
The loop saturator is level-normalised, so character intensifies as the tail decays instead of fading with it. A plain saturator in a loop is driven less on every pass, making the first repeat the dirtiest and the twentieth clean, which is backwards.
Key features
Twelve character models
Built as coefficient recipes over one engine, from bucket-brigade to tape to clean digital. MORPH blends each one towards the next.
Level-normalised loop saturation
Normalising the drive by the signal's own slow envelope makes every pass contribute the same proportion of harmonics, so repeats get quieter and dirtier at once.
Modulated read position
Successive repeats no longer align sample-for-sample, so the coherent reinforcement that produces metallic ring never accumulates.
Zero reported latency
The oversampler's group delay, the diffuser's length and the gap-loss filter's latency are all subtracted from the delay line read rather than reported to the host. The delay you ask for is the delay you get, and the dry path is never delayed.
Feedback past 1.0, stable by construction
Self-oscillation is stable because everything in the loop saturates and compresses: the small-signal gain exceeds one, the large-signal gain does not.
Age is mechanical, not tonal
It underbiases the tape, widens the effective head gap, increases head-to-tape spacing and adds transport drift. It also scales the between-channel component tolerance, which is why Age 0 is the mono-exact setting.
The interface
How it works
The signal path, as the plugin’s own documentation states it.
input ──► INPUT ──► DRIVE (oversampled) ──► DIFFUSE
──► LOOP (delay line · feedback tone · tape loss · compression · saturation · noise)
──► wow, flutter and drift on the read position
──► routing · WIDTH ──► output tone (warmth · thick · presence · air)
──► DUCK, keyed from the dry input
──► MIX with the dry, which is never delayed ──► OUTPUTAudio
Audio demos for ECHOBRIGADE are not published yet.
We would rather show you nothing than show you a demo that was not recorded through this plugin.
Measured
EchoBrigadeTests and EchoBrigadeBench · 48 kHz · 128-sample blocks · pluginval and auval from the release audit
- CPU, worst model
- 3.0 % of one core
- Instances per core
- 32
- Interpolator spread at 12 kHz: sinc-16
- 0.0001 dB
- Interpolator spread at 12 kHz: linear (BBD model)
- 3.0103 dB
- Aliasing, 7 kHz driven 18 dB into tanh, 2× oversampled
- −89.7 dBc
- Tape gap loss vs sinc(πfT), above −6 dB
- within 0.1 dB
- Spectral centroid, first repeat to eighth
- 1615 → 558 Hz
- Repeat interval accuracy at every delay time
- within 1 %
- Freeze, over one minute
- holds within 3.5 dB
- pluginval
- strictness 10, AU and VST3, four runs each
- auval
- passes
Figures are produced by this plugin’s own test suite and benchmark, on the hardware and sample rate named above. They are not estimates.
Controls
Header
- Preset
- Previous, next, or pick from the list by category.
- SAVE
- Copies the current settings into the B slot.
- UNDO / REDO
- Whole-state snapshots, taken at preset loads, randomise and A/B switches.
- A/B
- Swaps between the A and B settings.
- RND
- A randomise that stays inside the range where the plugin sounds like itself.
- Power
- Bypass.
Delay
- TIME
- 1 ms to 4 s, with 250 ms at the centre of the travel.
- FEEDBACK
- 0 to 110 %. Past 100 % it self-oscillates, stably.
- MIX
- Dry against wet.
- Model
- Clean Modern, Studio Tape, Magnetic Reel, Tube Echo, Vintage Drum Echo, Cassette, Bucket Brigade, Broadcast, Lo-Fi Digital, Dream, Cinematic or Ambient.
- Routing
- True Stereo, Ping Pong, Cross Feed or Mid/Side.
- SYNC
- Locks the time to a note division, 1/32 to 2/1, with dotted and triplet values.
- TAP
- Tap four times to set the time. Any incoming MIDI note taps too.
- FREEZE
- Holds what is in the loop.
CHARACTER
- DRIVE
- How hard the input drives the analogue stage.
- AGE
- Bias, head gap, spacing and transport drift together. Zero is mono-exact.
- COLOUR
- Scales the whole analogue colour engine.
- MORPH
- Blends the model towards the next one.
TONE
- LOW CUT
- 20 Hz to 2 kHz.
- HI CUT
- 500 Hz to 20 kHz.
- WARMTH / THICK / PRESENCE / AIR
- The output tone, each centred on flat.
SPACE
- DIFFUSE
- A modulated allpass network ahead of the loop. Heavy settings shorten the effective repeat slightly.
- SIZE
- The size of that network.
- WIDTH
- Stereo width.
- CROSS
- In Cross Feed and Mid/Side routing, how much each side's repeats feed the other. Between the ends they wander across the image.
- MOD
- Scales the model's wow, flutter and drift.
- DRIFT
- How differently the two sides' modulation moves.
DYNAMICS
- DUCK
- Pushes the repeats down while you play, keyed from the dry input.
- DEPTH
- How far, up to 24 dB.
- RELEASE
- How quickly they come back, 20 ms to 2 s.
- INPUT / OUTPUT
- ±24 dB, with meters beside the main controls.
Technical details
- Formats, macOS
- AU · VST3 · AAX
- Formats, Windows
- VST3 · AAX
- Operating system
- macOS 10.15 or later · Windows 10 or later, 64-bit
- Architecture, macOS
- Universal: Apple Silicon and Intel
- Architecture, Windows
- 64-bit
- Plugin code
- Ebrg
- Version
- 1.0.0
- Latency
- 0 samples reported
- CPU
- 3.0 % of one core, worst model
- Factory presets
- 16
Across eight categories: Basics, Vocals, Mix, Rhythmic, Character, Ambient, Guitar and Drums.
Worth knowing
- Some parameters have no control on the panel: Speed (half, normal or double), separate right-channel time and division, Swing, Humanise, Mod Rate, Tilt, the ducking threshold and Kill Dry. They are reachable from the host's automation and are stored in presets.
Also in these bundles
COMPLETE COLLECTION
Get ECHOBRIGADE as part of COMPLETE COLLECTION, 22 plugins worth 708 for 199.
199
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