PALINDROME

1. Introduction

Most delays repeat what you played. Palindrome runs two independent delay engines at once — one forward, one reverse — and lets them feed each other. The reverse engine grabs a segment of audio and plays it backward, so its echoes swell into the beat instead of decaying away from it.

Read forward or backward, it is still Palindrome. Hence the name.

What you can do with it

• A conventional stereo delay, with independent left and right times and seventeen tempo divisions.
• Reverse-swell effects that arrive ahead of the note — the classic backwards-guitar trick, without printing a reversed track.
• Both at once, blended, so a part has a forward tail and a backward pre-echo simultaneously.
• Series routing, where one engine's output is the other's input, for echoes that reverse and then reverse again.
• Cross-feedback between the engines, which is where it stops behaving like any delay you have used before.

Palindrome began life as a Recluse Studios module for VCV Rack. This is that idea rebuilt as a plug-in, with more of everything: four independent delay times instead of two, cross-feedback that genuinely works in stereo, saturation on each engine, and tempo sync.

2. Installing and Loading

System requirements

• Windows, 64-bit.
• A VST3-capable host, or the bundled Standalone application.
• Any sample rate.

Installing

Copy the plug-in into your host's VST3 folder and rescan. On Windows the per-user folder most hosts scan is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Common\VST3.

Where to put it

On a send, usually. Palindrome's MIX control means it works perfectly well as an insert, but reverse delays are easier to balance when you can ride the return. On a guitar or synth insert, keep MIX below about 50% unless the effect is the part.

The trial runs for 14 days from first launch; see section 11.

3. Quick Start

Start with one engine, not two. The interactions get interesting fast, and it is much easier to hear what each control does in isolation.

1. Insert Palindrome and set BLEND fully to Forward. You now have an ordinary stereo delay.
2. Set TIME L and TIME R to taste — different values give a wide stereo image. Or turn on SYNC and pick divisions.
3. Bring FEEDBACK up until the repeats last as long as you want.
4. Now sweep BLEND toward Reverse and listen. The repeats stop trailing the note and start arriving before it.
5. Park BLEND where the two feel balanced — around the middle is a good place to live.
6. Only now, add CROSS FB. A little goes a long way.

4. The Two Engines

Forward and reverse are separate engines with separate controls. They share only the master filters, the modulation source, and the routing.

Forward

A conventional delay with independent left and right times. Turning a time knob glides rather than stepping, so you can sweep it while the track plays without it tearing. Feedback goes up to 98%.

Reverse

Captures a segment of the incoming audio, then plays it backward. The segment length is the delay time, so TIME here sets both how long each backward fragment is and how far ahead of the beat it arrives. Left and right capture separately, so giving them different times genuinely widens the image rather than just offsetting it.

Segment edges are crossfaded, so you hear a swell rather than a click at each boundary. Feedback goes to 95% — a little lower than forward, because reverse feedback builds up faster.

Blend

In Parallel routing, BLEND sets the balance between the two engines: fully left is forward only, fully right is reverse only, centre is an even mix. In either series routing both engines are in the same chain, so Blend has nothing to balance and does not apply.

5. Routing and Cross Feedback

ROUTING decides how the engines are wired.

You can change routing while the track is playing. The wet path ducks and fades back in across the change, so it will not click and you will not hear the old routing's echoes hanging around.

Cross feedback

CROSS FB feeds each engine's output back into the other engine, per channel, in every routing. It is separate from each engine's own feedback and it is where Palindrome earns its keep — forward repeats get reversed, those reversed repeats get echoed forward, and the result develops over time rather than simply decaying.

6. Time, Sync, and Divisions

Each engine has independent left and right times, settable two ways.

Free

With SYNC off, TIME L and TIME R are in milliseconds, from 1 ms to 2 seconds. Small differences between left and right widen the image; large differences create counter-rhythms.

Synced

With SYNC on, the time knobs become DIV L and DIV R and follow host tempo. Seventeen divisions are available, including triplets (T) and dotted values (D):

The buffers hold up to 10 seconds, which covers a 2/1 division down to 48 BPM. Sync is per engine, so the forward side can follow tempo while the reverse side runs free, or the other way round.

Ping-pong

PING-PONG makes an engine's feedback alternate between channels, so successive repeats bounce left and right. Available on both engines independently — reverse ping-pong is an unusual and very usable sound.

7. Feedback, Drive, and Filters

Feedback

How much of an engine's output is fed back into itself. Forward reaches 98%, reverse 95%. Neither reaches 100%, so a patch cannot sustain forever on its own feedback alone — though cross feedback can push the system past that point (section 5).

Drive

Saturation in the feedback path, per engine, from 0 to 24 dB. It is always in circuit but genuinely transparent at 0 dB — the character ramps in over the first 3 dB rather than switching on.

Because it sits in the feedback loop rather than on the output, Drive compounds: each repeat is a little more saturated than the last, so a long tail degrades the way a tape loop does. That is the point of it. For a clean repeat that simply gets quieter, leave Drive at zero.

Low cut and high cut

Two filters shaping both engines' feedback paths. LOW CUT runs 20 Hz to 1 kHz, HIGH CUT from 1 kHz to 20 kHz. Like Drive, they act on every pass, so each repeat is darker and thinner than the one before — the standard way to make a long delay sit behind a part instead of competing with it.

Defaults are 100 Hz and 8 kHz, which is a gentle version of exactly that.

8. Modulation and Tape

Rate and depth

RATE (0–10 Hz) and DEPTH (0–100%) modulate the delay read positions. At low depth this thickens the repeats and stops long feedback tails from ringing on a fixed pitch; at high depth it is an obvious chorus or vibrato. Depth defaults to zero, so modulation is off until you ask for it.

Tape

TAPE adds wow and flutter — slow drift plus faster irregular variation — to both engines from a shared modulation source, so they wander together as though they were on the same transport.

It is separate from Rate and Depth. Those give you periodic, controllable modulation; Tape gives you the irregular instability of a machine. They stack happily.

9. Reading the Displays

Memory cores

Each engine panel carries a circular buffer display. The ring is the delay buffer; the marked heads are the write position (WR) and read position (RD). Left and right channels get their own ring, so different times per channel are visible at a glance as two rings out of step.

The caption below each core gives the timebase — how long one revolution represents — which rescales as your delay times change. Head brightness follows signal level, and the trailing arc shows feedback: more feedback, longer trail.

On the reverse core, the read head travels against the write head. That is the whole idea of the plug-in, drawn.

Matrix routing bus

The centre panel shows the signal topology: input and output diamonds, the two engine blocks, and the traces between them. It rewires itself when you change ROUTING, with the traces easing into their new positions. Self-loops glow with each engine's feedback, the dashed cross-trace with CROSS FB, branch traffic follows BLEND, and the dry rail plus overall brightness follow MIX.

It is worth watching while you set up a patch. If you cannot tell what a routing is doing by ear, the matrix will show you.

Themes

The DK/LT button switches between dark and light; the choice is saved with the plug-in state.

10. Controls and Parameters Reference

Per engine — forward and reverse

Master

All of the above are host-automatable.

11. Licensing, Trial, and Activation

Palindrome runs for 14 days from first launch without a licence. The footer shows how many days remain.

Activation

Click LICENSE in the header, enter the email address your licence was issued to along with your serial, and press ACTIVATE. The footer changes to LICENSED. You only do this once per computer.

Activation needs a working internet connection. Everything else works offline.

Seats

One licence covers three machines. To move it to a fourth — or to retire an old computer — open the LICENSE panel on the machine you are finished with and press DEACTIVATE. That frees the seat immediately and you can activate elsewhere.

Privacy

Activation sends only what is needed to issue and track your licence. No audio, no session data and nothing about your projects ever leaves your machine — not during activation, and not while you work.

12. Troubleshooting

13. Specifications

14. Glossary