stabiliser

take turns, or else

16 HP

A crossfader and VCA with a rule: A and B share one body, and each gets its fair turn. Keep one on too long and the other ages, coming back darker, slower and wobbling like old tape. Keep it up and the two fuse into one.

The STABILISER panel: a skeleton seen from behind, its spine stitched down the middle, in gold dots on black. SWAP's button is on its neck, FADE, the big knob, between its shoulder blades, with TURN and COST either side; a row of small windows runs across under FADE, and ten rungs of bare circuit board run down each edge. A and B come in at the top corners, A OUT and B OUT go out at the foot. stabiliser at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. SWAP is a button: press it to swap the sides. It lights when the side waiting is owed its turn. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a stand-in rack: drums and a bass, with a lead and a pad, or two CVs, through STABILISER's two sides. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The turns, the ageing, the fusing and every out here are STABILISER's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums, the bass and the voices are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

Taking turns

Patch anything into A and B, audio or CV: it's DC-coupled all the way through. FADE crossfades between them, and the side it leans toward is the one using time. Swap on time and both stay young: a plain, clean crossfade.

FADE: A fully left, B fully right, in a straight line, so a crossfade of two CVs is exact. Its CV sweeps the whole way over 5 V: with only B patched and an envelope in it, it's a VCA.
SWAP: the button, or a gate at its jack, swaps the sides, as if FADE were turned the other way. A clock or a sequencer in SWAP takes the turns for you. It lights when the side waiting is owed.
TURN: each side's fair share. On its own, half a second to an hour, a minute at noon; with a clock in CLOCK, a beat to sixty-four bars, four at noon.
The row across under FADE fills toward the side that's waiting as the turn runs down, and flashes when the turn is up.

Kept waiting

Keep one side on past its turn and the side kept waiting ages. When it comes back it's darker, wobbling like old tape, a little flat, hissing and crackling. Ancient, it drags an octave down at half speed, gritty and smeared. A CV ages too: it lags, slows, flattens and glitches. The side kept on too long wears as well, a third as fast.

COST: how hard waiting ages a side. Fully left nothing ages, and it's a plain crossfader. At noon a side is ancient after about forty seconds over; at full, after two. Its CV adds to the knob.
Healing: a side gets younger on its own fair turns, a quarter of its life a turn, so a ruined side takes four fair turns to come back.
The rungs: ten down each edge, A's on the left and B's on the right, going out one by one from the top as that side ages. The side you're hearing is the brighter.

Fused

Abuse it long enough and both sides are old, and they fuse. OUT is both at once, ring-modulated into one malformed voice that is neither, whatever FADE says. Fair turns heal them, and once both are young enough they come apart.

When: both sides past seven tenths of their life gone. They part once fair turns bring both back under a third.
The lights: both columns of rungs throb together, one heartbeat, and SWAP throbs with them.

What comes out

OUT: the two crossfaded, each as it's aged; fused, the one voice.
A OUT and B OUT: each side alone, as aged, at its share of the fade: a panner, or two VCAs opening in turn. They stay each side's own while OUT is fused.
FUSED: a gate, high while the two are fused. Here it drops the drums to half time.

Specs

Format

Width: 16 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (FADE's big), a lit button

Inputs

A, B: audio or CV, ±5 V, DC-coupled
FADE, COST: CVs, added to the knobs, 5 V the whole travel
CLOCK: a pulse a beat
SWAP: gate, swaps the sides on each rise

Outputs

OUT: ±5 V, DC-coupled
A OUT, B OUT: each side at its share, ±5 V
FUSED: gate, 5 V while fused