Janus BBD

Janus BBD is a dual-mode vintage bucket brigade delay chorus with extra controls for rate, depth, and character. It pairs naturally with Janus DCO to make classic early 80s-style synth sounds.

Manual

IN

IN L (M) · IN R — the stereo pair in. Leave the right jack empty and it takes its signal from the left, so one cable is a mono input which the effect "stereoizes".

SWEEP

MODE — For simplicity's sake, there are two sweep modes:

• I (down) — 0.553 Hz. The slow one. Classic wide pad movement.
• II (up) — 0.898 Hz. Exactly 1.62 times faster, and it sounds deeper as well as quicker even though the sweep is the same size. Pitch shift is depth multiplied by speed, so travelling the same distance faster shifts further.

RATE (×½ … ×1½) — trims whichever mode is selected. DEPTH (0 … 100) — how far the sweep travels about its centre. Lower it for a softer chorus. At 00 you get a comb filter and the rest of the BBD colour, which can be interesting in its own right.

BLEND

MIX (DRY … WET) — the mix of the dry and chorused signal. True bypass at dry.

CV — adds to wherever you leave the knob. Put MIX at DRY and let an envelope bring the chorus in behind a note.

BBD CHARACTER

Three knobs dialing in analog-style imperfections.

HISS (0 … 1) — noise from the delay line, with its own gentle motion. You can dial it all the way out, but you'll miss it when it's gone.

DRIFT (0 … 1) — irregular clock drift by up to a few cents. Makes the chorus sound slightly less regular.

RIPPLE (0 … 1) — emulates mains hum on the supply the clocks run from. Gives sustained notes a slight buzz.

OUT

L · R — the stereo pair. If you want a mono output, this chorus is designed so that the stereo channels from a mono source will sum cleanly.

Notes on the sound

It is soft at the top, by design. A bucket-brigade device band-limits hard at both ends of its delay, and this models that: the wet path is flat to about 4 kHz and 3 dB down near 7.7 kHz. That gentleness is why a BBD chorus sounds warm where a clean digital delay sounds glassy.

Drive it hot and it compresses. The buckets hold a finite charge. Around 4 V the wet path is already softening by a couple of decibels, and harder input compresses further.

Three starting points

The pad. MODE I, RATE centred, DEPTH 100, MIX about two thirds wet. Character knobs at zero, or dial in a bit of hiss. Play chords through it and leave it alone.

Wide and quick. MODE II, DEPTH 100, RATE up a little, MIX fully wet. Brighter, faster, and obviously moving. Good on electric pianos and plucks where the pad setting is too subtle to hear.

Tired machine. DEPTH around 20, RATE down, HISS about half, DRIFT half, RIPPLE a quarter. Very little sweep, plenty of wrongness: a fixed comb filter with a noisy, unstable clock behind it. Best on sustained single notes, where there is time to hear it fail.