Pastfabric II
Micro-Memory Reverb
Part of Studies
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Description
Pastfabric II is a granular reverb that works in real time on whatever you feed into its memory. We made it as the successor to our micro-splicing plugin, Pastfabric, drawing on microsound techniques and experimental tape splicing. It can turn your audio into short, nostalgic glitches or long, slowly moving ambience.
It records your input to a short buffer of about three seconds and pulls granulated splices out of it. Each splice can be chopped short or held long, then aged like worn tape and sent through two reverbs. Even a very simple input can turn into repeating patterns.
Your input is recorded to the memory buffer. The splices come out of it and go through the HAZE reverb and the tape aging, then meet the dry signal at the dry/wet blend. The blend goes through the ROOM reverb to the master section.
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Memory placement
- PAST
- Sets how far back in the buffer the splicer can reach, up to about three seconds. Low settings stay close to what you just played; high settings pull from further back.
- MOTION
- Sets how often the splicer jumps to a new random spot in the memory, from almost never to ten times a second.
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Memory grains
- DUR
- Sets the length of each splice, from 0.1 to 1 second. Short settings chop and glitch; long settings sustain into blurred ambience.
- LENGTH
- Shortens each splice by a random amount. At zero every splice plays for the full DUR; turn it up for a more broken, stuttering sound.
- DENS
- Sets how many splices play, from 2 to 10 per second.
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Haze reverb
- HAZE
- Sends the splices through a reverb that smears them together. It also sets how much of the ROOM reverb you hear, so at low settings the splices stay dry and up front, and at high settings they wash out.
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Tape aging
- FABRIC
- Ages the splices like worn tape. As you turn it up they wow, flutter and saturate, the top end closes in, the low end thins out, and hiss and dust crackle come up.
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Room reverb
- ROOM
- Sets the size and decay of the last reverb, which comes after the dry/wet blend. HAZE sets how much of it you hear.
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Master
- BLEND
- Sets the balance between your dry input and the aged splices. The blend feeds the ROOM reverb, so the dry signal picks up some room too.
- GAIN
- Sets the output level, from silent up to double. The middle is unity.
Try thisFor slow, blurred ambience, keep MOTION low, DUR long and DENS high, then add FABRIC to taste. For glitchy repeats, turn MOTION and LENGTH up and DUR down.
In Studies
Pastfabric II is in Studies Effects, under Granular.
Bundle
The standalone plugin is also part of the Granular Suite bundle.
- Formats
- VST2, VST3, Audio Units · Apple silicon native
- Systems
- Current macOS and Windows 10/11 x64
- Hosts
- Any AU or VST/VST3 host
Standalone version
The original plugin with its own interface, as a one-time purchase.
AU · VST2 · VST3 · macOS · Windows