Quazotron
Cybertronic Iterobuffer
Part of Studies
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Or own the plugin
The original plugin with its own interface, as a one-time purchase.
Description
Quazotron is a stutter and lo-fi machine for glitchy repeated phrases, chiptune console sounds and a good dose of cyberpunk nostalgia. It has 22 stutter algorithms, an 8-step modulation sequencer and a downsampling foldover.
Your sound is bit-crushed, folded and filtered first. Then the stutter engine repeats it in time with your track, at the original pitch or an octave up or down. A CHANCE control decides whether each stutter happens, which gives it that eccentric, Max Headroom kind of randomness.
Your input goes through the bit crusher and foldover, the Moog-style filter and a spectral pitch shift, then the stutter engine. The sequencer can step the pitch, the filter or the bit depth along with your host tempo. BLEND mixes the result with your dry input before the master section.
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Step sequencer
- TARGET
- Picks what the sequencer modulates: OFF, PITCH, FILTER or LO-FI, which is the bit depth.
- RATE
- Sets the step rate against your host tempo, at 1/2, 1, 1.5 or 2 steps per beat.
- CLOCK
- SELF runs the sequencer at host tempo whether or not the transport is playing, which is handy for finding patterns while the host is stopped. SYNC runs it only while the host plays and restarts it when you press play.
- SEQUENCER STEPS
- Draw the eight step values. Each step works relative to the target's current setting: a full step plays the target where you've set it, and lower steps take it down from there. Turn the target control all the way up for the widest range. On PITCH, a full step keeps the pitch and a half step drops it an octave.
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Bit crush + fold
- FOLD
- Sets the sample-rate foldover in eight steps, which sounds like downsampling. Higher settings give grittier, more aliased tones.
- BITS
- Sets the bit depth, from 16 bits down to 4. Turn it down for crunchy, console-style reduction.
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Moog filter
- FILTER
- Sets the cutoff of a Moog-style low-pass filter, from 96 Hz to 20 kHz.
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Stutter engine
- CHANCE
- Sets the probability that each beat division fires a stutter through the current ALGO. Between stutters the processed sound is silent, so lower settings leave more gaps.
- ALGO
- Picks one of 22 stutter algorithms. 1 turns the stutter off. 2 to 8 repeat once, twice, three, four, six, eight or sixteen times at the original pitch, on shorter notes as the count goes up, from a quarter note down to a 64th. 9 to 15 do much the same an octave up, and 16 to 22 an octave down.
- RANDOM
- Set to RAND, the algorithm wanders at random through the 22 settings at a drifting rate and ignores the ALGO knob. ALGO at 1 still turns the stutter off.
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Master
- BLEND
- Sets the mix between your dry input and the processed sound.
- GAIN
- Sets the output level, from silent up to double. Noon is unity.
Try thisSet TARGET to PITCH and RATE to 2, then draw a staircase in the steps for arpeggiated, chiptune-style phrases. Lower CHANCE to let them break up.
In Studies
Quazotron is in Studies Effects, under Glitch.
Standalone
The standalone plugin, shown further down the page, names some controls differently. Its ALGO RANDOMIZE button is RANDOM in Studies, MOD DESTINATION is TARGET, SPEED is RATE, SELF/SYNC is CLOCK and LEVEL is GAIN. The standalone sequencer also plays step 1 twice on every pass; we fixed that in Studies, so the eight steps cycle evenly.
Bundle
The standalone plugin is also part of the Chromascope bundle.
- Formats
- Studies: Audio Units, VST2 and VST3 on Mac, VST3 on Windows · Apple silicon native
- Systems
- Current macOS and Windows 10/11 x64
Standalone version
The original plugin with its own interface, as a one-time purchase.
AU · VST2 · VST3 · macOS · Windows