fMod - fBox Audio

Modulation is movement. Something in the circuit sweeps back and forth, and a sound that was sitting still starts to shimmer, wobble, swirl or throb. It is how a flat guitar chord becomes a lush one, and how an organ stops sounding like a keyboard and starts sounding like a room.

fMod gives you eight of those boxes in one plugin, each with its own controls and its own voice. And everything in it behaves like hardware. Lamps take a moment to come up to brightness. Photocells lag. Rotors take time to get up to speed. The delay line has its own clock noise, so a sweep is never quite as steady as a digital one.

Every mode keeps its own settings, so you can dial in a chorus, try the phaser, and come back to find the chorus exactly as you left it.

Eight Modulation Boxes, One Plugin

The mode is the instrument

Chorus

Thickens and widens

A short delay line swept back and forth against your original, with up to three copies spread around the sweep. The delay has its own clock instability, so the movement is never quite steady, and that unsteadiness is the sound.

Flanger

The jet plane

A chorus with a much shorter delay and far more feedback, so the copy sits close enough to interfere with the original and the sweep drags that interference around. Turn the feedback negative and it hollows out instead of resonating.

Phaser

Rounder than a flanger

Notches rather than a comb, and because they are not evenly spaced it sounds warmer and less metallic. Four stages is the classic pedal, twelve is dense and almost vocal. Take the depth to zero and you have a filter you can park anywhere.

Tremolo

Three circuits, three sounds

Level modulation done three different ways. One is the amplifier wobble that breathes with how loud you play. One is a lamp behind a photocell that takes a few cycles to reach full brightness. One rocks the bass against the treble so the tone moves while the level stays put.

Vibrato

Pitch, not level

A chorus with the dry signal taken away, so the pitch genuinely rises and falls instead of beating against itself. A swell control leans into the note the way a player does, arriving over as long as two seconds rather than being there from the start.

Rotary

A speaker that spins

A horn turning above a drum, picked up by two microphones. The two rotors run at different speeds and take different times to get there, so it never quite repeats. The famous part is the change between slow and fast, not either speed on its own.

Ring Mod

Clangorous on purpose

Multiplies your sound by a tone it makes itself, so what comes out is rarely in the same key as what went in. Low settings throb, the middle gives bells and robots, the top is pure clang. Fine tuning sits it in the track instead of fighting it.

Univibe

It breathes rather than sweeps

Four stages, each watching the same lamp through its own photocell. The lamp brightens quickly and dims slowly, and the four cells do not respond identically, so the stages never move together. That staggering is what separates it from a phaser.

Nothing Here Is In A Hurry

The lag is the character

A digital modulation effect is instant and exact. Real ones are neither, and almost everything people love about them comes from what they get wrong.

So fMod models the delays as well as the sweeps. The optical tremolo takes the first few cycles to reach full brightness, because a real lamp cannot go from dark to bright instantly. The Univibe's four stages each watch that lamp through their own photocell, and because no two cells respond identically the stages never quite move together, which is why it breathes instead of sweeping.

The rotary cabinet takes time to change speed, and the light horn always gets there before the heavy drum, so the sound pulls apart while it is changing. The chorus delay line has its own clock instability, so the sweep drifts. The ring modulator is built around diodes that never quite match, so a little of the raw tone always leaks through.

None of it is a fault. It is the reason these boxes have been kept and repaired for fifty years.

In Time, Or Driven By Something Else

Six of the eight modes lock to your tempo. Switch Sync on and the rate follows the song instead of a knob, so a tremolo chops in time and a phaser sweeps across the bar. Rotary and Ring Mod have no Sync, because neither is driven by an LFO: the rotors have their own momentum and the ring modulator has a pitch rather than a rate.

Two modes can be driven by another track entirely. Feed Tremolo a sidechain and the other track's level decides when the volume dips, so a kick can duck a pad in time with the playing rather than in time with an LFO. Feed Ring Mod a sidechain and it multiplies your sound by that track instead of by a generated tone. Two pieces of music multiplied together is a strange and useful noise.

Shared Controls

The same toolkit, whichever mode you are in

Mix

How much of the effect you hear against the untouched signal. Its default differs per mode, because a rotary cabinet is the whole sound while a chorus is a blend.

Sync

Locks the rate to your host tempo on six of the eight modes, with a note selector for the division.

Trim Link

Ties input and output together in opposite directions, so you can drive the modes that have a drive stage harder without the level moving.

Input and Output Trim

Level in and level out. In the modes with a drive stage, a hotter input pushes that stage harder as well as raising the level.

Soft Bypass

Mutes the effect but leaves both trims and the unit's small noise floor in circuit, so the level stays steady as you switch back and forth. Use your host's bypass when you want a completely clean one.

Every parameter is automatable from your DAW, including the mode selector itself, and fMod runs anywhere the suite does: on a track in your DAW, in an insert slot in fBox Console or the standalone application, or in a slot in fBox Rack.

Your Unit

Every unit is different. Keep the one you like.

Serial No. 7C4A-19E8-B035-D6F1

Every instance is minted with its own serial number and its own character, the small manufacturing differences that make this unit sound like this unit and no other.

Put two fMods on the same setting and the beating between them will not match. The sweep runs at its own speed and reaches its own depth. The lamp comes up at its own rate. The rotors settle at their own pace and pull apart by their own amount. Rotary is where you hear it most, because a real rotating cabinet is famously inconsistent and so is this one.

Every new instance can be a different unit, or it can be the one you have chosen to keep. The Unit button beside the serial is where you decide.

Saved units live in your Documents folder, a folder per product, so you can find them, back them up and copy them between machines.

A unit is the character. A patch card is the character plus everything you set on top of it. Save a patch card and it carries the unit it was made on as well as the settings, so loading one back gives you a choice: Recall Unit brings that machine back with it, character and all, while Apply Settings Only keeps the unit you are on now and takes just the knob positions.

You cannot choose a unit's character any more than you can choose the character of a real machine. But you can learn it, and you can keep the one you love.

At A Glance

Eight Modes

Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Tremolo, Vibrato, Rotary, Ring Mod and Univibe. Each a separate machine with its own controls, not a preset.

Independent Per Mode

Every mode remembers its own settings. Try another and come back to find the first exactly as you left it.

Hardware Behaviour

Lamps that take time to brighten, photocells that lag, rotors that spin up at their own pace, and a delay line that drifts.

Tempo Sync

Six of the eight lock to your host tempo with a note selector, so movement lands with the song rather than beside it.

External Sidechain

Drive the tremolo from another track's level, or ring-modulate your sound with another track instead of a generated tone.

Three Tremolo Circuits

An amplifier bias wobble, an optical lamp and photocell, and a harmonic shape that rocks the bass against the treble.

Your Own Unit

Serial-seeded character throughout. Roll a new one, save the ones you like, and pin your favourite so every instance opens as that unit.

Three Quality Tiers

Eco for tracking and dense sessions. Studio for mixing. Master for final mixes and mastering.