TIDES Review
Bleass Audio sent me a preview copy of their newest effect Tides. Tides is a creative delay with modulation, filtering, and effects that can applied to the feedback loop. The modulation is simple, you get three LFOs, two envelop followers and two macros. All the standard LFO shapes are here including sample hold and smoothing and each modulation source can target up to four destinations within Tides. I’m not the biggest fan of the Bleass color scheme, but the shapes and layout are always nice. I especially enjoy the dot matrix style
The delay goes all the way down to 1ms in free mode with 1ms resolution. Bleass have included both a tape and crossfade mode for time adjustment, giving you two flavors of delay time modulation. In addition to this, there is an inertia control allowing you to manipulate the speed and quality of the tape and crossfade modes. Om most delays these are usually just set internally and can not be adjusted. This gives you a wide variety of flavors that are generally “baked in” to a delay, as most delays aren’t quite meant to be modulated.
The feedback effects are a nice touch, you get five slots to apply one of 11 different effects. These effects include some filters, distortion, ring mod, frequency shifting and pitch shifting, and even an additional delay. Sadly each effect can only be applied once and some of them are limited in their control set. I would have liked a mix control for the shifters and would have really enjoyed stacking a few different shifters and delays for some weird experiments. Still, modulation can be applied to these feedback effects and there is plenty of creative uses.
I like to see creative takes on classic effects like this, I feel there is enough interesting to play around with Tides and get some new sounds. Frequency shifters inside of delay feedback are always a great effect and the various inertia settings with delay modulation in conjunction with this can give you some strange motion processing. I can’t say this is one of the more powerful creative delays out there, I think with a couple more options it’d be up there, but there is plenty of fun stuff to play and experiment with in this one. There’s always room for creative designs like this, and I’m glad to see continued innovation in the world of delays