User Guide

132
Module: Silver
Flanger
Though flanging is also delay-based, unlike the
phaser, it manages without phase shifting.
Incidentally, do not confuse this with Neuron’s
stereo phase parameter used to spread the signal in
the flanger, phaser and chorus! But back to the issue
at hand: The incoming audio signal is delayed in the
flanger regardless of its pitch. The delay time
remains constant and the wet signal is mixed to the
original dry signal at the effect’s input via a feedback
loop.
Even if you listen very closely to a flanged sound,
you will not hear any echoes despite the delay. This
is explained by a very short delay time, which usually
ranges somewhere around 10 ms. The human ear is
said to begin perceiving echoes at delay times of
around 70 ms but certainly no lower than that.
So instead of the echoes you might expect to hear
when the original and delayed signals are mixed, you
get destructive interference causing frequency
cancellations and changes in the amplitude of
uncancelled frequencies. The greater the flanger’s
depth (mix parameter), the more distinct the
cancellations, that is, the more dramatic the changes
in the frequency spectrum of the wet signal.
The trademark dynamic flanger sound is produced
when delay time is modulated by an LFO oscillation
rather than remaining constant. Then the frequency
cancellations sweep across the frequency spectrum
as determined by the LFO oscillation.
The timbre of this flanged composite signal is
colored, resulting in anything from majestic-
sounding sweeps to nausea-inducing detuning.
Rumor has is that the flanger was discovered
accidentally by the Beatles, no less. The scene of the
crime was a studio, the means a tape machine and
the motive to create delay. Supposedly, one of the
mop-tops inadvertently knocked one of the tape
reels, changing the pitch of the delayed signal.
Legend has it that the boys fiddled with the reels
until they could replicate this random effect and laid
it over a few tracks here and there. Thus the typical
flanger sound was born. The projecting rim of the
tape reel is called a "flange", which gave the newly
born effect a name.
Neuron.book Seite 132 Montag, 23. Dezember 2002 2:28 14