HARBOUR

The panel

Black Silver

Click any knob, jack, button or the meter. Everything shown is at its default setting. The four channels are identical, so clicking any of them tells you about that control on every channel. Harbour comes in two panels, silver and black: Rack picks one from its own dark-panel setting, and you can force either from the module's right-click menu.

Channels

Each of the four channels is a stereo strip, read from the top down: the audio inputs, three rows of CV inputs, the big VOL knob, then MUTE and PAN, then the two AUX sends.

IN L and IN R

Patch a stereo source into both, or a mono source into IN L alone: IN R copies IN L when nothing is patched into it, so a mono source sits in the centre. A polyphonic cable into either input is summed to one signal.

VOL

The channel's volume. It is silent at the left and unity (0 dB) at 75%, and it starts there. There is 5 dB in hand at the top. The tooltip shows decibels, and you can click the knob and type a level ("-6", "-inf"). VOL, AUX 1, AUX 2 and MASTER all use this same curve.

PAN

PAN behaves the way the source needs. With a mono source (nothing patched into IN R, so IN R copies IN L) it is a true pan: both sides are at exactly unity at the centre, and as you turn it the signal moves across, keeping its loudness, until at the far left it is on the left side only and the right side is silent. A quarter of the way left, the right side is already 3.5 dB below the left; halfway, 7.7 dB.

With a stereo source (both IN L and IN R patched) it is a balance: at the centre both sides pass at exactly unity, so the stereo picture is untouched, and turning it left turns the right side down, to silence at the far left, while the left side stays as it was. A balance keeps a stereo image whole, so some of a panned stereo source is always heard on the far side: use IN L alone, or a mono mixdown, if you want to place a sound with a pan.

You can type a value: "L40", "R25" or "C".

M/S (mute and solo)

One button, three states per channel: Off, Mute and Solo, one at a time. Its tooltip reads Channel 2 M/S: Off, Mute or Solo. Mute (left-click) lights it red. It fades over about 5 ms, so it never clicks, and it silences the channel's sends too, before or after the fader. Other channels are not touched.

Solo. Right-click the button to solo that channel (the mouse icons on the panel show which click is which). Soloing a channel takes it out of mute, and muting a soloed channel takes it out of solo. While any channel is soloed, every other channel is muted (with the same fade), and the soloed channel's button glows amber. Solo a second channel to hear both. Right-click it again, or choose Clear all solos in the module's right-click menu, to bring everything back. Solo is saved with the patch.

AUX 1 and AUX 2

How much of the channel goes to send A (AUX 1) and send B (AUX 2). Both start at zero, which is off. They use the same curve as VOL. Where the send is taken is chosen in the right-click menu (see Sends and returns).

The four CV inputs

Each channel has a CV input for VOL, PAN, AUX 1 and AUX 2, in the three rows under the audio inputs. VOL CV, AUX 1 CV and AUX 2 CV scale their knob: 0 V is silence, 10 V leaves the knob as it is, and an unpatched jack counts as 10 V. PAN CV adds to the knob: +5 V is the whole way right, −5 V the whole way left, and an unpatched jack counts as 0 V. CV inputs read the first channel of a polyphonic cable.

Sends and returns

Two loops, A and B, for effects that live outside Harbour: a reverb, a delay, anything with audio in and out. Each loop is a stereo pair of SEND outputs and a stereo pair of RETURN inputs, in the bottom row.

Sends

SEND A carries every channel's AUX 1 added together, SEND B every channel's AUX 2. By default a send is post-fader: it is taken after the channel's VOL and PAN, so a channel that is turned down, or that TIDE is easing away, takes its send with it. The right-click menu can make either send pre-fader: it is then taken after MUTE only, so it ignores VOL, PAN and TIDE, and the effect keeps hearing the channel at full while you pull the fader down. Switching between the two glides, it does not click.

Returns

Whatever comes back into RETURN A and RETURN B joins the master bus at unity, ahead of SALT and the master level. There is no return knob: set the level on the effect. A return does not go back into any send, so a loop can never feed itself. A polyphonic cable into a return is summed.

TIDE

TIDE is the knob at the top right, and it is off. Turn it up and each channel's volume and pan start to wander, slowly and independently of each other, like boats rising and falling at their moorings. Low is a gentle, constant drift. High lets channels swing in and out of the mix.

How it moves

Every channel has two wanderers, one for volume and one for pan, so eight in all. Each one picks a random target at random intervals and glides towards it, and is already heading for the next before it arrives, so it is always moving. Every new target is a real swing, usually to the other side of where it was. It is purely random: there is no pattern to learn and no seed to set, and Harbour draws fresh randomness every time a module is created, so no two modules, and no two sessions, breathe the same way. The wanderers are independent: one channel fading tells you nothing about the others.

Depth and speed ride one curve, so one knob does both. As you turn it up the movements get deeper, and arrive sooner:

The movements are centred on where you have set the knobs. Volume can lift a channel by at most 3 dB above its fader, so TIDE never pushes your mix into clipping, and it can take a channel down by as much as 36 dB, which is as good as out. Pan wanders either side of the PAN knob. VOL and PAN CV, MUTE, and the sends all keep working: a muted channel stays muted, and a pre-fader send ignores TIDE.

Seeing it, and choosing the speed

While TIDE is running, a fine amber line curves round each VOL knob and each PAN knob, from where you have set the knob to where TIDE is holding that channel right now, with a small dot at the end. The line swings out and back as the channel drifts, so you can see which channels are moving, and by how much, without touching anything. It disappears when TIDE is off or the channel is muted.

The right-click menu has a TIDE speed choice. Medium is the speed in the table above; Slow takes 4× as long between targets (a very slow drift) and Fast half as long (2× as many). Depth is the same at all three, and the TIDE knob still sets depth and speed together within the choice. The choice is saved with the patch.

At zero it is an ordinary mixer

With TIDE at zero nothing moves and nothing is added: Harbour is an exact, ordinary mixer. That is checked sample for sample against a plain reference mixer, and a mixer that has been through TIDE and back to zero is bit for bit the same as one that never left it. Turning TIDE up or down eases over about 50 ms, so the knob itself never clicks.

Tip: start around 20 to 30% for a mix that is alive but never loses anything, and go higher for a patch where channels should come and go.

SALT

SALT is a little tape on the master bus, and it is off. It is the lo-fi half of Haar's Drift, brought over: the mix is saturated softly, the top end rolls off, and the whole thing wobbles very slightly in pitch and level the way a worn tape does. A busy mix sounds warmer, softer and a little alive, not louder or harder.

It sits after the returns and before the master level, so the MASTER knob does not change its character, and it is on the master bus only: the sends are never salted. What it does, at full:

• The top rolls off. A two-pole slope that slides from 6.5 kHz towards 2 kHz as you turn it up; at full SALT 12 kHz is 26.3 dB down.
• Soft saturation. Quiet material is brought up by about 5.0 dB at 100 Hz, a sine peaking at 2.5 V comes out about 0.5 dB higher, and one peaking at 5 V comes out 3.7 dB lower (at half SALT, 1.2 dB lower). The harder the signal, the more it is rounded.
• Wow and flutter. Two slow random wanders and a 7.4 Hz flutter move the delay by up to about 2.2 ms, which bends the pitch by a few cents. The more SALT, the more it moves.
• A small delay. While SALT is on, the main output is about 5.5 ms late. The sends are not.
• No click. SALT eases in over about 50 ms and the tape fades in over the first 20% of the knob.

Like TIDE, the wobble draws fresh randomness every time a module is created. There is nothing to set. At zero SALT is bypassed completely: the signal does not pass through it at all.

Master and meter

MASTER

The master level, the last stage before OUT L and OUT R, on the same curve as VOL. It starts at unity (0 dB) at 75%, 5 dB in hand at the top. It does not affect the sends.

The meter

Two columns of five LEDs, left and right, watch what leaves OUT L and OUT R, after the master level. They read the peak, and the light falls away over about 300 ms. From the bottom they light at −18, −12, −6, −3 and 0 dB, where 0 dB is a 5 V peak, the usual level of Eurorack audio: three green, then yellow, then red. Red means the output is touching 5 V peaks. That is not a fault, since Rack does not clip, but whatever follows might.

Patching and CV

Harbour is stereo and not polyphonic. It expects ordinary Eurorack audio, about ±5 V at the peaks, and puts out the same level.

Nothing steps. Every level, pan, mute and send glides over about 5 ms inside the engine, so stepped CV, fast envelopes and sample-and-hold sources stay clean.

Right-click menu

Installing

Harbour is sold through the VCV Library, for Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel), Windows and Linux.

1. Add Harbour to your account on its VCV Library page (purchase it there).
2. In Rack, log in from the Library menu and choose Library > Update all. Rack downloads Harbour and any other plugins you own. The first time, Rack also fetches Harbour's licence key while you are logged in; after that it works offline. Until the licence is in place the module shows a message over its panel and stays silent.
3. Restart Rack if it asks you to, then add Harbour from the module browser, under Ormer Modular.

Harbour needs Rack 2.

Troubleshooting

I hear nothing from a channel.

Check its MUTE light, that VOL is up, and that audio is patched into IN L (IN R follows it). Check MASTER too.

I panned a channel left but I can still hear it on the right.

Check what is patched. A stereo source (both IN L and IN R patched) is balanced, not panned: the left side stays and the right side is turned down, so it only goes quiet at the far end. For a true pan, patch the source into IN L alone and leave IN R empty. Also remember that a post-fader send follows the pan, and that anything coming back through a RETURN joins the master at unity, so an effect on that send will still be heard on both sides.

One side is silent.

PAN turns one side down: all the way to one side, the other side is silent. Bring it back to the centre. Also check PAN CV, which adds to the knob.

My effect hears nothing.

Raise the channel's AUX 1 (for loop A) or AUX 2 (for loop B); they start at zero. A muted channel sends nothing, and a post-fader send follows VOL, so a channel with its fader down sends nothing unless the send is set to pre-fader in the right-click menu.

The effect's output doesn't come back.

Patch it into RETURN A or RETURN B (left and right). Returns have no level knob: they join the master at unity, so set the level on the effect.

A channel is fading in and out by itself.

That is TIDE. Turn it down; at zero Harbour is an ordinary mixer.

TIDE does nothing.

It is off at zero. At the very bottom of the knob the movement is small by design (depth follows the knob in a straight line), but it never stops. If a channel has nothing patched into it, there is nothing to hear move; also check the amber lines round the VOL and PAN knobs, which show the movement.

SALT is hard to hear.

Compare it switched on and off at full: the top rolls off at any level and the wobble is always there. The first fifth of the knob fades the tape in, so turn it past that. The saturation is strongest on a hot signal, with peaks near 5 V.

The meter is always red.

The output is reaching 5 V peaks. Lower the channels or MASTER.

The panel won't change colour.

Use the module's right-click Panel menu. If it is set to Follow Rack setting, Rack's View > Use dark panels if available decides.

Specifications

Harbour's engine is original. It uses no third-party DSP. Harbour is closed-source and proprietary.