WAKE

The panel

Black Silver

Click any knob, jack, button or the screen. Everything shown is at its default setting. Wake 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.

The three knobs

Under the knobs is one stereo delay line with feedback. You never meet its parameters raw. Each big knob is a macro: one control that moves several things along a single curve.

DISTANCE: how long the trail lasts, how wide it spreads

Low, you get a few repeats close together. Turn it up and each pass keeps more of the last, so the trail runs longer. At noon each repeat keeps about 60% of the one before; at 95% it keeps about 98%.

The last few degrees hold. In the final 5% the feedback reaches 100%, so the trail no longer dies: it holds as a bed. A slow leveller sits inside the loop: when sustained sound piles up in a long trail it eases the feedback back smoothly, so the bed stays clean instead of distorting, it never runs away, and a trail can run for minutes. CLR clears it.

The same knob opens the stereo image. The right side runs a little longer than the left, by up to 1.5% at full, so each repeat lands further from its left twin than the last did, and a mono sound comes apart into stereo as it trails. The two sides stay separate, so a stereo input stays stereo.

CHOP: repeats that stutter

Each repeat has a chance of being broken into a fragment that repeats: the first half, third, quarter, sixth or eighth of the repeat is looped for the length of that repeat, each grain faded in and out over a few milliseconds. At 0% every repeat plays straight. As you turn it up, more repeats stutter, and the divisions get finer.

It changes what you hear, not the trail: the repeats keep circulating underneath, and the pitch never moves. It is purely random: the dice are rolled afresh for every repeat, with no seed and no pattern to learn. It needs the delay to be at most half the maximum delay time, like REV. While BCLM is holding the loop, CHOP rests.

DRIFT: how far the pitch wanders

Steady at zero. The lower half brings in a slow sine wobble of the delay time (about a third of a hertz), different on each side, deepest around 45%. From 40% genuine random wander takes over, and from 45% the tape comes in: wow and flutter, a little saturation in the loop and a darker top. The sine recedes past 60% but never leaves. At full, pitch moves by up to about 4%, which is under a semitone.

The curve is applied to the delay time, so it acts on the repeats only, never on the dry signal.

Feel: DRIFT moves settle over a fraction of a second, so the weather changes rather than switches. With DISTANCE high, DRIFT and TONE together make a trail that wanders and darkens as it goes. That is the idea.

Time and tempo

TIME: a division of the tempo

TIME is a stepped dial of 25 musical divisions, from a 1/32 up to four bars, including septuplets, quintuplets, 5/16, 7/16, 5/8, 7/8, one and a half bars and three bars. It snaps, shows each step's name, and you can click it and type one ("1/8", "dotted 1/4", "2 bars"). The default is 1/4. The delay time is the step multiplied by the length of a beat.

TIME takes CV: +10 V sweeps all 25 steps, so a sequence or a stepped source plays the delay time.

CLCK: where the tempo comes from

Patch a clock into the jack under CLCK and Wake sets the tempo from the spacing of the pulses. With nothing patched, the CLCK knob sets it, from 20 to 300 BPM (default 120). If a patched clock stops for four seconds, Wake falls back to the knob. The right-click menu says how many pulses make a beat (1, 2, 4 or 24, default 4). A clock with jitter in it makes the delay time wobble a little: that is the clock, not a fault.

Long steps fold down

A step longer than the maximum delay time halves until it fits, so it stays on the beat grid. At the default 10 seconds, four bars at 60 BPM would be 16 seconds, so it plays as 8. The maximum is a right-click choice: 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 seconds. Changing it rebuilds the buffer, which clears the repeats.

Moving TIME: tape glide or crossfade

By default, change TIME while repeats are sounding and they glide to the new delay like tape, rather than cutting. A small step is a quick swoop. A big jump takes a few seconds and bends further: shortening can lift the pitch by up to a fifth, and lengthening can drop it by up to an octave while the delay travels. Park the knob before a take if you don't want it. DRIFT works on the same glide, which is why they suit each other.

If you would rather the pitch never moved, choose Time change mode > Crossfade in the right-click menu. A change then jumps to the new delay and the old repeats fade into the new ones over a tenth of a second: no bend, no click, a quick blend instead of a swoop.

Times shown are at 120 BPM, before any fold-down.

The other controls

Patching and CV

Wake is stereo and not polyphonic. It expects ordinary Eurorack audio, about ±5 V at the peaks, and puts out the same level. The right input is normalled to the left, so a mono source into IN L feeds both sides. Bypass passes left to left and right to right.

Nothing steps. Every level and filter glides inside the engine, so stepped CV, fast envelopes and sample-and-hold sources stay clean. The one thing that moves in steps is TIME, and it glides between them.

Right-click menu

Installing

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

1. Add Wake to your account on its VCV Library page.
2. In Rack, log in from the Library menu and choose Library > Update all. Rack downloads Wake and any other plugins you own.
3. Restart Rack if it asks you to, then add Wake from the module browser, under Ormer Modular.

Wake needs Rack 2.

Troubleshooting

I hear nothing.

Patch audio into IN L (IN R follows it) and make sure the module isn't bypassed. With MIX at zero you hear only the dry signal.

I hear the dry signal but no repeats.

Check MIX is above zero, GAIN isn't at zero, and BCLM isn't lit with nothing in the loop (becalm shuts new input out). A very low DISTANCE gives just a few short repeats.

REV does nothing.

REV only works while the delay is at most half the maximum delay time. Choose a shorter TIME step, a faster tempo, or a longer maximum in the right-click menu.

The pitch swoops when I change TIME.

That is the tape glide: the delay slides to its new length instead of cutting. A big jump bends further and takes a few seconds. Change it slowly, or before a take, or choose Time change mode > Crossfade in the right-click menu for no pitch change at all.

TIME won't move while BCLM is lit.

Becalm holds the loop at the length it had. TIME takes effect when you release it.

The tempo knob does nothing.

A clock is patched into CLCK, and it takes over. Unpatch it, or stop it for four seconds, and the knob is used again. If the tempo is a multiple or fraction of what you expect, check Clock pulses per beat in the right-click menu.

The trail stops when I change the maximum delay time (or Rack's sample rate).

Wake rebuilds its buffer, which clears the repeats. They start again as audio arrives.

The trail at full DISTANCE won't die.

By design: in the last 5% the feedback holds. Lower DISTANCE, or press CLR.

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

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