Effects

Every track in Kiwisonic has a built-in effect chain. Effects are processed in order by the native audio engine for low-latency playback.

The effect chain

Effects are applied in the order they appear in the chain:

Instrument signal → [effect 1] → [effect 2] → … → Mixer

The default processing order follows standard mixing practice — shape → color → space → character → volume:

Compressor → Saturation → Bitcrusher → Tone → Phaser → Chorus → Pitch → Filter → Stereo Widener → Auto-Pan → Delay → Reverb → Vinyl → Scratch → Gate → Volume

Effects are divided into two scopes:

• Instrument-level — set once per track, stays the same across all sections.
• Section-level — can change per section, so a verse can be dry while the chorus has reverb and delay.

Effect categories

[Shape — dynamics and distortion](shape.md)

These effects shape the waveform itself.

• Compressor — evens out volume differences (instrument-level)
• Saturation — adds warmth and grit (instrument-level)
• Bitcrusher — retro lo-fi sound (instrument-level)
• Volume — controls overall track loudness (section-level)

[Color — modulation, filtering, and pitch](color.md)

These effects color the tone with filtering, modulation, and pitch shifting.

• Tone — tilt EQ, darker or brighter (instrument-level)
• Phaser — sweeping filter movement (instrument-level)
• Chorus — width and thickness (instrument-level)
• Pitch — shifts pitch up or down (instrument-level)
• Filter — low-, high- or band-pass for sweeps, builds, and drops (section-level)

[Space — stereo and time-based](space.md)

These effects place the sound in stereo space and add echoes or ambience.

• Stereo Widener — controls stereo width (section-level)
• Auto-Pan — automatic left/right panning (section-level)
• Delay — rhythmic echoes (section-level)
• Reverb — room and hall ambience (section-level)

[Character — novelty and texture](character.md)

These effects add lo-fi character and atmosphere.

• Vinyl — crackle, hiss, and warmth (section-level)
• Scratch — tempo-synced DJ turntable scratch (section-level)
• Gate — rhythmic volume chop (section-level)

Using effects in the mixer

Each track's mixer strip shows effect cards for the fifteen slots. Each card has:

• Enable/disable toggle — click the header to turn the effect on or off
• Preset selector — browse named presets for quick setup
• Macro controls — knobs, sliders, toggles, or selectors for the effect's macro parameters (1–4 depending on the effect)

Changes are heard immediately during playback.

Master bus effects

Alongside per-track effects, Kiwisonic has a master bus chain that processes the whole mix at once — every track summed together. It is the place for glue compression, saturation, and final tone shaping. Open it from ⚙ Master FX at the bottom of the expanded mixer panel. See master-bus.md.

Effect categories at a glance

Cards in the effect strip are tinted by category:

The same colour appears as a 3 px stripe on notes that have per-note overrides for that category, so you can tell at a glance which kind of effect a note is overriding.

Adding and reordering effects

Click the [+] button at the right of the effect strip to open the effect picker — a categorised list of every effect not currently on the track. Picking one inserts it at its recommended position in the chain.

Each card has a header you can drag to reorder, and a small ✕ to remove the effect. Removing a section-level effect drops only that section's settings; the slot itself can still be re-added.

Automation

Most effect macros can be automated — drawn as an envelope across a section so the parameter moves over time. To start, open an effect's popup card and click Automate [knob name]. A new automation lane appears below the note editor with a flat line at the current value. Drag points to shape the curve. See automation.md for the full guide.

Per-note overrides

In the piano roll, you can give a single note its own effect settings — say a one-bar reverb soak on a held note while everything else stays dry. Right-click a note → Note effects → pick a slot to override. The note grows a thin coloured stripe to show it has overrides. See note-effects.md.

Section-level effect workflow

To set different section-level effects for different sections:

1. Select a section in the arrangement
2. Adjust the section-level effect macros in the mixer
3. The settings are saved for that specific section
4. Navigate to another section and set different values

Section-level effects: Filter, Stereo Widener, Auto-Pan, Delay, Reverb, Vinyl, Scratch, Gate, Volume.

During playback, Kiwisonic automatically switches to the correct effect settings as the playhead enters each section.

Presets

Each effect slot has built-in presets that configure all macros to useful starting points. Select a preset from the card's preset row, then tweak the macros to taste.

Effect settings (including presets and macro values) are saved with the project file.

Combining effects

Effects interact with each other because each one changes the signal before it reaches the next in the chain. Understanding a few common combinations helps you get more out of the chain than any single effect can do alone.

Saturation → Tone

Saturation adds harmonics across the entire frequency range. If the result is too harsh, Tone can tilt the balance back toward warmth. If the saturation sounds too dull, Tone can bring back brightness. Think of Tone as the cleanup tool after Saturation — shape the distortion first, then polish the tone.

Compressor → Saturation

Compression evens out the dynamics before the signal hits saturation. Without compression, loud peaks get distorted heavily while quiet passages barely clip — the saturation sounds inconsistent. With compression first, the signal enters the saturator at a more consistent level, so the distortion character stays even across the performance.

Chorus → Delay → Reverb

This is the classic "space stack." Chorus widens the sound in stereo, Delay adds rhythmic depth, and Reverb places everything in an acoustic space. They build on each other — chorus makes the source bigger, delay gives it rhythmic echoes, and reverb wraps it all in ambience. Using all three at subtle settings creates a rich, three-dimensional sound. Heavy settings on all three creates a wash — useful for ambient music but easy to overdo.

Filter → Reverb

Closing the filter while keeping the reverb open creates a "distant" sound — like the instrument is playing in another room. The filter muffles the direct signal, but the reverb tail stays full. Opening the filter back up brings the instrument forward. This combination is one of the simplest ways to create contrast between sections.

Gate → Reverb

Gate chops the sound into rhythmic pulses, and reverb smooths the gaps between them. Without reverb, hard gating sounds abrupt and mechanical. With reverb, each pulse gets a tail that fills the silence, creating a rhythmic but flowing texture. This is the classic trance pad sound — the gate provides the rhythm, the reverb provides the atmosphere.

Saturation → Filter

Heavy saturation generates lots of high-frequency harmonics that can sound harsh. Closing the filter after saturation tames the brightness while keeping the warmth and body that the saturation added. This is how many aggressive bass sounds are made — distort first, then filter off the fizz.

Bitcrusher → Vinyl

Both are lo-fi effects but they degrade the signal in different ways. Bitcrusher adds digital artifacts (aliasing, staircase distortion), while Vinyl adds analog artifacts (crackle, hiss, warmth). Together they create a convincingly worn, retro sound — like a chiptune sample played off a dusty record.

Compressor → Gate

Compression raises the quiet parts of the signal, which makes the gate's volume chop more dramatic — the sound goes from consistently loud to silence, rather than from varying levels to silence. This creates a punchier, more defined rhythmic gate effect.

What to watch out for

• Too many time-based effects — Chorus + Delay + Reverb all at high mix settings can turn any sound into an indistinct wash. If things sound muddy, pull back the mix on one of them.
• Distortion after reverb — Saturation and Bitcrusher sit before Reverb in the chain, which is the standard order. If you want distorted reverb tails (a creative effect), you'd need to use heavy saturation with high reverb mix — but the result can get noisy quickly.
• Gate + Delay at competing rates — If the gate chops at one rhythm and the delay echoes at another, the result can sound chaotic rather than rhythmic. When using both, the delay time should complement the gate rate.
• Compression squashing reverb tails — Compressor sits before Reverb in the chain, so this isn't usually a problem. But heavy compression can reduce the dynamic range that reverb needs to sound natural.