Stargazer is the latest and surely the most fun and inspiring addition to our ToneKnob series. We really went all out on it, and we hope it brings you the same joy. It's the kind of effect where you plug in your guitar, keyboard, snare drum, or add it to your vocal signal chain, and embark on an endless journey of inspiration.
What is it?
Stargazer can be both a practical spatial effect with beautiful coloration and an ambient machine suitable for sound design and creating endless musical textures — controlled by a single knob. In the initial and lower positions of the knob, you’ll get a small room reverb that fits perfectly with your guitar, vocals, or drums. It gives your instrument body and space, which is crucial for natural-sounding mixes. As you turn the knob further, the space enlarges, and you move through chamber reverb, church reverb, and hall, all the way to a cathedral and beyond. With a beautiful reverb coloration, we’ve tuned the effect to be usable in every position.
50% and beyond – Angels just joined the jam! 🙂
Really interesting things start happening once you pass the halfway mark of the knob. At this point, the shimmer effect kicks in, which sounds like a string orchestra joining your performance and harmonically responding to you. As you turn the knob further, the response, reverb tail, or whatever you call it, extends, allowing you to achieve truly endless soundscapes with beautiful coloration that enrich your instrument, voice, or anything you send through our Stargazer.
Watch the introduction video
How to use Stargazer in practice?
Up to 25% knob level, it’s a great practical reverb, as you know it, applicable to basically any signal source. However, you don’t have to bother with all the values like in other reverbs such as Decay, Pre-Delay, Damping, Density, and so on.. We did that for you, so just enjoy the great sound. Want more reverb? Just turn the knob further to the right.
25-50% Here you get a really long and full reverb, which you must handle carefully in the mix. It can serve well on backing vocals, strings, winds or if the track has a slower tempo and you need deliberately long reverb, no problem, here it is.
50-100% Now we enter the world of ambient music and sound design. Put Stargazer on the track of an acoustic or electric guitar, synthesizer, piano.. really anything you can think of, here there are no limits. It always surprises us what Stargazer does to the sound, and we’re sure you’ll love it too.
100% WET
Experienced users don’t need this button, found in the control panel, explained, but ToneKnob is designed for simplicity of use even for novice sound engineers, so allow us a brief explanation.
The 100% Wet function in plugins (especially reverbs) means that only the affected sound (reverberated signal) goes to the plugin output, while the original, “dry”, i.e., your instrument/signal, is completely removed. The 100% Wet function is key in parallel signal processing, where the affected (wet) sound is separated from the original (dry) signal on a separate aux channel. This allows for easy mixing of the clean and affected signals, even for multiple tracks simultaneously. When creating ethereal textures, large ambient soundscapes, the separated wet signal also sounds impressive. Setting 100% Wet is also useful when tuning the effect parameters, as you hear only the processed sound without the influence of the original input signal.
Enough talk, the ToneKnob series is designed so that no big explanations are needed. Use the trial version on our website and try Stargazer for free in your mix, with your instrument, and be convinced by its impressive sound and easy settings.
Behind the advanced algorithms of Stargazer is primarily our engineer Martin Linda, who has many years of experience in developing specialized sound effects.
We will soon come back with another addition to the ever-growing ToneKnob series.
