Superbooth 2023: This Is Not Rocket Science - Bopp And Steve

video upload by sonicstate

"We spoke to Stijn from This Is Not Rocket Science at Superbooth 2023, who showed us their new flagship module called Bopp and Steve Deconstructed Spatial Effect. The module is a combination of a reverb, delay, pitch shifter, and diffuser, all mixable and matchable to create a customized reverb. The signal input hits a diffuser for early reflections, a delay for pre-delay, and a reverb tail for a glossy reverb with a shimmer effect. There's also a chord pitch shifter which can be controlled with polyphonic MIDI pitch shifting for playing chords with reverb tails.

Although it is still currently in development, Bopp and Steve is already festooned with 16 knobs, a bunch of CVs, and promises more effects to come, including more reverb tail types.

Available: Winter 2023. Price: around 440 Euros"

"Bopp & Steve Space Effect

With this module every sound is bigger on the inside and we can finally know how many angels fit on a pin-header. Between the input and the output your soundwave is shot through space and changes occur. BOPP & STEVE let you in at different points to tweak and trim their spatial effects until you find the exact place in the universe you were looking for. BOPP & STEVE reverberates, diffuses, delays and shifts pitch of whatever you send into it. Based on a deconstructed audio path and intricate DSP these fabulous sounds come alive. We connected the virtual with physical reality. Making an instrument by giving you tangible parameters, connecting your fingers to bits floating in space.

PITCH
Pitch modes let you shift pitch chromatically (regular) three notes at time (chord) or detuned and unquantized (free). The chord mode is unique as far as we can tell. All modes are CV and Midi controllable. This is where we stuck all the angels on the pin-header. Following the note of your input a choir of harmonious notes will start sounding. Instant etherealness. With Pitch Point you select a point in the audio path where the pitch gets shifted. Pressing the Pitch Point LED button you will see little LEDs turn on (and off) at the wet input point, the diffuse point, the delay point, the tail point, wet output and dry output point or even on the feedback of the delay point. Transpose lets you set how far you transpose from -2 octaves to +2 octaves. Control gives you control over something else for every pitch mode. In Regular mode it lets you control inertia, in Chord mode it lets you control chord type and in Free mode it controls detune.

AUDIO PATH
The audio path in BOPP & STEVE is input – diffuse – delay – tail – output. Diffuse smears your sound over time which seems to change the shape of the space you are in – and has its own Flavour setting you can tweak. Delay holds your sound over time which seems to make the space you are in bigger. In the Tail the diffuse and delay of your sound merge together and travels into infinity. A Main knob lets you set the wet/dry mix of all these spatial effects on your output. The Envelope of the dry audio path has its own tracker output that you can invert with the knob besides it. For the Delay effect you can choose between bouncing between left/right (pingpong), a supershort Karplus-Strong physical model (waveguide) or staccato repetition (multitap). You can tweak the Length, Feedback and Pattern of these delay modes. The tail can be smoothly tapering off (dense), coming and going (float) or choppy and granular with space in between (sparse). You can tweak the Length, Chorality and Temprature of the different tails. Freeze holds the sound in the Delay and the Tail so they become infinite.

ORIGIN
The heritage of BOPP & STEVE starts with a reverb that Stijn has been working on since the 2000s. A version of it is in the Fenix IV Dual Delay as the Reverb mode with a “chunky shimmer and a phat detune”. Stijn has further deconstructed their Early Reflections into two parts (Delay and Diffuse) and created three types of Tail (Dense, Sparse, Float). At Superbooth23 we are presenting a prototype. The hardware is 99% settled, the software is mostly functional but not yet feature-complete and not all glooped together yet. We expect to produce modules before the end of the year so everyone can have BOPP & STEVE for Christmas.

Sales price will be 440 EUR inc tax."

via http://www2.thisisnotrocketscience.nl/eurorack/bopp_n_steve/#