Sync Ping Pong

A tempo-synced stereo delay whose echoes bounce across the stereo field. Feed it a stereo signal and a clock, and each repeat ping-pongs left-to-right-to-left in step with your tempo — classic dub and ambient spacing that always lands on the beat.

How it works

The two delay lines are cross-fed: the left line's feedback comes from the right line's last echo, and vice versa. So a transient on the left appears on the right one division later, back on the left the division after that, decaying as it travels. Delay time is locked to the beat — the module measures the period between pulses at the Clock input and multiplies it by your chosen division, so the spacing tracks tempo changes automatically. That is the Ext Clock setting, and with nothing patched it sits at 120 BPM; Song takes the timeline's tempo instead, no cable needed.

Controls

  • Div — the echo spacing, stepped through twelve musical divisions from 1/1 down to 1/64, with dotted variants between the straight note values.
  • Fdbk — how much of each echo feeds back into the bounce; higher settings sustain longer trails before they fade.
  • Mix — wet/dry blend, from fully dry up to the full echo send.
  • Clock — where the tempo comes from. Ext measures the pulses arriving at the clock input, which is how this module has always worked. Song follows the timeline's tempo directly, with no cable at all. Int runs at its own speed, set by the BPM field beside it. One thing worth knowing: in Ext the divisions are relative to whatever you clock it with, so feeding it sixteenths makes every label four times faster than it reads. In Int and Song the module knows what a quarter note is, so the labels mean exactly what they say.
  • BPM — the tempo for Int. In Song it greys out and shows you the timeline's tempo instead; in Ext it greys out too, because the cable is in charge.

Inputs & outputs

  • In L / In R — the stereo signal to echo.
  • Out L / Out R — the processed stereo pair.
  • Clock — patch a clock or gate here; its tempo sets the delay time while the Clock control is set to Ext. Left open it sits at 120 BPM.
  • Div / Fdbk / Mix CV — voltage control over those three knobs; each offset adds to its knob setting, so patch an LFO or envelope to step divisions, swell the feedback trails, or fade the wet blend in and out.

Tips

  • Feed a mono source into one input only and let the cross-feed do the panning for you — instant ping-pong from a single voice.
  • Push Fdbk near the top for long, evolving trails; pull Mix back to keep the dry signal punchy underneath.
  • Sweep Div with a slow LFO into Div CV to ratchet the echoes through tempo divisions on the fly.