Traverse is a lo-fi tape effect and stereo delay in one plugin. The cassette side runs a hysteresis-modeled tape engine with Drive, Wow, Flutter, and a tilt-EQ Tone control. The delay side does what delays do — Time, Feedback, Width, sync, ping-pong. A Post-Delay routing toggle lets you swap their order, so you can use it as either a tape-flavored delay or a cassette effect with a delay built in.
Layered on top: a four-control splice system for procedural dropouts, and a procedural noise generator with nine styles — Hiss, Crackle, Dust, Fan Rumble, 60Hz Hum, 50Hz Hum, White, Pink, and the Califone Card Reader. The noise routes into the cassette path, so whatever else you've dialed in shapes it on the way out.
This is the third entry in our Motion Effects family, alongside Ascent and Descent. Same as the rest of our catalog: Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS. No DRM, no subscriptions, no dongles, perpetual license.
Platforms & Downloads
Fully functional demo. 20-minute session timer, save disabled.
Documentation
Traverse Owner's Manual
PDF · 340 KB · English
In Use...
Drum buses are the obvious target — a couple turns of Drive and some Wow take a clean kit and age it down to a generation-loss dub. Vocals respond well too, with the noise floor up; the Hum and Hiss voices give you AM-radio room tone without having to record anything. We tend to use it on pads more than anything, with the splice rate up and the Card Reader noise voice running, for the broken-equipment thing. And if you park it across a single guitar chord and push Feedback, the loop self-saturates into a drone you can ride. That last one is our favorite.
Features
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Cassette engine with magnetic-hysteresis tape model - State-dependent nonlinearity hysteresis equations wrapped between pre-emphasis and de-emphasis filters, with oversampling at the saturator stage. Errr. In English, sounds like a cassette deck. Internal gain compensation keeps output level consistent across the full Drive sweep.
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Drive - Sweeps from clean new tape to fully driven, shedding iron oxide. The hysteresis curve responds to signal history, which is what separates this from a static saturation curve.
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Wow and Flutter - Two independent depth knobs for the cassette's slow pitch drift (Wow) and faster modulation jitter (Flutter), each driven by its own LFO with a noise component layered in. Per-channel modulation gives the stereo image a natural cassette wobble.
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Tone - Bipolar tilt EQ sitting inside the cassette signal flow. Darker to the left, brighter to the right, flat at center. One knob does the work of separate high and low shelves.
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Tape emulator inside the feedback loop - Every repeat is re-processed through Drive, Tone, Wow, and Flutter. Push Feedback and the repeats bloom into a self-saturating wash; pull it back for two or three colored echoes.
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Time - Stereo delay time from 20 ms to 10 seconds in free mode, or snapped to host-tempo beat divisions (straight and triplet, 1/32 through two whole notes) when Sync is engaged.
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Feedback - Recirculation amount, ceiling-limited so the loop cannot run away even with Drive at maximum.
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Width - Continuous ping-pong control. Positive values send the first echo to the right and cross-feed the channels.
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Splice system - Procedural tape splice simulator with four interacting controls. Time sets event rate (0.5 seconds to one minute between events, knob travel packed at the fast end where it matters). Depth sets the amount. Pitch and Amp toggle the pitch-chirp and amplitude-dip components of each dropout, so you can dial in anything from a clean spool to a worn-out shoebox tape.
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Curated noise generator - Nine procedural noise voices: Hiss, Crackle, Dust, Fan Rumble, 60Hz Hum, 50Hz Hum, White, Pink, and the Califone Card Reader. Pick a voice, set the amount, and the noise feeds straight into the cassette path where it gets shaped on every repeat just like the input signal does.
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Gated noise - When on, the noise floor drops 20 dB below the Noise setting whenever the input is silent, so the room tone speaks only when the track does and disappears between phrases.
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Post-delay routing toggle - Off (default) is the Space-Echo model: cassette first, delay second, with feedback returning through the full cassette chain. On flips the order so the cassette processes the delay tail only, turning Traverse into a more conventional tape-flavored delay with a clean input path.
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Mix - Standard dry / wet blend, defaulting to fully wet so the plugin reads as an effect from the moment it loads.
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Click-free Bypass - Smoothed 50 ms crossfade for live A/B comparisons and live performance use.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Traverse a tape saturation plugin or a delay plugin?
Both, and the Post-Delay toggle decides which one is more dominant. With it off (default), the cassette is first in the chain and the delay is second, so feedback returns through the whole thing. That's the unusual flow that gives Traverse its sound. Flip it on and the cassette only processes the delay tail, which is how every other tape-delay plugin works. Two products in one routing button.
What makes Traverse different from a standard tape delay plugin?
Most tape delay plugins leave the input signal alone. With Traverse, you get a choice of applying the same effects to the non-delayed signal as to the feedback loop. If you want the standard delay signal flow, the Post-Delay toggle gets you there.
Does Traverse work on Linux?
Yes. CLAP, VST3, and LV2 for Ubuntu 20 or newer. Every plugin we make ships with a Linux build, same day as Mac and Windows.
What plugin formats does Traverse support?
Windows 10 or newer: CLAP, VST3, AAX. macOS 10.13 or newer (Intel or Apple Silicon): CLAP, VST3, AAX, AudioUnit. Ubuntu 20 or newer: CLAP, VST3, LV2. iOS 12 or newer: AUv3, coming soon. All desktop builds are 64-bit.
How does Traverse compare to Audio Damage Dubstation 2?
Dubstation 2 models a bucket-brigade chip — Memory Man territory. Traverse models a cassette. Different source machines, different sound. The BBD is smeared and midrangey; the cassette has wow, flutter, and noise. They don't really overlap, and most people who own one end up owning both.
How is Traverse different from Ascent and Descent?
All three are Motion Effects, but the underlying engines are unrelated. Ascent is a shimmer reverb. Descent is a granular delay and reverb. Traverse is a cassette tape delay. They share a goal — ambient work, sound design, anything where you want movement in the signal path — but you'd own all three for the same reason you own three different reverbs.
Does Traverse use copy protection, require a subscription, or need iLok?
No. Audio Damage does not use copy protection of any kind, and never will. Install it on every machine you own. Perpetual license, no subscription, no iLok, no online activation. You buy it, it's yours.
