Following up 2018's Magneto tape delay, Strymon has stepped back into the modular world with StarLab, which is described as a “time-warped reverberator”. The company says that it set out to create “the highest quality reverb possible for modular systems,” and one that comes with plenty of control.
You can choose from three reverb textures - Sparse, Dense and Diffuse - with each offering a different flavour. There’s also a delay - an expanded reverb pre-delay, in fact - along with a range of modulation effects that can be used on their own or in addition to StarLab’s reverb.
There’s an LFO, too, and if you switch to Karplus-Strong mode, StarLan becomes a delay-based, CV-tuneable monophonic string synthesis voice.
You can go even deeper with the Size/Pitch knob, which changes the reflection density and response of the reverb while retaining the integrity of the audio within the reverb. You can also add musical intervals to the reverb signal with Shimmer, and enhance the harmonic spectrum with Glimmer.
Throw in a filter section - which enables you to sculpt both the reverb signal and the Karplus-Strong string synthesis voice - and an Infinite button (this freezes the audio at the input to the reverb core, while allowing any new audio to be processed by the reverb on top of the frozen audio) and you’ve got a serious, if slightly bewildering proposition.
StarLab is available now priced at $649. Find out more on the Strymon website.
