Soliton

What is Soliton?

Soliton is a feedback delay and texture engine where every repeat reshapes itself. Eight allpass dispersion stages spread the wave on each pass through the loop (controlled by the Spread knob); saturation refocuses it (Focus knob); a dynamic stabilizer holds the amplitude steady. The result is a delay line that neither decays into silence nor runs away into feedback. Repeats that hold their amplitude indefinitely while their character evolves on every recirculation — built from the Korteweg–de Vries equation that John Scott Russell first observed as a wave of translation in 1834.

What is Soliton?

The KdV equation describes solitary waves — pulses that propagate through a nonlinear dispersive medium and preserve their shape against the forces that would normally smear or attenuate them. Soliton implements that balance directly inside a feedback delay loop.

Eight allpass stages spread the spectrum on each pass through the loop, the same way dispersion spreads a real wave. A waveshaper inside the loop refocuses the signal, bringing the spread energy back into a coherent pulse. A dynamic amplitude stabilizer adjusts feedback gain on every cycle so the line neither decays into silence nor runs away into self-oscillation. The equilibrium between dispersion, refocusing, and stabilization is what makes the delay sustain at a fixed amplitude while continuing to change in character.

That sounds cool, so how do you use it?

There are five primary parameters: Time sets the delay length; Spread sets the magnitude of the dispersion stages; Focus sets the refocusing strength of the in-loop saturator; Sustain sets the target amplitude the stabilizer holds; and Tone shapes the high-frequency response of the loop.

There are four shaper modes: Warm Tanh, Asymmetric Tape, Glass Sine, and Metal Fold — each give different evolution arcs as the wave recirculates: from gentle harmonic warmth that stabilizes quickly, through tape-style asymmetric drive, through glassy upper-harmonic structure, into hard-clip metallic saturation.

A Pulse parameter introduces optional rhythmic gating tied to the host BPM for drum-bus and percussion work. Ping-Pong mode and a Freeze function are also provided.

Okay, long elevator pitch. Last words?

Soliton works as an infinite-sustain ambient generator (Sustain high, Spread wide), as an evolving rhythmic delay (Pulse on, Time at a divisor of the project tempo), as a saturator with depth (short Time, all Wet), and as a stabilizer for runaway feedback patches that would otherwise self-destruct. The mechanism is balance, not effect: every parameter is a knob on the equilibrium between forces that already exist in the equation.

It can be used programmed in projects or as a performance instrument.

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Learn more at https://chiral.audio.