PARROT: FREE Delay Review

Dark Palace just released a new FREE delay effect for the KVR developer’s challenge. Parrot is a three tap delay that allows you to place a different effect on each tap. This simple concept makes for some interesting delay design where various echoes distort, move, shift and wobble depending on which effect is applied to each delay line. Each delay line can go as short as 0.1 ms allowing you to create some nice short delay resonators

Each of the three delays has a bandpass filter, their own delay time, panning, and one of ten different effects: tube, BBD, saturation, pitch shift, freq shift, bitcrush, disperser, flanger, chorus, flutter. Tube, bbd, and saturation can all add some nice crunch. The pitch and frequency shifters really open up a lot of creative sound design options. I always love using a subtle frequency shifter within a short delay with high feedback. The disperser also makes for some crazy resonances making this an incredible physical modeling tool. The chorus, flanger and flutter also provide some nice motion.

I really apreciate what they did with the UI on this one, the main filter display acts a s a controller for the three different filter bands allowing you to adjust their frequency and slope. As well they’ve made the effects displays act as controllers for the effect’s parameters. These parameters vary from effect to effect as well as the animations within the window which is a nice touch. 

The simplicity behind Dark Palace plugins while still hiding a bit of depth beneath the surface makes them quite enjoyable. The variety of effects here essentially make this a parallel multi-effects processor with a delay built into each effect. Three dispersers with three short delays is such a great combo that it could be the only setting and I’d still enjoy this plugin.

I really like the idea of incorporating different effects into multi-tap delays, it is an idea I’ver explored in the past and I like how they’ve done it here, but I’m not sure I’d quite call this a multi-tap delay. Still, for a free plugin, this one is definitely worth picking up. That said, there are a few quirks and bugs, the input gain slider doesn’t seem to do anything, I’d also have liked feedback to work vertically instead of just sideways. Dark Palace mentioned to me that they plan to clean this all up after the KVR developer challenge.

You can pick up PARROT for FREE here: https://darkpalace.studio/products/parrot