Darkglass Anagram Multi FX Announced

[Christian N]

Darkglass was sold to Korg a couple of years ago, so beyond Neural having the Darkglass plugin I'm not sure how much connection or collaboration there is between them anymore. The Anagram may even be purposefully intended as competition against the QC for the bass market

The fact that they opted for open source neural amps instead of the proprietary NDSP captures really elevates this point.

Had no idea Darkglass was sold to Korg! O thought that maybe a Quad Crortex II was just around the corner with NAM functionality too, or an update to the QC including it. :/

It's marketed for bass, but it seems guitar players (this month I'm a guitar player and was looking to renter the QC) are also using this as a NAM player with amazing results. The captures are so close it's unbelievable! So much that trying to get anywhere closer would have insane diminishing returns..



(Sorry if this get double posted.. I had a weird login glitch)

 

[silky smoove]

And yet, the attack values of compressors fall right into that range and fiddling with attack knobs has impact on the perceived sound.

Attack and release characteristics are different than your ability to perceive latency.

I don't know. I am not tech savvy. But I would rather avoid a signal chain that messes with my timing.

Good news; Even twice the latency reported by Darkglass won’t mess with your timing because you won’t be able to hear the difference anyway.

 

[kyral210]

$1200??

The symbol you’re looking for is‽

Honestly, if I had that money burning a hole in my pocket I would buy one, I bet it’s an upgrade from the Helix and definitely has more capacity than my HX Stomp. HOWEVER, from the videos I cannot tell any noticeable jump up from my Stomp in terms of sound quality, so I would spend money for a shiny box with no improvement on enhancing the show, ease of life, functionality, price, or tone (well, maybe a small bump up).

 

[bassnyc1]

I just noticed this last night while watching this on the Bass Channel's review. Nice box. At first I was a bit bummed because I just bought a Stomp less than 3 months ago and this one sounds great but the price.... and no dual inputs. As a Ric O Sound user, this isn't viable for me.

 

[jimfist]

1.3ms latency, directly confirmed by Darkglass in the youtube comments

Ok. Digging a little deeper... if I'm using my standard tuned 4 string bass playing on my low open E string, and then I engage the pitch shifter to drop the pitch a whole step ( to D ), does the latency vs. dry remain at approximately 1.3 msec? In this case, if it's anywhere below 4msec, that would be remarkable, especially if tone artifacts and warble are minimal.

Since the pedal allows for split path, it would be easy to see this on a recording through the unit, with a performance having one path on a dry recorded track, and the down-shifted tone on another track, and then zoom in on the waveforms to see where the attack offset is, if any, between the two tracks.

I know it's still very early for demos and fine scrutiny of the Anagram, but I'd love to see a user deep dive into this aspect. Would be an expensive solution, but if can in fact do drop-pitch shifting with superior results vs. the rest of the market, that's pretty HUGE IMHO.

 

[calypsocoral302]

I'm just going to say this-- if this unit has both the Microtubes Infinity and A-O Phi drive & compression built-in, that alone would justify the asking price, given that those units still go for $599 & $549, respectively...

 

[beardown10]

I own the Exponent 500 so I have some experience/exposure to the Darkglass ecosystem. I’m happy with their blocks and the tones I get from them. I think it’s on par with all their other products. I do read some people are concerned on how many updates we’ll see from Darkglass since they’ve so far been pretty sparse but the fact that they’re adding more products integrated with the Darkglass Suite has to mean they’re going to be committed to it right? The more products they release that use/support the Suite can only be a good and reassuring thing I’d think…

 

[whoismarykelly]

Ok. Digging a little deeper... if I'm using my standard tuned 4 string bass playing on my low open E string, and then I engage the pitch shifter to drop the pitch a whole step ( to D ), does the latency vs. dry remain at approximately 1.3 msec? In this case, if it's anywhere below 4msec, that would be remarkable, especially if tone artifacts and warble are minimal.

Since the pedal allows for split path, it would be easy to see this on a recording through the unit, with a performance having one path on a dry recorded track, and the down-shifted tone on another track, and then zoom in on the waveforms to see where the attack offset is, if any, between the two tracks.

I know it's still very early for demos and fine scrutiny of the Anagram, but I'd love to see a user deep dive into this aspect. Would be an expensive solution, but if can in fact do drop-pitch shifting with superior results vs. the rest of the market, that's pretty HUGE IMHO.

In order to synthesize a new pitch the unit needs to hear at minimum half the wave length of a note to identify the pitch. Then it needs to perform the processing. For an E that would mean about 12ms for half the wavelength.

 

[amper]

I haven't had the chance to watch any of the introduction videos, but I do have to say that Darkglass has a lot of convincing to do to get me to buy a unit that costs double what a Boss GT-1000Core costs.

I like that the Anagram has stereo XLR outputs, but a good external stereo DI box is going to have better quality and be more flexible than anything you can stuff into such a tiny box. Even considering that the Core needs a stereo DI, it's still significantly cheaper, and I'm not convinced the Anagram has better features, otherwise.

I also note that the Anagram seems to require about three times as much current as the Core, 2000 mA v. 670 mA.

 

[silky smoove]

Since the pedal allows for split path, it would be easy to see this on a recording through the unit, with a performance having one path on a dry recorded track, and the down-shifted tone on another track, and then zoom in on the waveforms to see where the attack offset is, if any, between the two tracks.

Unless the outputs are delayed so that they come out time aligned. This isn’t an uncommon approach for processing devices with multiple outputs.

 

[Evan J]

They could probably charge 2K for this and still sell like crazy. The rising prices have clearly not stopped the pedal business. But man these boxes have gotten expensive.

Sadly my rig is still costs more, so they have a point.

 

[BrianVengeance]

Oh, 3.5mm midi connector? So weak. I see that getting changed at some point, that's a deal breaker.

@D.A.R.K. can you elaborate? Even for a 5 / 7 pin DIN you're only using 3 of the pins, and DG did the correct thing by adopting the standard Type A TRS MIDI wiring over the Type B used with the ADAM / Infinity / Photon. This is big improvement IMO.

I'm just going to say this-- if this unit has both the Microtubes Infinity and A-O Phi drive & compression built-in, that alone would justify the asking price, given that those units still go for $599 & $549, respectively...

Having the VMT / B3K / AO engines under the same hood is a pretty compelling palette IMO. It doesn't add up to $1200, but the rest of the features make up most of the difference. I think that last few hundred or so will be bridged with updates and longevity of the device. Getting 4-5 years out of it amortizes out pretty favorably for an updatable platform with midi control, effect loop, looper, tuner, mixer, global EQ, RTA, bluetooth, audio interface, and plugin capabilities. The NAM capture support and alignment to open source software is a nice touch on top of it all.

Looking at my board now, I've definitely spent a lot more to recreate a significant amount of this same bit of functionality.

 

[amper]

Another thing I notice is that I cannot find any listing of the effects algorithms that are actually available in the Anagram, other than this image, and it's not clear if this is meant to be comprehensive.

 

[amper]

It's interesting that they are marketing the Anagram as "Linux-based", but Linux is not an inherently realtime OS, although there are realtime extensions to Linux. I'm all for free and open source software, but it remains to be seen how well this device will actually work and whether or not it's going to actually be open in any meaningful sense. Android, after all, is "Linux-based", but most Android devices have bootloaders that cannot be bypassed. Do Darkglass have any intention of providing source code for the drivers for their proprietary hardware, or is it only going to be binary blobs, if they are available, at all?

My first view of the deep dive video seems to show that the signal chain order on the display is left-to-right, which I loathe. The vast majority of all pedalboards go right-to-left, because most players are right-handed, and in fact the physical layout of the jacks is right-to-left, so I really hope there is an option to reverse the display.

 

[DenisLM]

Coming from a HX Stomp (and XL) and Helix Rack, feels like there’s more potential, however as of today doesn’t see to have nearly as much as effects, options and configurability as the HX family. MIDI is nearly non existent.

So overall I’m not sure how much it is really an upgrade….
All that said, ended biting the bullet and getting it
Should arrive on Friday.

With some talk you can get a 10% off without that much effort. Got it with tax and shipped for less than the MSRP. Just a FYI.
Make a bit easier to justify I guess…

 

[BrianVengeance]

It's interesting that they are marketing the Anagram as "Linux-based", but Linux is not an inherently realtime OS, although there are realtime extensions to Linux. I'm all for free and open source software, but it remains to be seen how well this device will actually work and whether or not it's going to actually be open in any meaningful sense. Android, after all, is "Linux-based", but most Android devices have bootloaders that cannot be bypassed. Do Darkglass have any intention of providing source code for the drivers for their proprietary hardware, or is it only going to be binary blobs, if they are available, at all?

I wouldn't fret too much over Linux - low latency kernel extensions have been a thing for 20+ years at this point, and ALSA / JACK have about the same level of maturity. Harrison Mixbus is based on Ardour which has about the same legs as ALSA / JACK, and Allen and Heath consoles integrate with Harrison LiveTrax, so there is some level of confidence behind that part of the ecosystem within the pro audio world. In general, Darkglass seem to be following the Apple model (they are a hardware company), so only time will tell if that approach is successful...

As for Android, I wouldn't exactly call that a shining example of open source software, nor is it explicitly audio related. Bootloaders are what actually load the Linux OS into memory and are more closely aligned with the hardware than anything. There are open source boot loaders, but that comes down to vendor's choice for the device itself. I won't even step into the awfulness that telcos have perpetrated upon Android as an OS and supporting devices, but I would consider Darkglass' adoption of NAM similar to the ratification and adoption of the OpenDocument format by ISO in 2006. I won't say it is a repeat, but it certainly rhymes and is one of my more favorite moments in open source history.

You've also probably answered your own question with asking about the source code for the drivers for proprietary hardware - if that's the level of access you're looking for, then you may want to look towards the MOD Audio devices. Embedded systems, especially for audio, is quite niche, and if you have the time and the talent I'm sure they'd take a pull request or two.

 

[olko]

I bought exponent e500, and since there was maybe 1-2 updates that added something, still no parallel processing and now darkglass dropa this. Am sceptical whether promised features will get into unit at all, since i felt e500 was marketed as what anagram is now (+ being an amp but i didnt care about that, since i dont use it as amp (and also when i did it's 500w felt weaker than my old trace elliot 150w head))

As a potential buyer i'd be warry of buying this, at least until all features that you want are implemented properly.

For me ut just made me double down on getting fm9 instead of qc or anything other can't trust darkglass anymore.

 

[Ratterbass_]

It's interesting that they are marketing the Anagram as "Linux-based", but Linux is not an inherently realtime OS, although there are realtime extensions to Linux. I'm all for free and open source software, but it remains to be seen how well this device will actually work and whether or not it's going to actually be open in any meaningful sense. Android, after all, is "Linux-based", but most Android devices have bootloaders that cannot be bypassed. Do Darkglass have any intention of providing source code for the drivers for their proprietary hardware, or is it only going to be binary blobs, if they are available, at all?

My first view of the deep dive video seems to show that the signal chain order on the display is left-to-right, which I loathe. The vast majority of all pedalboards go right-to-left, because most players are right-handed, and in fact the physical layout of the jacks is right-to-left, so I really hope there is an option to reverse the display.

The Cortex is also Linux based. There’s even an unofficial modded firmware somewhere on GitHub.

 

[DamirDart]

I have two pedalboards. One is based on the HX Stomp, extended with the new Cali Compressor and the DCX Bass. The other is built around the Quad Cortex, complemented by the Jad Freer Capo, Empress Compressor, and HX One. So, I’ll never need this pedal in my life! That being said—Darkglass, take my money!

 

[gtirard]

My favorite Youtube video so far:



I really like the explanations:
- By bassists for bassists
- Intuitive UI
- Open to external plugins (needs Darkglass team collaboration). Can become a player for any DAW plugin if the developer wants.