What Makes A Flanger, uh, Flange? Why Not A Chorus?

TSJMajesty

TSJMajesty

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In a simple way, what is it that happens to create a flanging effect? And a Flanger can do Chorus, but not the other way around..., is that right? Why is that? What's different?
 
I think the Strymon Zelzah is pretty good at explaining this in a practical way. Turning its Voice knob takes it from phaser to flanger to chorus sounds. Basically the difference is in how much delay is added to the signal, with chorus having more delay and potentially more copies of the signal as well.

Then Flanger, like @2112 said, feeds some of the signal back, which causes the "swoosh" a flanger has. This would be the resonance switch on the Zelzah.

Flanger can do chorus because many flangers allow you to adjust the delay time with the Manual control, whereas chorus pedals usually don't have something like this.

Here's a good article on the technical level: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/understanding-chorus-flangers-and-phasers-in-audio-production.html
 
I am also confused about modulation, I couldn't tell you if it's a phaser, flager, univibe, chorus or whatever by sound alone.
 
I’m not an expert, but I believe chorus involves mixing a slightly pitch shifted and delayed signal with the original signal, flange involves mixing a shorter delayed signal without pitch change with the original signal, and phase uses filters to invert the phase of one signal against the other.

Flange gets the sweeping thing because the pitches aren’t shifted like a chorus and so it produces a comb filtering effect. An LFO sweeps that across the frequency range giving the jet plane effect.

Phase is the one that is different because it’s a filtering effect (like wah) not a pitch modulating or delay effect
 
TSJMajesty said:
In a simple way, what is it that happens to create a flanging effect? And a Flanger can do Chorus, but not the other way around..., is that right? Why is that? What's different?
Click to expand...
Both use a modulated-delay signal mixed with dry. The difference is static delay offset: a chorus effect requires something on the order of 20-30ms, whereas a flanger uses much less: as little as zero ("through-zero" flanging).

You can create either effect with a delay block in any generation of Axe-Fx.
 
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A good analogy I heard once when describing the comb filtering produced by phasers vs flangers is that flangers will have evenly spaced teeth on the comb whereas phasers have unevenly spaced teeth and less of them. Edit: - It was probably this article.

Arguably the most iconic chorii, the BOSS CE-1, uses delay times in the 5ms range which is closer to the times chosen for flangers.

This is all making me realise how much of my life I've spent listening to things that go swoosh and trying to figure out the minute differences :facepalm
 
metropolis_4 said:
I’m not an expert, but I believe chorus involves mixing a slightly pitch shifted and delayed signal with the original signal, flange involves mixing a shorter delayed signal without pitch change with the original signal, and phase uses filters to invert the phase of one signal against the other.

Flange gets the sweeping thing because the pitches aren’t shifted like a chorus and so it produces a comb filtering effect. An LFO sweeps that across the frequency range giving the jet plane effect.

Phase is the one that is different because it’s a filtering effect (like wah) not a pitch modulating or delay effect
Click to expand...

Is flange also including feedback/regeneration of the delayed signal whereas chorus is not?
 
metropolis_4 said:
It’s caused by modulating the pitch of the delayed signal isn’t it?
Click to expand...
Yes, and the change in pitch is caused by changing the delay time.


Tape based chorusing would achieve this mechanically (so called warble). Most other cases use an LFO to modulate the delay time in some way.

The Lexicon PCM42 and Eventide Rose are interesting examples that modulate the sample rate of the delay line.
 
James Freeman said:
I am also confused about modulation, I couldn't tell you if it's a phaser, flager, univibe, chorus or whatever by sound alone.
Click to expand...
That's why the Strymon Zelzah is a cool pedal because you can easily vary between those sounds with one knob. It takes out the "I don't know which I want here" guesswork when you can just twist a knob until it sounds in the ballpark. Of course the compromise is that you won't have the specifics of different flanger or chorus types, e.g through-zero flanging or tri-chorus etc.
 
TSJMajesty said:
In a simple way, what is it that happens to create a flanging effect? And a Flanger can do Chorus, but not the other way around..., is that right? Why is that? What's different?
Click to expand...
I guess it is based on how our ear identifies the different sounds. It is all based in delays:

- if the delay is reasonably long you hear an echo. Let's say that anything delayed more than 50ms will sound doubled to you. If there is no original signal you feel a latency, if there is original signal you'll feel from a slap-back to long delays.

- once the delay is shorter than that, the ear isn't fast enough to really detect a delay from source to what you hear (you'll feel it when playing as latency but that's a different issue).

so now, it is when the modulation comes into play. If you modulate a delayed signal two things will happen:
- if the delay is 'long', say more than 10ms, you will hear the sound being in and out of tune. Technically it is called a vibrato. You can do your own coarse vibrato by turning up and down your delay control in a delay pedal.
If the delays you are modulating are between 10ms and say 40ms and you add the original signal (boss chorus) or you use several modulated signals together (boss dimension C), you will hear a chorus effect. And it is called chorus because it is the same reason why when singing we do vibrato, the ear is smart enough to 'autotune' itself and find the fundamental note. Imagine a choir, so many people are singing out of tune but they sound huge. It is also the same as doing vibrato on a guitar, you automaticall get in tune. Just try playing a note with a string slightly out of tune, do vibrato and magically sounds good as long as your vibrato is around the note you want of course.

-with delays shorter than that (and adding the original signal, don't forget this), you start screwing it up. The delays are so short that the signal interacts with itself and starts "self-filtering". Technically you get a comb filter, which is like a filter with a few narrow notches, so several frequencies get suppressed or boosted. This is a flanger. Sounds metallic when no modulating, then you have two flavours depeding on how you add or substract the original signal.

The Phaser is similar to Flanger but the signal delays, instead of being fixed and equal to all frequencies, depend on the individual frequencies. For example the lows may stay in phase and the highs be out of phase relative to the original signal. You add them, the highs disappear, the lows get boosted. If you start modulating the phase shifting and/or shift the signal several times (more delay), then you get the different types of phaser. They just don't sound as metallic as a Flanger.

Then on top of all this you have a reverb, which is a combination of everything above and, in fact, can be constructed with the same type of filters that Phaser use, then you can add some modulation here and there, a bit of delay. You mash all that together and if you are clever enough you'll have your own Lexicon reverb :D
 
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