How do the playback and feedback buttons work on Volante?

Volante has 4 playback and 4 feedback buttons that are used to select which of the playback heads are active which will be feeding back to the record head.

Playback Buttons

When in standard operation, Volante has 4 playback heads, each of which can be enabled or disabled with their corresponding playback buttons.

• Press Volante’s playback buttons to select which of the playback heads are active.  A GREEN (full volume) or AMBER (half volume) playback button indicates that the head is active.
  • To set a playback head to half volume, press and hold the playback button until it turns AMBER.
• If you are looking for multiple delay repeats per delay cycle, engage 2 or more playback heads.

Feedback Buttons

Each playback head has a corresponding feedback button which determines if the signal from the head will fed back to the record head.

• Press Volante’s feedback buttons to select which of the feedback heads are active (GREEN). 
  • If you want just a single delay repeat, engage any 1 of the playback heads with no feedback buttons engaged.
    • If you want that delay repeat to continue playing back, engage 1 of the feedback buttons and use the REPEATS knob to control the amount of the delay signal being fed back to the record head.

The SPACING knob is used to adjust the spacing between the playback heads.  Turning the knob morphs the heads between the noted even, triplet, golden ratio, and silver ratio settings.

• even: Head 1 – 16th note, Head 2 – 8th note, Head 3 – dotted 8th note, Head 4 – quarter note
• triplet: Head 1 – 16th note triplet, Head 2 – 8th note triplet, Head 3 – quarter note triplets, Head 4 – quarter note
• golden: Head spacing resulting in dense, non-overlapping repeats biased towards head 1.
• silver:  Head spacing resulting in dense, non-overlapping repeats biased towards head 4.

Here are some examples to help with using the playback and feedback buttons (with the SPACING knob set to even):

• If you have no playback buttons on, you will not hear any repeats, even if you have all the feedback buttons on.
• If you have only playback 4 on and all feedback buttons are off, you will get a single quarter note repeat.
• If you turn on feedback 4 only with playback 4 on, you will get quarter note repeats and the REPEATS knob will control the amount of feedback for the number of repeats.
• If you turn on all 4 playback heads, but only turn on feedback 4, you will hear 4 delay repeats per quarter note for every delay cycle.
• If you turn on all 4 playback heads, but only turn on feedback 3, you will hear 4 delay repeats, but they will repeat every dotted 8th note after the initial repeat since that is the tap division that head 3 corresponds to.

Additional Tips

• For a standard, quarter note delay, engage both playback and feedback 4 and set the SPACING knob to even.  Use the TIME knob or tap in a quarter note tempo with the TAP switch to set the delay time.
• If you want eighth note triplet delay repeats, engage both playback and feedback 2 and set the SPACING knob to triplet.
• For dense and atmospheric golden and silver ratio delay settings, engage 2 or more of playback heads 1-3 and at least 1 of the corresponding feedback buttons.
• A playback head can be fed back to the input even if its playback button is disengaged.
• Engaging multiple feedback buttons will help shape atmospheric and rhythmic delay repeats.