Ahoy, Swashbucklers!

Now lets see what the VCB-SKPR is all about!

Using spectrometers, oscilloscopes, and more nautical-grade equipment than Captain Ahab's tool shed, we've perfectly replicated these RAM-bent beauties with our revolutionary VCB (Virtual Circuit Bending) technology.

1. NAVIGATION BRIDGE (TRANSPORT)

Where Every Captain Charts Their Chaotic Course

Welcome to your command center, you beautiful sea dog !

This transport section channels the spirit of Oval's legendary album 94diskont, where Markus Popp deliberately damaged CDs to create glitch music. Oval's technique involved physically damaging the surface of CDs to force the player's error correction to produce rhythmic artifacts and digital textures.

The Navigation Bridge provides five distinct playback behaviors that emulate various CD malfunction states:

Core Parameters:

  • Repeat Rate – Stutter frequency (syncs to DAW tempo)
  • Repeat Time – Duration of each repeated segment (most audible in Pause mode)

Transport Modes:

Loop – Continuously repeats selected audio segment

Reverse – Plays audio backwards from current position

Play – Single playback pass with pitch shifting capabilities

Pause – Freezes playback at current position, creating sustained repetition

Skip – Randomized jumping between different audio positions

Oval showed us that the most beautiful music comes from intentionally damaged navigation equipment. Each mode imitating the chaotic beauty of storm-damaged playback systems that somehow still sing.

2. VESSEL CONDITIONS (CD MODELS)

Five Degrees of Digital Shipwreck

Batten down the hatches!

These models recreate the anti-skip behaviors studied by experimental sound artist Yasunao Tone, who created "wounded CDs" by applying scotch tape and ink to CD surfaces, forcing players into various error states.

Every weathered vessel tells a different story, and these models simulate everything from pristine naval flagships to ghost ships barely holding together with digital duct tape and the prayers of long-dead audio engineers.

Each condition emulates a different anti-skip behavior—from tight military precision to full-blown memory mutiny:

  • Clean – Your ship fresh from the digital dry dock, pristine and disappointingly well-behaved
  • Clean Clicks – A few sonic barnacles on the hull, subtle artifacts from life at sea
  • Lo-fi – Your vessel's weathered some storms (pitch clicks + 5% sample rate corrosion from salt spray)
  • More Lo-fi – Battle scars and creaking digital timbers (stronger clicks + 10% electronic rust)
  • Crashed – Full ghost ship mode: intense click distortion, lost bit-depth, and interpolation failure like your vessel hit a digital reef and kept sailing anyway

3. CHAOS COMPASS (CIRCUIT BENDING SWITCHES)

Digital Mutiny at Your Fingertips

Splice the mainbrace!

The circuit bending switches scattered across your deck represent a convergence of legendary audio pirates. Here we honor  Reed Ghazala, who coined the term "circuit bending" after accidentally short-circuiting a toy in 1966, and CD Bitch, an anonymous hacker who specifically circuit-bent the anti-skip protection mechanisms in portable CD players.

While manufacturers designed Electronic Skip Protection (ESP) to buffer audio data in RAM and prevent playback interruptions, CD Bitch discovered that by circuit bending the Anti-Skip circuitry and buffer timing, they transformed protective mechanisms into creative tools for generating stutters, loops, and digital artifacts.

Together, these pioneers mapped the territory we're now exploring digitally. CD Bitch handled the RAM rebellion while Ghazala provided the theoretical framework for why breaking things on purpose could be an act of sonic creation.

Switches 1–9 – Toggle secret navigational charts using our VCB (Virtual Circuit Bending) Technology.

Intensity – How hard you want to sail into the digital hurricane (multiplies all bending effects until your signal begs for mercy or starts speaking in tongues)

This whole plugin owes both Reed Ghazala and CD Bitch a sea-soaked, solder-scorched salute. They showed us that love and destruction are often the same thing when applied to the right circuit board at exactly the wrong moment.

4. STORM GENERATOR (MUTATION SEQUENCER)

Where Rhythm Goes to Get Beautifully Lost

All hands on deck!

This mutation sequencer pays homage to Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, White Whittle's Turing Machine and Alan Turing's mathematical madness of pattern theory. Those electronic admirals who proved rhythm doesn't need to follow maritime law. 

You're not just sequencing here—you're conducting a mutiny against predictability:

  • Stutter Switch – 50% chance your audio gets caught in digital crosswinds and starts repeating itself like a parrot with amnesia
  • Pitch Switch – 50% chance of octave leaps like a ship jumping waves during a sonic hurricane
  • Rate – Speed of your rhythmic storm system (how fast the chaos evolves)
  • Steps – How many beats before the pattern repeats (or evolves into something unrecognizable)
  • Chance – Likelihood of each cycle spawning new chaos instead of following orders
  • Lock – Batten down your mutation pattern when you find sonic treasure worth keeping

5. THE KRAKEN'S REVENGE (DIRTY CROW DISTORTION)

Feedback From the Depths of Audio Hell

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!

The Dirty Crow distortion module is our Frankenstein's monster, assembled from countless feedback experiments and haunted by the restless spirit of the ZVEX Fuzz Factory—that unhinged little treasure chest that squeals, screams, and occasionally interrogates you about your deepest audio fears.

This legendary pedal doesn't just process your signal—it psychoanalyzes it. 

  • Dirty Crow Mode Switch – Choose your level of nautical nightmare:Dirty = Controlled chaos (blended dry signal with civilized distortion for landlubbers)Crow = Full kraken mode (intense resonance and beautiful destruction that'll make your speakers question their life choices)
  • Intensity – How hard you want this beast to bite your signal (from gentle nibble to full digital mauling)
  • Cutoff – Dual navigation filters (bandpass + highpass) to chart your frequency course through the storm
  • Feedback – Global feedback that can summon digital sea monsters (self-oscillation warning: may cause spontaneous electronic possession!)
  • Pre/Post – Whether chaos happens before or after your stutters (pre = raw hurricane in a blender, post = smoothed aftermath of digital carnage)

Fair warning: Don't answer when it speaks to you. Just sail through the storm and let this beast turn your pristine audio into something that sounds like it was recorded inside a hurricane made of broken amplifiers.

6. TIME DILATOR (STRETCH)

Where Seconds Become Centuries

Last but not least, we present our most mystical instrument: the "Stretch" knob. This is our maritime love letter to Paul Nasca's Paulstretch—the time-warping algorithm that can take one measly second of audio and stretch it into an ambient ocean of eternity. It's like watching time itself take a deep breath and become the horizon.

Turn that mundane cowbell hit into an epic ambient voyage worthy of its own sea shanty. 

Two Temporal Vessels at Your Command:

  • Two-Grain Stretcher –No So Clean or precise time dilation (0–100% = infinite sonic loop of eternity)
  • Reverby Multi-Grain – Cinematic, octave-shifted, reverb-soaked time, wavey gravey, shoe gazey stretch that sounds like whales singing in a digital cathedral in a black hole

Navigation Control:

  • Stretch Parameter – Your temporal helm: adjust stretch intensity and reverb blend (in Reverby mode)

Thank you, Paul, for showing us that time is just another ocean to navigate—and that sometimes the most beautiful journeys happen when you slow down enough to hear the waves between the waves.

CAPTAIN'S LOG: The Evolution of Anti-Skip Warfare

A Brief History of RAM-Based Rebellion

 1990–1993: The Lawless Seas (Pre-ESP Era) No protection, no mercy. Every bump meant instant sonic mutiny. These were the days when listening while walking was like sailing through a hurricane with no anchor.

 1994–1995: First Defenses (ESP 1.0 Arrives) Sony launches their first Electronic Skip Protection with 3-10 seconds of RAM armor. Light protection for gentle voyages, but still vulnerable to serious storms.

 1996–1998: The Great Buffer Wars (ESP2 Era) Buffer sizes grow to 1MB. RAM-based protection becomes serious business. Joggers finally get their sea legs.

 1999–2001: The Golden Age of Anti-Skip (Mega Buffers) MP3-CD hybrids arrive with buffers up to 120 seconds. These ships become nearly unsinkable, able to weather any digital storm.

 2002–2010: Overkill and Abandonment Skip protection reaches perfection just as everyone abandons ship for iPods and streaming. The CD player becomes a ghost vessel, perfect and forgotten.

 2020–Present: Digital Necromancy Circuit benders like us raise these electronic spirits from their watery graves, turning their perfect anti-skip systems into instruments of beautiful chaos. What was once protection becomes our weapon of choice for sonic exploration.

Ready to set sail, Captain? Your digital crew of 100 broken Discmen awaits your command. Chart your course through these six treacherous waters and discover what happens when skip protection becomes skip perfection.

 Welcome to the VCB-SKPPR Fleet