A cool pedal - Empress Effects Zoia

[st.bede]

Empress effects Zoia. I put mine back on my board.

I think I took it off my board because, I was spending too much time creating stuff.. or, I could of had a new project, or I could of bought a new pedal… I do not remember why, I took it off.

… I think my next pedal purchase will be a Strymon Nightsky… that looks fun.

[Spook410]

Looks complex and kinda fun..

[st.bede]

Compared to any other pedal, I know of, it is extremely complex.

That allows for a person to really build any effect, within processing power limits. It is like a modular synth.

They do offer already built effects.

However you can deeply shape an fx if you build it from the components. For example chorus/vib you take a delay line and an lfo to modulate the time. However how you modulate that time is really dynamic. What wave: sine, square, triangle, random… you can also mod the lfo… and you can build sawtooth, and much more complex wave forms. Maybe you want your chorus to move from a strict delay to chorus over a set amount of time.

I have not even done what I just described, but I know it can be accomplished. Is it worth while? I would have to build it to know.

I just spent maybe ten hours building a complex chorus. That is a down side. I could be working on music. However, sometimes it is good to take a break from the physical playing or creating of music and do something that is related to that.

There are a few other downsides. Bringing patches in and out of Zoia is little funky. Also understanding another built person’s patch is difficult.

I have not seen any good vids, so I have not embedded any here.

I have been also interested in the beebo, but there is too much latency for me.

[supersoul]

With the Zoia, what is the latency, and how complex can you make a patch? For instance, how many Oscillators can you use before it runs out of power?

[st.bede]

With the Zoia, what is the latency, and how complex can you make a patch? For instance, how many Oscillators can you use before it runs out of power?

Those are excellent questions. I wish I had great answers. I do not.

When it comes to latency, it is not bothering me. I think I notice a little. I have a feeling that it is about as bad or good, as most complex digital pedals.

Processing power increased a good amount after an recent-ish update. (Maybe a year ago). I use to constantly bump up against it, when creating verb like multi-tap delays, or if I had a complex fx and then used the high quality plate verb. Since I put it back on the board, and then did the update, I have yet to experience an all out “no more power moment”. Again my feeling is such that, it is a good amount more powerful. All I can say is that I am a happy camper.

Another thing to think about is, that I can send out a lot of different midi messages to other pedals, or anything that takes midi.

I can also run one line in with pedals before and another straight in and mix the two lines, in creative ways.

I did try to do a send and return type of thing, that did not work well.

It is powerful. I wish there was a good example in the youtube world, but either they sound a bit lame, or they get pretty deep. If I come across one, I will embed it.

[supersoul]

Thanks for the detailed response. It's a good sign that you haven't run out of processing power yet!

I looked up the Zoia FAQ and found that The baseline latency when bypassed is 3.21ms and 1.33ms with each module. which is pretty low.

It looks like a really cool device, almost like a digital modular synthesizer with two inputs and two outputs. I would definitely waste time if I had one!