Big Time - Analog/Digital Echo
Chase Bliss saves the Automatone format — those gorgeous motorized-fader boxes — for its most ambitious ideas, and the Big Time earns its slot in that family. Developed with John Snyder of Electronic Audio Experiments, it chases a very specific ghost: the sound of early-80s rack delays, when digital echo was new, expensive, and full of analog circuitry wrapped around the converters. The Big Time recreates that hybrid architecture faithfully. A genuine analog preamp and feedback limiter surround a 32-bit, 48kHz stereo delay engine, so repeats saturate, compress and bloom the way they did through studio racks on countless post-punk and new wave records — clear but never sterile, warm but never murky. Six CNC-machined faders control Color, Time, Cluster, Tilt EQ, Feedback and Wet/Dry, each with the satisfying physicality that makes Automatones feel like instruments rather than utilities. Preset recall physically slides the faders into place, which never stops being delightful. Scale, Motion, Mode, Voicing and State switches unlock chromatic pitch options, modulation shapes, looping behavior, and voicings from hi-fi to saturated tape-adjacent grit. Full MIDI, stereo I/O and expression control make it as deep as anything Chase Bliss has shipped. This is not a budget delay — it is a statement piece for players who obsess over the character of their repeats. If your reference points are Peter Gabriel-era studio echo and modern ambient sound design in equal measure, the Big Time speaks both languages fluently.
