ginTronic transparentSea

When game developers turn their hand to making studio effects, the results are bound to be highly playable!

The transparentSea multi‑effects unit is the first hardware device from Dresden‑based developers ginTronic. It draws on their experience in game design and interactive systems, and there’s an intentional and functional clarity about this box that makes it both beautiful and very playable: it eschews screens, presets and complexity in favour of hands‑on, intuitive control with everything out on the table.

Soft Hues & Overviews

On my desktop, the transparentSea sits in quiet contrast to everything around it. The soft hues of blue, red and pink against the off‑white enclosure with Buchla‑style knobs radiate a sense of assured calm amidst the chaos of my working environment. It’s beautifully designed, clear, ordered, well‑labelled and solidly built. Those transparent, illuminated buttons are very striking, and have a satisfying ‘clack’ to them, as they transition between blue and pink, and occasionally green. The knobs feel solid too, with a good amount of resistance to turning. All in all, then, first impressions of the hardware are that it’s top‑notch.

One thing that does raise an eyebrow is the choice of physical connections. On the back are four mini‑jack sockets, labelled MIDI Out, MIDI In, Out, and In. Mini‑jacks are, of course, very common in Eurorack modular gear, but the transparentSea is primarily designed as a line‑level device. The audio mini‑jacks are stereo, which means many will need to access this awesome, high‑quality effects box through a pair of headphone adaptors. I feel that full‑sized jacks would have been a more robust choice for something designed for use with synthesizers and outboard gear. But, with the right adaptor, that’s a gripe more than a genuine difficulty.

It’s not just the MIDI that’s on mini‑jacks — the stereo audio I/O is too.

The effects on offer here are a pair of delay lines, a chorus, a tremolo, saturation (what GinTronic call ‘Heat’), a DJ‑style resonant low‑pass/high‑pass filter, a stutter effect, and a reverb. An enormous reverb, in fact! All the physical controls are on the front panel, and except for a couple of Shift+button combos, it’s almost all one‑knob‑per‑function. In addition, there’s have a Clock button, a Bypass button, input and output level controls, and a wet/dry mix knob.

First in the chain are the two digital delay lines, which are identical. On each you have controls for time, feedback and level, with a Shift function for panning, and a nice big on/off button. The button works as a ‘soft’ bypass, letting all the echoes continue...