Will we ever see a truly new effect?

[John]

Apologies if this has already been explored here...

Every "new" effect that comes out is just a rehash, a twist on an existing design, or a combination of standard effects. I can't think of when the last time an effect was created that was truly unlike anything that came before it. I think "Shimmer" is the most recent novel sound to be featured in a pedal, but that's still just a combination of reverb or delay and pitch shifting. If I had to guess I'd say the newest single effect is either the digital looper or glitch pedals, unless you count amp modeling as an effect in which case that really started with the original SansAmp. Does the Miku Stomp count? How about audio to MIDI converters?

What say you? Will there ever be a truly new effect in our lifetimes? And what do you think is the newest single effect?

[Ghost Hip]

Fun thought experiment. Maybe the new effects are the ones we met along the way?

My initial thought is most effect units are synthesized versions of naturally occurring/practical effects and there are no "new" base effects being introduced through effect units. Chorus emulating a choir singing. Tape flanging. Tape looping. Audio phasing. Vibrato. Amp tremolo. Overdriving a mixing deck. A pitch shifter is emulating another instrument playing a certain interval alongside you, 12 string, etc. Are seashells are resonant volume boosts? Not exhausting the list here but had fun thinking this through lol.

Shimmer would be a fascinating one to research to see if a natural example exists or can be constructed. Could you equip a hall or cathedral with resonant objects that pick up upper octave harmonics from reverberations?

Digital buffer looping and/or freezing seems like a reasonable contender for newest effect? Is a Boss PS-3 the same effect as the count to five?? Are plasma coils my dad?? Is recording popping bacon grease the same effect as the relaxing rain sounds I use to fall asleep??

Curious what other people think of

[backwardsvoyager]

Not super big on genAI, but having a little thingermajigger that can work off open-ended text prompts to create code for real-time audio processing algos and then run it on the same device would be pretty wicked. And sound hideous, obviously.

[TheTransient]

First thing that came to mind is maybe the EAE Prismatic Wall? Obviously based on resonant sympathetic strings, so in line with what Ghost Hip was saying, it's not a "new sound" per se. But I dont think there are other pedals doing that, so I guess it could be a "new effect"? That said, even EAE's description says "Part reverb and part synthesizer", "physical string model formed by tuned delay lines" and "analog saturation and filtering". So I suppose it's really just a novel combination of existing effects.

AI could be interesting, but I figure you'd have to keep it from learning about traditional audio treatment/effects and guitar pedals for it to have a chance of figuring out something new.

[Warpsmasher]

I'm sure AI can restyle, or rather re-synthesize audio input in countless ways, but in a pedal that would be a new kind of digital synth effect..an advanced version of stuff like Miku and C4. Prompting synth voices could get pretty interesting. Prompting a unique new effect might be a bit more difficult, since AI is trained on existing material, so maybe negative prompting to eliminate everything that's been done already.

AI, create me an amplitude modulated formant filter distortion with voice settings from the entire cast of Conan the Barbarian.

[friendship]

this is a kōan.

[Gone Fission]

Digital signal processing has brought a lot of things that used to require analog recording media manipulation done very ploddingly available in real time. Granular stuff in concept is old but is new in this zone of readily available to by as a guitar pedal. We’re still behind what people are doing in Max or PD but the gap seems to be shrinking. The newer things I’ve seen in studio DSP stuff has been about breaking out layers of audio to process bits of it separately. Maybe coming to pedals eventually?

(Prismatic Wall does something barely done in pedals before, but Lexicon and Eventide have done resonators in rack for decades and I think the H9 had a much less deluxe resonator algorithm that preceded.)

[le lambin]

Short answer is no.

Is there a new number between 0 and 1?

Is there a new note between B and C?

No, but it’s still an interesting topic. The effects may have been all accounted for- but their depths maybe haven’t been fully plumbed?

[alexsga]

Is there a new number between 0 and 1?

fractions?

Is there a new note between B and C?

microtonality?

[UglyCasanova]

Well, we had the fart and cat pedals recently. Not new tech, but I suppose new sounds.

[D.o.S.]

I would say normally the innovation comes from use cases, rather than audio effects.

See: Entombed and the HM-2. Dubstep and detuned sine waves. T-Pain and Vocoder/Autotune. Electric Wizard and the FZ-2. Sunn and boosted Rats. Remember the PLL convo around the Schumann PLL pedal (the "you can't just build a PLL" guy who posted here lives in my head to this day)?

If you have ideas, you'll find ways to make the gear do what you want. If people like your ideas, they'll flock to the gear you used to do it. The more people do that, the more companies will be incentivised to explore avenues like that.

[Gone Fission]

Is there a new note between B and C?

microtonality?

Fretless bass preceded the fretted. Old hat.

[John]

I would say normally the innovation comes from use cases, rather than audio effects.

See: Entombed and the HM-2. Dubstep and detuned sine waves. T-Pain and Vocoder/Autotune. Electric Wizard and the FZ-2. Sunn and boosted Rats. Remember the PLL convo around the Schumann PLL pedal (the "you can't just build a PLL" guy who posted here lives in my head to this day)?

If you have ideas, you'll find ways to make the gear do what you want. If people like your ideas, they'll flock to the gear you used to do it. The more people do that, the more companies will be incentivised to explore avenues like that.

I agree, but those innovators haven't inspired the companies to create new effects, just signature and custom shop models of already existing gear. So if some Gen Alpha kids start a really popular band that prominently features some bit of gear, no matter how innovative those kids are the technological development will only be around encapsulating that sound in a marketable product. I guess that happened when studio bands first started messing with tape flanging, phasing and delay, which led to the pedal versions of these things, so as you said the innovation is in the use, not the tools themselves. Maybe that means that the next new effect will come from someone bastardizing an as-yet unexplored bit of tech. Just thinking out loud here but I guess we should look at things that have been ignored.

For example, I don't know if anyone else has done this but I use my guitar to trigger a v-drum module. I run it through delays and a matrix of bypass pedals and I can instantly create blast beats from my riffs - here's a quick video clip: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0pEFX17KmJg . There are already drum trigger systems that play samples and do other MIDI things, and I think the future might look more like this.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I'm going to say no because it's fun to be grumpy and old and then be proved wrong.

I do think it seems very unlikely in the audio world to find something "new" for all the good reasons people have said. But it's a strange world and I'm sure someone said that before some other thing came out.

[Blackened Soul]

Unless we manage to go beyond analog and 1s&0s and stop thinking ai will do anything new… and are still here on earth planet… so.. no.