The Walrus Audio Qi is a a stereo multiFX pedal, where the granular engine, delay, and chorus can be routed in series or parallel. It looks like it’s going for the massive ambient wall of sound that Walrus does well.
As someone who loves any and all granular delay pedals, this definitely piques my interest
Excited about this one. I love that there’s some granular stuff in there, and a freeze. I’ll have my first look video on my channel fairly soon!
I’ll post one more YT demo I found. Listening to what’s out there makes me wish it had more of the Fable DNA in it. As it is, you just don’t have much control over the granular engine. That said, while the individual components aren’t as powerful as a dedicated pedal, taken as a complete package, it’s pretty compelling. A drive pedal plus a Qi could definitely give you a characteristic sound
I’m looking forward to more videos from owners once these are in the wild
Would make a gorgeous send effect for a drum machine and/or synth.
Would also love to play guitar through it, of course. 
I’ve been playing with this one all day, and I’m really pleased with the sounds it makes. I’ll try to get a video up in the next day or two.
Oh, this one looks interesting. I’ve been interested in a multi FX with delay, chorus and reverb. Having that plus something granular in stereo is very appealing (and the orange version even looks really cool).
Looking forward to your demo, @jayhosking. The reverse and random mode of granular sounds really cool in their guitar demo, reminds me of Microcosm’s best mode when phrase sample is active. I didn’t like the chorus and reverb sound at all in the demo, will be interesting to hear that with a synth. All the effects are also way overdone in the demo when they’re running all at the same time.
Is there any way to switch the signal flow in series mode? Having the granular after the delay doesn’t make much sense to me.
P.S.: Nice they let CBA’s Joel do the guitar demos ;).
Strong agreement with others who are saying that looks really interesting. The black version looks really nice… looking forward to hearing what Duskmos/Jayhosking do with running synths through. Particularly interested in hearing it what it sounds like with softer sounds, or those with fewer harmonics than the guitar demos typically have. I can imagine that some 8-bit sine waves or simple triangles would be particularly nice.
Here’s the Qi with a bunch of hardware synths. I honestly think this thing will be super useful as a multi-effect that gets you into the ballpark of ambient and spacy really quickly. I’m really enjoying its sounds and already setting up to record a song with it that I wrote while improvising here.
Sounds amazing! Relatively inexpensive! I am interested now…What is the catch?
Honestly, no obvious catch here that I can see. The delay is pretty unexceptional (just a clean mono delay line down the middle), but otherwise it does a bunch of very nice things.
Looks very similar to the chroma console with more focus on the ambient side of things (as opposed to the saturation stuff on the chroma).
Would you say it’s mainly for those who want to make ambient wash? Or would it also be good to just have some reliable hands on control over bread and butter FX (plus some granular from time to time if you want to)? Can’t watch your video right now, maybe you adress that in it.
I don’t do any talking in the video, but I demonstrate each of the effects individually. My personal opinion is that it gives you the bread and butter effects if you want them, but starts to really shine when you combine the effects.
The stereo chorus sounds great on mono sounds and is all the chorus I really need; the delay is a pretty bland/boring mono delay line, but the tap tempo and MIDI synch work and it combines well with the other stereo effects; the granular on its own is a really cool and pleasing sounding thing, and with granular buffer freezing you get beautiful dry sound collages; the reverb sounds great but having mix and decay on the same knob somewhat limits its use; and the filter is handy on its own and great for shaping the effects.
When in parallel mode, you can basically use any of these in its own audio path, which is super handy.
So you could use it for bread and butter send effects, but I think my favourite moments with it was definitely when I was combining everything.
Does routing the delay into the granular engine get you into Fable (also from Walrus Audio) territory? It seems like with the delay time, feedback, and grain time, you could get into some interesting sound design
I don’t know Fable well enough to say, I’m afraid, and I didn’t try that particular routing.
Have to agree with @jayhosking - fun to get it all going and just smear it up. I love it.
tone suck, prob?
OT and this is not related to that Walrus Audio pedal only:
For me it is getting more and more difficult to hear and notice the differences between all these now available fancy stereo reverb and delay pedals, e.g. from Strymon, Eventide, Meris, Source Audio, Walrus Audio, Chase Bliss etc.
To me they mostly sound very good and I don’t feel the need to get a new device. Maybe this is today’s luxury to have broad offerings, maybe that market is saturated.
Regarding sound quality of pedals used with synths IMO we should discuss more re-amping to get the best sound from them live and in a DAW context.
Agree, but CBA pedals imo are still pretty unique and definitely have a kind of hi-lofi sound going that’s quite unique. Their interfaces usually are also pretty singular and the controls rarely map 1:1 to something known from other pedals/plugins. They’re all about exploring and finding interesting sounds, while many of the other pedals/manufacturers you’ve mentioned are more about giving you instant gratification with only a few controls (especially Microcosm) or well known FX and controls in yet another new case (especially Strymon, UAFX). CBA pedals aren’t afraid to let you make ugly and crappy sounds, while the others are mostly about helping you to avoid these.
Here’s a great guitar demo. I’m really enjoying the Qi on guitar, but I think that’s just because the granular+delay engine does nice things with plucky sounds.
