The mono plugin from Dutch one-person developer DROP_OUT audio works as a delay, a synth or a noise box.
Where most delay plugins are made to keep their repeats clean, MonoDelay heads in the opposite direction. The new plugin from DROP_OUT audio is a lo-fi dub delay, modelled on a cult-classic toy synth, and rather than smoothing out the imperfections, it holds onto the noise, degradation and dynamic limits you’d get from a cheap signal path.
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Part synth and part effect box, MonoDelay is built around a monophonic synth section, PT2399-style delay behaviour, an MS20-style filter, a recordable ribbon MIDI keyboard and a routable LFO. Depending on how you approach it, the plugin can be run as a delay, played as a synth or taken somewhere a little stranger.
With the feedback turned right up, the delay becomes effectively infinite, and sweeping the Rate knob while it plays sends the buffer pitching up and down along with it. Routing the LFO to the filter, with its peak set high, is where things tip over into an outright noise box.
By design, MonoDelay is mono, with no stereo option and no host sync, so its rate is set by ear rather than locked to your project’s BPM. DROP_OUT is also upfront about what it isn’t: this was never meant to be a faithful PT2399 emulation, and the goal was to preserve the chip’s character rather than reverse-engineer its silicon.
Shipping as both an effect and an instrument, MonoDelay is available in VST3 for Windows, and in AU and VST3 for Mac, running natively on Apple Silicon and through Rosetta on Intel, with sample rate support spanning 44.1kHz to 192kHz.
A 14-day, full-featured trial can be found on the website. It’s the debut release from DROP_OUT audio, a one-person Dutch company run by producer and coder Martijn, who has around five more character-first plugins planned across the next two years.
If your other delays have started to feel a little too polished for their own good, this is the gap MonoDelay is meant to fill.
Head here to check it out.
