The Walrus Audio Qi is a stereo multi-effects pedal designed for immersive atmospheric soundscapes, created in collaboration with the truly amazing guitarist/influencer Yvette Young. It’s a creative stompbox that offers creative flexibility and inspiration through an organic blend of effects including Chorus, Delay, Granular effects, and Reverb.
Powered by the company’s own MDSP platform and an ARM-based Cortex M7 processor, this is a rather complex device featuring a whopping 12 knobs and 4 push buttons.
Its key features can be summarized this way:
- Three main effects: Grain sample tweaking effect (2 modes), a basic Digital Delay, and Chorus (2 modes). Their overall level con be controlled via the top knobs.
- They can be run in series (Chorus into Delay into Grain) or parallel (all sharing input and output without feeding each other) or a blend of the two.
- Grain Effects: this is the first effect in the chain, it has two modes selectable by the push mode at the bottom: Grain Cloud (generating glitchy textures) and Phrase Sample (producing rhythmic grain effects). They can be tweaked via the Gran and “X” knob (setting the grain’s length or the tempo of the samples, depending on the mode).
- The Digital Delay is as straightforward as it gets, with controls for Time (up to 2 seconds) and Feedback, plus three subdivision options for Quarter, Dotted Eigth, and Eigth.
- The Chorus section has two modes: Tri Chorus, more lush and complex mono effect, and Stereo Chorus, more classic-sounding but in stereo.
- The Space Knob adds ambient reverb to the entire output.
- The Tone Knob applies a synth-style low-pass filter for tone shaping to the output.
- There’s also a Freeze footswitch for momentary effects – how could that be missing from a pedal of this kind?
- Preset Storage: Save 3 onboard presets (expandable to 127 via MIDI).
- MIDI Control: TRS MIDI in/out and additional stomp controls for advanced features.
Here are the videos!