What does the Razornator actually do?
Erica Synths has teamed up with Dutch DSP house 112dB for something that is not a synth and not a delay, even though it is built from delays. The Razornator is a desktop stereo effects box whose core is five chromatically tuned resonating stereo delay lines, which add up to ten Karplus-Strong resonators. Feed it a drum loop, a vocal, a pad or noise, and it imposes a tuned resonant character on whatever passes through.
Around that core sits a proper processing chain rather than a single knob. There is a master 'shift' control and four pitch offsets to tune the resonators chromatically, a gain stage that pushes up to 24 dB for an analog-style overdrive, a resonant low-pass filter, an envelope follower for dynamic movement, plus a compressor-limiter and an EQ to keep the output usable. All 12 parameters respond to MIDI, and presets save and recall.
Why a Karplus-Strong box, and why now?
Karplus-Strong is the classic algorithm for plucked-string and physical-modeling sounds. It simulates the way a real object rings, the body of an instrument, a room, a metal structure, by feeding a short delay back on itself. Putting ten of those in a stereo hardware unit turns the technique into a performance effect rather than a hidden DSP trick.
For organic house, dub techno and percussion-led tracks, this is a machine for making sounds feel struck, bowed and physical.
The timing is not random. Producers have spent two years chasing organic, acoustic-leaning textures as a reaction to clean digital sound, and a dedicated resonance box rides that wave straight onto the desk.
Is it for you?
The honest counter-argument is that physical-modeling plugins already do Karplus-Strong, often cheaply. Erica Synths is betting that hands-on control, stereo routing, a footswitch and the 112dB sound design are worth the 490 euros plus VAT, with shipping from 3 July 2026. If you build tracks around texture and resonance rather than presets, a tuned, playable resonator on the desk is a different way of working. If you mostly want a reverb, this is not that.
