Special Source

Building on what it started with its Collider delay/reverb pedal, Source Audio delivers a close Encounter of the ambient kind

- Words Trevor Curwen

The Encounter is the fourth pedal to use the dual-footswitch form factor seen in previous Source Audio pedals.

The Ventris Dual reverb and the Nemesis delay were the first two and then came the Collider, which basically combined some of what those two provided in a pedal that offered individually footswitchable reverb and delay. The new Encounter is more of the same, but where the Collider led with the more traditional reverb and delay types, this time things get more esoteric with some reimagined and enhanced from the Ventris and Nemesis, and some all-new engines developed by the Source Audio boffins.

You get six delay and six reverb engines in total, to be selected with the encoder knob. The two footswitches effectively give you two separate pedals that can be used individually or together, but while the two sides of the pedal may be marked on the front panel as Delay and Reverb, they are really Engine A and Engine B because you can actually load any of the 12 engines into each side, allowing dual delay or dual reverb combinations. Whatever you set up can be saved as a preset and you can access eight of these from the front panel or a full 128 if you use MIDI.

In Use

With two inputs and two outputs there are various ways to connect the pedal, with combinations of mono and stereo depending on your needs. The control surface is pretty straightforward yet it still gives you plenty of hands-on adjustment over the sounds. A small toggle switch assigns the six knobs to either the Delay or the Reverb side, or just locks them so they can’t be accidentally tweaked.