The Alan Parsons/Keith Adkins handmade, one-of-a-kind Frequency Translator was a key component of The Dark Side of the Moon. And its sound has been hard to describe, let alone recreate – until now. PSP Audioware worked with the one and only Alan Parsons to model it in plug-in form in a personal passion project they’re releasing as PSP Wobbler.
Just to get that in your ear, here you go – “Time” is where the Frequency Translator is most noticeable (not on the clocks, but the phase/frequency shifting through the rest – especially on background vocals):
Alan Parsons racked up some great all-time production achievements, from The Beatles’ Abbey Road to Al Stewart to, of course, The Alan Parsons Project. Abbey Road engineer Keith Adkins built the original Frequency Translator hardware as a custom-built modulated phase shifting effect – it’s a pitch shifter with feedback, behaving effectively like a chorus. And the effect is beautiful and nuanced, triggering all sorts of wonderful confusion. “Wait, that’s like a phaser. No, I mean a flanger. Wait, no, like a Leslie speaker? What?” That’s fair confusion, too, since the Shin-Ei Univibe (of Jimi Hendrix fame) did mimic rotating speakers in a phase shifter effect – but the Frequency Translator is none and all of these. It’s really a phase shifter with specific circuitry and design impacting coloration and results.
PSP has recreated this effectively in plug-in form and added quite a lot of additional control – meaning, this isn’t just a one-off historical novelty but something you might well integrate into new techniques. Features:

- +/- 25Hz shift, which you can run free/manually or use as a DAW clock division
- Lower/upper controls for frequency via EQ settings
- Follow tempo changes or set to a fixed value
- Wet/dry mix for the wobble
- Drive, Age controls (modeling saturation/character of the original hardware) – with control over where you add that to wet or dry signal, or both
- Feedback, thermal and voltage Drift, Phase, and stereo spread
It’s fantastic: it’s a convincing model of the original effect and something you can use in new ways.
But maybe you want to hear Alan Parsons talk about this Alan Parsons Plug-in Project. (Alan is like the 1970s synthfluencer if you will. Uh, we’re not worthy.) And you’ll hear that this wobbling is a totally contemporary effect, not just a 70s throwback – not that there’s anything wrong with a throwback to Dark Side of the Moon even in 2025 – but with that nice, crunchy, organic character of the original hardware:
Maybe that’s not enough Grammy Awards for you, so here’s still more with David Das, looking even more deeply at how to apply this creatively (watch in the beginning for some historical images of the original):
It’s funny, having just taught phasers to some undergraduates in a course in the fall, but so often this is what you want. “A phaser-but-not-really-quite-a-phaser” is the technical term.
PSP is doing some great historical recreations with the proper blessings – Eddie Kramer has endorsed their Datamix A567, emulating Jimi Hendrix’s console EQ.
And why not? Not to switch entirely to cooking metaphors, but there is a defensible parallel here. There’s the five-spice seasoning in southeast Asian cooking – or coming from a Lebanese background here, the Lebanese seven spice. Even more directly, African cooking has the miracle Maggi cube. These are secret-but-not-so-secret formulas that give cooking a particular flavor. When you don’t know what it is, it’s hard to describe. Once you do, you unlock that flavor. It doesn’t magically make you a good cook – and conversely, it doesn’t destroy the magic of the cuisine or those ingredients. It just connects your sense of taste to the source. It’s likely to make you want to head back to the kitchen even more.
I’d argue you’ll even have a more complete, heightened sense of the flavor once you do know what it is. And there’s an equivalent in sound. You may hear “Time” even more vividly once you’ve messed around with this.
I just started to play around with Wobble, but wow.
It’s on an intro price of $49.99 until February 14 (I may just sit with a box of chocolates and a bottle of wine and add Wobbler effects to some things). They’ve also given you a 30-day trial, so you don’t have to worry about me getting you overexcited about something you don’t need.
https://pspaudioware.com/products/psp-wobbler
PSP’s Antoni Ozynski shares a really personal story about why this plug-in mattered – more than just nostalgia, I know this really speaks to a lot of the connections we have in our lives to records:
This project is deeply personal for me. My father left my mother and me when I was just two years old. Then, in the late ‘70s (when I was 4), my stepfather came into our lives, bringing with him a vinyl turntable and a collection of albums. One of them was The Dark Side of the Moon.
From the moment I first heard it, I was mesmerized. I started listening to the album almost every day—it quickly became my favorite. The immersive sound effects—clocks, coins, helicopters, engines—completely captivated me. The atmosphere was dark and mysterious, and I absolutely loved it.
In fact, before Mateusz came up with the idea to start PSP, Alan was the only sound engineer I truly recognized and admired.
Thanks, Antoni.
I also love that these tools give us greater insight into creative production minds. For more, here’s an extended conversation by Rick Beato with Alan Parsons from the summer:
Plus the Recording Academy in a talk about vari-speed double-tracking (more Maggi cube / monosodium glutamate action):
You’ll find more details:
Dark Side 25th anniversary interview with Alan Parsons in June 1998 by Mel Lambert
Plus for a device-by-device breakdown of the equipment:
The Gear of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” [Reverb.com]
And yeah, hope you all create some new sounds with this. Our moon still has a lot of its dark side to explore – great as that original record was, I’m sure you’ll uncover still more.