Acoustic Feedback is a title whose name describes an effect rather than a product, and the catalogue should establish which title it names before publishing, since feedback is simulated by more than one developer and the resulting products are not equivalent. The effect itself is worth explaining regardless of which one a listing names, because it is a real acoustic phenomenon rather than a generic effect category.

Acoustic feedback occurs when a signal picked up by a microphone is amplified and re-emitted through a loudspeaker in the same space, and the sound re-enters the microphone — above a certain gain the loop becomes self-sustaining, producing the familiar rising howl at whichever frequency has the shortest path around the loop and the highest gain at that moment. Three things follow from the mechanism and are what a simulation must reproduce. The pitch is determined by the room's acoustics and the microphone's position, not by the instrument — so the feedback note changes when the player moves or the amplifier is repositioned, which is why guitar players shift position to find the note they want. The onset is gradual — as gain increases the howl grows and its pitch locks in, so the effect has a characteristic swell rather than an instant onset. And the harmonic content is rich and unstable — the fundamental dominates but the timbre shifts as the loop settles, which is what makes feedback usable as a musical tone rather than only as an accident. In the recorded repertoire the effect is closely associated with electric blues and rock guitar, where holding a note near a loud amplifier produces a sustained, sung tone the instrument itself cannot sustain — the reason a plugin simulating it exists, since a producer working in the box has no amplifier to place a guitar against. What distinguishes one simulation from another is worth stating as criteria: whether it models a specific amplifier and speaker combination or a generic feedback behaviour, since the amplifier's frequency response and the cabinet's resonance determine which frequencies feed back first; whether the pitch is controllable, since a musical feedback effect must allow the sustained note to be chosen; and whether it produces the swell as well as the sustained tone, since the transition into feedback is part of what performers use. The product form should also be stated, since feedback tools exist both as plugins and as Kontakt libraries of recorded feedback, and the two are not interchangeable: a recorded library supplies finished performances, while a plugin generates feedback in response to the input signal.

Suits blues, rock and psychedelic guitar production, film and game audio, and sound design where the swell into feedback is needed as an effect.

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