Delay: Echo and Repetition
A delay records the signal and plays it back after a gap. You hear the original sound, then a copy arrives later. An echo.
How echoes work
Think of shouting across a canyon. Your voice hits the far wall and bounces back. The gap between shout and echo is the delay time. A delay effect does the same thing electronically - it stores your sound, then plays it back after a set number of milliseconds.
Each vertical line above is a burst of sound. The first is the original - loud and clear. The repeats are echoes, each one quieter than the last. The spacing between them is the delay time.
The three controls
Time - the gap in milliseconds. Short delays (50--100 ms) produce a slapback - a quick doubling, like early rock and roll vocals. Longer delays (300+ ms) create distinct, separated echoes.
Feedback - feeds each echo back into the input so it gets delayed again. Low feedback = one or two repeats. High feedback = a long, slowly fading trail of echoes.
Mix - balances the original (dry) signal against the echoes (wet). At 0% you hear no echo. At 100% you hear only the echoes.
Try it
Turn on the arpeggiator first, then enable the delay. With separated notes going in, you can hear each echo clearly. Start short, then stretch things out.
- Slapback: Time 80 ms, Feedback 10%, Mix 50%. Quick doubling - rockabilly vocal sound.
- Rhythmic: Time 250 ms, Feedback 50%, Mix 40%. Echoes that reinforce a pattern.
- Atmospheric: Time 500 ms, Feedback 70%, Mix 35%. Long trails that wash into each other.
Rhythmic delay
Set the delay time to match the tempo of your music and the echoes land on the beat. At 120 BPM, one beat = 500 ms. Use 500 ms for quarter-note echoes, 250 ms for eighth notes. The echoes reinforce the rhythm instead of blurring it.
This is how The Edge from U2 builds those shimmering guitar textures - precise delay times that multiply a single strum into a cascade of on-beat repeats.
Ping-pong delay
Ping-pong delay alternates each echo between left and right channels. The sound bounces back and forth across the stereo field. This machine uses a standard mono delay, but the principle is the same - two delay lines panned to opposite sides.
Tape vs digital
Tape delay records signal onto magnetic tape and plays it back from a second head. Each pass degrades the signal - high frequencies are lost, subtle wobbles appear. Echoes get warmer and darker with each repeat.
Digital delay keeps the signal perfectly clean. Same echo, same fidelity, every time.
Neither is better. Tape sounds organic. Digital sounds precise. Most modern delay effects are digital, sometimes with deliberate tape-style degradation added back in.
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