the many shapes of delay

About the different applications of audio delay effects.

There are quite a number of different types and applications for the audio delay effect in the audio production ranging from plain technical delay application up to all the musical and creative ranges of application. The rather technical or correctional delay typically is a plain digital delay which serves as a sample accurate alignment tool. Such alignments might be necessary for example for plug-in delay compensation (when a plug-in introduces latency) or during the mixing process to align a group of recorded tracks or samples. The so-called pre-delay can also be seen as an alignment sort of thing where the direct source signal has to be aligned in a positive or negative manner in relation to a processed signal, e.g. in a reverb effect.

NastyDLA – final teaser and release info

NastyDLA – technical architecture

simplified technical architecture

Internally, NastyDLA consists of quite a bunch of DSP processing building blocks which as a whole are summing up to an authentic signal path simulation of it’s analog models. The blocks and the according signal flow are shown in the diagram above. Basic signal flow goes from left to right except the feedback path which goes in the opposite direction.

With NastyDLA, signal path coloration already starts in the input stage which provides a complete model of both, frequency and phase response as well as dynamic saturation. It’s located in the dry path but all nonlinear processing and coloring can be disabled on demand so it remains as a simple input volume control then. But while switched in, the input stage can greatly contribute on getting the processed signal to fit right into a mix.

NastyDLA – some tape delay fun

To make up a complete and sustaining sequence out of  some melodic pattern is a standard task for the electronic musician. The good old tape delay is his best friend then, providing not only consistent and sustainable echos which are glueing nicely with the original signal but also offering some realtime modulation possibilities as well, to animate some maybe rather static sources.

In this short demo a static pattern is used and NastyDLA is going to be in charge as a tape delay replacement. The chorus is not used in this example but the plug-ins coloring possibilities are shown to some extend: After some bars the timbre of the delay feedback loop changes to a higher pitch and then to a lower one (and vice versa) while simultaneously the feedback amounts are going to change. To the end when the pattern stops, the “tape speed” is slowed down first and accelerated back again afterwards to demonstrate its artifact-free modulation capabilities.

Note how smooth the saturation behaves when driven into self oscillation w/o the usual amount of aliasing artifacts. The delay line generation in this example is set to “dual mono” mode (with 8th to the left and dotted 8th to the right) and the time modulations can be done separate per channel. All animations were done in realtime with host automation and in general all plug-in parameters can be automated in the host.

NastyDLA – first public audio shot

A plain riff played with a simple Kontakt sample based guitar, no additional modulations or reverb is used.

Download both naked and rendered version in wav quality here.