Simple delay pedal settings5/26/2023 With the old tape echo units, pitch modulation could be achieved manually by turning the tape speed knob back and forth, but to my knowledge, none of the units had a device for automatically modulating the capstan motor speed. The depth control sets how far sharp or flat the sound goes, but it should be noted that the longer the delay time you have set, the more pitch variation for the same depth setting. The available controls are speed and depth, which determine how the sound is modulated modulating the delay time causes the pitch to waver both sharp and flat at the rate set by the speed control. The modulation section is based around a low‑frequency oscillator, rather like the LFO on a synth, which modulates the delay time in much the same way as rapidly turning the delay knob up and down would do. This feedback effect was often used with tape echo machines to create sci‑fi effects, but with a DDL, the distortion caused by level overload when feedback occurs usually results in a pretty unpleasant noise. But if you set the feedback too high, the level of the repeats builds up rather than dying away, until the result is an uncontrollable howl. All the feedback control does is to send some of the delayed output back to the input so it gets delayed again the more feedback, the more repeats. But, because the DDL has a much wider range of delay times than a typical tape echo unit, and because it has delay modulation facilities, it can be used to create a far wider range of effects.Īs well as having the option to vary delay time from a few milliseconds to around one second or more on a typical DDL, we can vary the feedback to produce more than one repeat from a single sound. For those of you who remember tape‑loop echo machines, the DDL does the same job but with no moving parts. The result is a copy of the original sound but slightly delayed. The DDL is fairly simple in principle a sound is digitised, stored in RAM memory, then, after a short time, it is read out, converted back to an analogue signal and sent to the output socket. With a modern programmable unit, setting the parameters is less intuitive, so it helps if you know how the effects are created in the first place. This meant that you had to learn to use the machine, because there were no presets - but because there was a dedicated knob for each function, it was easy to fiddle around until you got what you wanted. In the early days of digital delay, the units were all controlled by knobs and were non‑programmable. The range of effects that can be coaxed out of a DDL includes: delay, repeat echo, slap‑back delay, chorus, vibrato, flanging, phasing and resonant 'tunnel' echo. The majority of multi‑effects units offer digital delay as part of their repertoire, but all the most common delay‑based effects can be produced using any digital delay line, manual or programmable, that has modulation facilities and control over delay time and feedback. Though we have come to accept digital reverberation as perhaps the most important of all studio effects, it's probably still true to say that the simple digital delay, or DDL, is the most versatile. Paul White describes how to set up your own DDL effects from scratch. Digital delay tends to be taken very much for granted, but the majority of today's studio effects would be impossible without it.
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