Delay plugins / hardware

Hey guys,

I'm working on some music right now that requires I use very specific delay times. Right now, I'm using the stock Apple plugin 'AUDelay' because I'm able to plug in a specific delay speed.

However, it will round off a number after the 4th decimal place and I need it to go up to 6 or 7 decimal places. Are there any digital delays that give you this kind of resolution?

The intended delay time here is 0.02085 but rounds to .0209

Also, are there are hardware digital delays that let you plug in tiny, specific delay speeds?

EDIT: it's probably obvious that I posted this before I read the OP but I'm leaving it because I'm quite satisfied with my little visual analogy (also delays like the one I posted do have the kind of resolution the OP needs, but it would be a real hassle to set accurately). As far as the actual question, this might be useful, you can set delay times with inter-sample levels of accuracy:

http://www.airwindows.com/purestecho/

No feedback or tone shaping of any kind, just four taps of delay with extremely tight timing.  You can use other plugins (Chris offers a lot of them himself) and depending on your DAW it might be easy to add feedback. It's simple to do in Reaper.

The off topic original post starts here.

I used to have an ADA s1000 rack delay like this (but with the original knobs):

I traded it and kept the two second Digitech counterpart because that one had a phase inverted output, negative feedback and a footswitch for the hold/freeze but I kind of regret it.  Thee was something really nice about that ADA and I think in retrospect it's probably my favorite digital delay, new or old, hardware or software, that I've ever used.  The Digitech has identical controls with those extra features, but it doesn't have that sound.  The ADA sounds digital in the best possible way.

EDIT: it sounds like this:

  On 1/27/2018 at 2:38 AM, Oscar said:

echoboy.png

How many decimal places will it go up to?

I thought it did two, but it's only one decimal point between milliseconds.

He needs five of the bad boys. Definitely intrigued as to the requirement of one hundred thousandth of a second (my brain is struggling with the maths - is that 10 micro seconds?) precision!

0.02085 seconds = 20.85 ms. I can't figure out what the hell he needs to be that precise for either. Sounds like he's cooking up some madness over there.

Ah sorry I meant I was trying to work out the precision (being unhappy with 0.0209 as needed 0.02085)

ohhhh

Ah I just remembered something I'd used in the past with delays down to 1 micro second. I can't remember why I didn't pick this up and ended up with a similar vst (excalibur by exponential audio) but: https://ariescode.com/ariesverb

Edit: just found my post over in kvr as to why I didn't pick ariesverb up - *none* of the parameters are automatable by the daw. You have to stay with the values chosen in the gui if you want to use it in a track

Damn thing crashes Renoise in OSX. Looks like it's still in beta. Sounds like it could be really cool, though. I'll keep an eye on that and hope they get a working version on OSX

I think it's been in beta for like 6+ years now, that mightve been the other reason I didn't buy it. Shame though as I got some damn wild sounds out of it

... Just looking at the changelogs and it's been at v0.7.x since 2009!

The closest thing I've got that'll do this is the H-Delay from Waves

maybe this http://www.voxengo.com/product/sounddelay/

not strictly a proper delay but maybe can be used on wet send of normal delay to add that extra delaying

You could probably find or design a delay in Max/PD that is as precise as you want it to be. When I was trying to learn Max, there were quite a few tutorials for making your own delay (pretty early into the learning process IIRC, so it should be easy enough to make with limited knowledge), and of course user-made stuff is out there to test and/or modify to your needs.. Does any of this work as a VST though...hell if I know :)

edit: out of the scope of the request, and it seems obvious to me but I'll mention it no matter: halving/quartering/etc. the BPM of the track will allow the available delays to essentially act as more precise tools. May not always be an option of course, and definitely a roundabout 'fix' that would likely lead to other problems, but still.

Thanks for the links, fellas!

  On 1/27/2018 at 10:55 AM, mcbpete said:

He needs five of the bad boys. Definitely intrigued as to the requirement of one hundred thousandth of a second (my brain is struggling with the maths - is that 10 micro seconds?) precision!

  On 1/27/2018 at 1:37 PM, auxien said:

You could probably find or design a delay in Max/PD that is as precise as you want it to be. When I was trying to learn Max, there were quite a few tutorials for making your own delay (pretty early into the learning process IIRC, so it should be easy enough to make with limited knowledge), and of course user-made stuff is out there to test and/or modify to your needs.. Does any of this work as a VST though...hell if I know :)

 

edit: out of the scope of the request, and it seems obvious to me but I'll mention it no matter: halving/quartering/etc. the BPM of the track will allow the available delays to essentially act as more precise tools. May not always be an option of course, and definitely a roundabout 'fix' that would likely lead to other problems, but still.

Yeah, modifying existing code would probably be the best way to do it. I have a few books about designing plugins, so I may have to start there.

  On 1/27/2018 at 11:28 AM, mcbpete said:

Ah I just remembered something I'd used in the past with delays down to 1 micro second. I can't remember why I didn't pick this up and ended up with a similar vst (excalibur by exponential audio) but: https://ariescode.com/ariesverb

 

Edit: just found my post over in kvr as to why I didn't pick ariesverb up - *none* of the parameters are automatable by the daw. You have to stay with the values chosen in the gui if you want to use it in a track

I like AUDelay because it can take in a very small number, but you can only automate like two things. One of those things isn't the delay speed, oddly enough. The idea of just building my own delay plugin is sounding like a better idea already.

you could try something like

  Quote

Protoplug is a scriptable plugin that lets you load and edit Lua/LuaJIT scripts as audio effects and instruments. The scripts can process audio and MIDI, display their own interface, and use external libraries.

 

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/protoplug-by-open-source-audio-research

a basic delay script

https://github.com/pac-dev/protoplug/blob/master/ProtoplugFiles/effects/delay%20line.lua

another thing would be Cabbage Audio:

http://cabbageaudio.com/

some example scripts

http://www.iainmccurdy.org/csound.html#Cabbage

That looks rad! I'll definitely dive into that soon.

  On 1/29/2018 at 12:15 AM, Braintree said:

 

  On 1/27/2018 at 10:55 AM, mcbpete said:

He needs five of the bad boys. Definitely intrigued as to the requirement of one hundred thousandth of a second (my brain is struggling with the maths - is that 10 micro seconds?) precision!

 

 

But yeah, what's the intention of the micro-second precise delay times - Are you doing pitched delays a la comb filtering ?

Yeah, I'm pitching the drums and other things, so the delay times need to be exact. It annoys me if the pitch is off by few cents. I'm also experimenting with microtonal tunings using delay speeds in other compositions. I actually just applied to MUTEK with a live set that uses that concept (it's actually xenharmonic, though).

So why not just use a comb filter?

Versatility.

alternatively to max/msp you can try puredata which is free and edit some delay patches made by other users...

also c-sound allows you to do this for sure...

sorry if that doesn't help that much...

On the hardware side, Axoloti would do this.