Reverb and delay
Reverb and delay: rooms, echoes, pre-delay and decay, drawn as they happen.
What is reverb pre-delay?
Pre-delay is the gap before a reverb starts. Hear it in a live lab, see where it comes from in a real room, and set it for vocals and drums, with tempo charts.
What is reverb decay time (RT60)?
What reverb decay time and RT60 mean, how RT60 is measured, typical times for real rooms, and how to set decay to your song's tempo, with a reverb lab to try.
What are early reflections?
Early reflections are the first echoes of a sound off nearby walls, inside 50 to 80 ms. See how they set room size and distance, then shape them in a live reverb lab.
What is convolution reverb?
What convolution reverb is and how it uses an impulse response, shown on a live lab: trim, stretch and reverse an IR, see a sine sweep measure one, load your own.
What is reverse reverb?
Reverse reverb plays a reverb tail backwards so it swells into a sound. Learn how to make it in any DAW, time it to the tempo and hear it in a free interactive lab.
What is delay feedback?
Delay feedback sets how many echoes you hear and how fast they fade. Learn the dB-per-repeat maths, tail lengths at any tempo and what happens at 100%.
What is ping-pong delay?
Ping-pong delay bounces echoes between the speakers. Hear it in a live lab, get the timing maths per side, fix the lopsided bounce and set it for vocals and synths.
Delay times and note values
Work out delay times from BPM: 60,000 ÷ tempo gives one beat. Dotted 1/8, triplets and straight notes in ms, with a tap-tempo calculator and a delay lab.
What is slapback delay?
Slapback delay is one fast echo 80 to 150 ms after the sound. Learn where it came from, the times, feedback and filters to use, and hear it in a live delay lab.
What is the Haas effect?
The Haas effect explained: why a copy under 30 ms late sounds like one wider sound, how to widen a mono part with it, and what it does to your mix in mono.
What is ducked delay?
A ducked delay turns its echoes down while the dry sound plays and lets them swell in the gaps. Hear it in a live lab, then set one up with a sidechain compressor.
What is tape delay?
Learn what tape delay is and why tape echoes sound the way they do: darker repeats, saturation, wow and flutter, multiple heads and runaway feedback.
Reverb vs delay
Reverb vs delay: delay gives separate repeats you can count, reverb thousands of echoes that blur into a wash. Hear both on one sound and learn when to use each.
Plate vs hall vs room vs spring reverb
Plate, hall, room and spring reverb compared in a working lab: how each one starts, how its decay changes with frequency, and which to use on vocals and drums.
Algorithmic vs convolution reverb
Algorithmic reverb builds a space from delay lines you can reshape live; convolution plays back a recorded impulse response. Hear both, captured from one space.
Insert vs send effects
Insert vs send effects: what each routing does to the dry sound, why reverb and delay go on a send, and pre vs post-fader sends, with a two-channel mixer to try
Tape delay vs digital delay
Tape delay vs digital delay compared in a live lab: darker repeats, saturation, wow and flutter, pitch bends and feedback, with settings for when to use each.
What is reverb?
What reverb is and how to set it: pre-delay, decay, damping and mix explained on a live stereo reverb with room, hall, plate, spring and chamber types.
What is delay?
Learn what a delay effect does on a live stereo delay: tempo-synced note values, feedback, ping-pong, filtered and ducked repeats, slapback, and ear training.