Echo echo

As I have explained in a previous article, sounds have particular characteristics that make them appear different from one another depending on the space they are played, one of these being reverb, where the reflections of the sound on a closed surface play along with the direct interpretation of the sound, making It sound like It's slowly fading away. Another one of these characteristics, and one that is notoriously apparent and understandable to us is Delay. You might recognize delay from a common effect, what we know as echo, where we pronunciate a word through a deep tunnel or metal surface and Its sound waves reflects through It, making the word be replicated through more iterations before fading away. In this article I'll talk about the artificial ways to create delay and the properties and knobs these usually have. Let's begin by defining first what Artificial Delay is.

What Delay is?

Delay consists in the multiplication of a sound signal and the modullated shift of It, which once processed adds Itself to the main sound, making Its content replicate through different repetitions with less intensity before It disappears.

The way this effect is added can be through analog means (With pedals) or digital processing (VSTs or plugins), though generally, the elements that are controlled in the equipment designed for this keep constant. Let's see what these are:

Delay Characteristics:

• Dry/Wet: The old Dry/wet knobs, These two control how much of the original signal (Dry) we want in comparison with the Wet or Processed signal.

• Volume and Pan: The Volume knob controls how much amplitude we want the delayed signal to take and panning shifts the direction of the delay to our left or right.

• Delay mode: This controls how we actually want our Delay to be regarding to Its panning and stereo field, that's why Its actually pretty related to It. Usually there are three options, one being mono, where the delay plays in a narrow way (Losing Its stereo characteristics) in the center with equal amount on both speakers/headsets. Stereo, where the Delay plays in a more space regarding the Stereo field and Ping Pong, where the Delayed sounds shifts constantly between left and right before disappearing. We might also have the Inverted mode, where the delay just plays exactly in the opposing direction from where the original signal is played.

• Feedback: It determines how much the delay will continue playing before finally fading away. A high amount of feedback will make the echo sound for a long time, and a low amount of feedback will make It disappear almost instantly.

• Offset: Another one which helps the sound open in the stereo field, with echoes that sound wider.

• Time: It determines how separated the delays or echoes will be one from each other. This kind of time adjusting usually comes in two ways, one where you control It according to the Tempo or the beats per minute, and one where It is more time oriented in an objective way, with the shifts being measured in milliseconds.

Finally, I hope that with the information presented you can get a better glimpse of what delay is and the many properties that can be controlled to make It sound just the way we want It. As always, I wish you the best of luck and I thank you for support!