So lets think

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Have you ever been in a large hall and called your out a word? Or maybe been on a mountainous area and shouted a word out?

If you have, you will notice that a distinct reply comes back to you after a short amount of time. That my friends, is known as an echo.
A reflection of a sound that bounces of from a surface, and returns back o the source(you) after a set amount of time. The concept of delay and echo is rather not new.

In a record, there are times when a singer speaks, and then you sort of hear a repetition(if you listen real hard). This is done like this because the real world operates like this.

See in the real world, like the example I gave above, sound does not just travel in a straight line and then disappear. Several surfaces, depending on the material that was used to create it, reflect sound waves. When we speak, what we feel is natural, is simply the echos and delays that we hear, that we are accustomed to. That is why when a singer records in a room , and a delay or echo effect is not added, the vocal seems, off, it seems unnatural.

Reverbs and delays are connected, but whole delays are short and distinct repetitions, reverbs are a wash of repetitions, so much that it feels like a flow or a wave moving out and slowly diffusing when the source stops producing any sound.

Delays and echos

echoooooooo!

So what is delay? It should be called echo, as that's what it actually is. It is the repeated replay of a sound from a source, at an interval a user sets, but with diminishing volume.

You hear it everywhere, its one of those effects that gives your sound shape and dimension. It gives a recording that natural feel.

The difference between echo and delay effects is in the time you use it.In the old days, digital magicry wasn’t all that common and effects had to be applied via special boxes know as echo boxes. These analog equipment created delays by taking a sample and looping it several times, with diminishing volume based on what the user set.

These days, delays are purely digital. They occur as a result of carefully constructed mathematical expression within a Digital Audio Workstation.

That said, a lot of complexities may not be in order for now, so ill break this tut into 2 parts.

The second part will go more indepth about the processes of delay and echos, for now, lets know about the controls.

A typical delay

a delay plugin from ableton live 9, called a simple delay

A delay plugin, will more or less have a few options

delay time

The delay time is the amount of time it takes for a sound to travel from a source(say a boy shouting), reflect in barrier, and return to the source(the ears of the boy).

What it is, its the amount of time per beat, calculated in milliseconds , set by the user, that you want the delay to operate.

Suppose you play a song at 4/4 time(4 beats per measure)(imagine a normal house track that has a kick, and count 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2. . . . . that is 4 kicks/beats per measure)

A delay of 4 means that the delay will follow each beat/kick in the measure, a delay of 2 means the delay will play 2 times as fast, playing twice for every kick, a delay of 8 means the delay will play once every 2 kicks.

Feedback

The feedback is the amount of repetitions that the delay does. A high feedback means the delay will have a high number of repetitions, all reducing in volume, one after the other, unless the source is re-triggered.

Dry/wet knob

The Dry/wet knob determines the amount of delay one wishes to mix with the main unprocessed signal.

Delays are great for giving vocal in recording a natural feel.
It is also used to make a song more ambient in nature, more spacious.

You know how we gave an example of shouting in a mountain in the beginning? Thats how we use our ears to judge distance. The further a barrier is away from us, the longer it takes the echo or delay to get back to our ears.
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