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dale116dot7 · 10th April 2009

Here's what I came up with for observations:

At any delay less than about 50ms it sounds like a pitch. Above that it sounds like a tape loop. If I set one loop to about 100ms, another at 130ms, and another at about 160ms, the tape loops seem to be much less. But the other thing which was very noticeable was that even though the last delay loop would hide the tape loop effect anywhere from 140-195ms, the pitchiness of the noise (or snare drum) changed quite a lot. Around 160ms seemed to be pretty even, though I did not use a spectrum analyzer. With noise, the spectrum changes a lot. If I move the 160ms tap out to 180ms, the low end of the snare drum really pops out.

If I use something like a snare drum as opposed to a noise source as the input, the 'tape loop' sounds a lot like a helicopter. Adding a second loop at 130ms makes that sound totally go away and it sounds like a bad reverb. Adding 160ms sounds like a better bad reverb. Also, if you stop the sound, the tail of this (bad) reverb sounds pretty even - no particular 'ring' seems to stick out.

At feedbacks less than 0.5, it sounds like a couple of delay lines. At around 0.7 it starts to sound like there's a reasonable tail. Setting the levels at about the same volume level for each loop seemed to sound most natural to me.

What seems tricky here is getting a good frequency response (no peaks), and at the same time getting a good time response (nice reverb tail). One combination of delays seemed to work. Interestingly, those times didn't ratio very well. I got another reasonably nice sounding one at 50ms, 73ms, and 89ms, which have different ratios than the first set of numbers.

Setting one loop fairly short tends to make a 'tunnel' sound - very resonant.

Does this sound familiar?

10th April 2009	#16
dale116dot7 Lives for gear Joined: Dec 2003 Location: Calgary, Alberta Posts: 816 Thread Starter	Here's what I came up with for observations: At any delay less than about 50ms it sounds like a pitch. Above that it sounds like a tape loop. If I set one loop to about 100ms, another at 130ms, and another at about 160ms, the tape loops seem to be much less. But the other thing which was very noticeable was that even though the last delay loop would hide the tape loop effect anywhere from 140-195ms, the pitchiness of the noise (or snare drum) changed quite a lot. Around 160ms seemed to be pretty even, though I did not use a spectrum analyzer. With noise, the spectrum changes a lot. If I move the 160ms tap out to 180ms, the low end of the snare drum really pops out. If I use something like a snare drum as opposed to a noise source as the input, the 'tape loop' sounds a lot like a helicopter. Adding a second loop at 130ms makes that sound totally go away and it sounds like a bad reverb. Adding 160ms sounds like a better bad reverb. Also, if you stop the sound, the tail of this (bad) reverb sounds pretty even - no particular 'ring' seems to stick out. At feedbacks less than 0.5, it sounds like a couple of delay lines. At around 0.7 it starts to sound like there's a reasonable tail. Setting the levels at about the same volume level for each loop seemed to sound most natural to me. What seems tricky here is getting a good frequency response (no peaks), and at the same time getting a good time response (nice reverb tail). One combination of delays seemed to work. Interestingly, those times didn't ratio very well. I got another reasonably nice sounding one at 50ms, 73ms, and 89ms, which have different ratios than the first set of numbers. Setting one loop fairly short tends to make a 'tunnel' sound - very resonant. Does this sound familiar?