A dedicated Valhalla Delay plugin?

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Would people like to see a Valhalla Delay

Yes
193
76%
No
3
1%
Ubermod already does this
34
13%
There are enough delay plugs that do everything already
24
9%
 
Total votes: 254

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V0RT3X wrote:Im glad im not a software dev

You all are a tough lot :lol:
Being a gifted developper seems to be a curse yes..."With great power comes great responsability." :hihi:

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V0RT3X wrote:Im glad im not a software dev

You all are a tough lot :lol:
The key is to follow your own vision. And hope that your own vision doesn't totally suck. :lol: Listening to customers is critical, but in the end the developer has to have some sort of guiding vision, otherwise feature bloat will rule the day (see: Microsoft Windows :D).

I've been following this thread with interest. I'm one of the "ÜberMod already does this" votes, but this ignores how people feel about using the plugin, as opposed to the raw capabilities of the plugin.

Here's a question for y'all: What do you LIKE about tape echos? What is most important to you:

- The specific tape echo sound? i.e. it isn't just that the sound decays into distortion, but it decays away EXACTLY like a Space Echo/EchoPlex/etc. The warble has to be just right, the filtering needs to be tape echo esque, and so on.

- The TRIPPINESS of the sound? Sorry about using this term, as it is very inexact, but there isn't a better way of describing the RE-201 to my mind. Tape echos are psychedelic (as are a lot of different algorithms I can think up).

- The simplicity of the controls? The RE-201 has 7 controls, not counting input volumes and power switches. Compare this to the 40+ controls in ÜberMod.

- Something else?

From my perspective, coming up with an exact tape echo model might be an exercise in futility. Even if you model a specific tape echo unit exactly, it won't sound exactly like any other tape echo out there, due to variations in the stretching/drop outs of a specific tape loop. However, this doesn't mean that I shouldn't investigate things further. Especially if it requires me to buy an RE-201 at some point this year. :D This would be one of the few gear purchases that I would actually use once I was done with the analysis (to be frank, I don't have much use for these Lexicon rack mounts I have running here, now that VintageVerb is out the door).

Sean Costello

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It sounds more analog :hihi:

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xybre wrote:I haven't been able to find a good oil can delay anywhere. I'd really like something that could at least optionally emulate that scratchy, dirty, cyclic, vibrato-y sound.
I thought you be trollin' for a second there. But apparently an oil can delay is an awesome bit of kit :)
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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It's definitely the tripiness for me. Iteratively changing pitch and adding distortion it a lovely effect, but it strikes me as just one of a wide range of things you could do that are going to sound nice because (like a reverb) we can predict what the sound will do next, and it's nice when it does.

Freq Echo is a great example, it has the same tripiness because we sort of guess where it's going, even though it's not a replication of any physical real world process.

I've been playing with iterative processes in the visual domain, with some rather nice results. Ever wondered what happens if you were to digitally blur an image slightly then sharpen it again by the same amount, thousands of times? This six second video animates about 27,000 iterations of blur/sharpen on a piece of text (with some video fx at the end). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwasCpuIxnA

This one puts a tiny bit of a twist in with the blur/sharpen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joiIr7-MnfQ

I think these (and tape delays / FreqEcho or even the Mandelbrot Set) are inherently enjoyable effects because they produce structure from iterative process, and we're wired up to appreciate that sort of thing, but not in the way any natural phenomenon does. 'Trippy' can be considered as meaning 'iterative but unnatural', the word describes something that hooks into our understanding of natural processes, but subverts them. Dali's melting clocks are 'trippy' because things do melt, but clocks don't.

My hunch is that a lot of other processes would sound great when combined with a delay, we only love the delay+pitch-shift+distortion combination in particular because it's the one we were able to do mechanically a few decades ago, so it has familiarity and heritage. If Roland somehow made a delay that time-stretched each repeat without effecting pitch back in the early '80s, or one that put a series of progressively less sample-rate reduced copies of a sound before the original, then we'd love those combinations too.

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Poll needs option: "Vee3 does a nice delay, too."

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LX_Nen wrote:It's definitely the tripiness for me. Iteratively changing pitch and adding distortion it a lovely effect, but it strikes me as just one of a wide range of things you could do that are going to sound nice because (like a reverb) we can predict what the sound will do next, and it's nice when it does.

Freq Echo is a great example, it has the same tripiness because we sort of guess where it's going, even though it's not a replication of any physical real world process.
I think you have stumbled upon a good definition of "trippiness" in this context. It is an iterative process, that changes the result, in a way that doesn't exactly resemble the real world. If things are "properly" randomized, it seems natural. If we can see/hear the patterns, it is much more psychedelic.

An example would be the "diffusion" in ÜberMod. This has been designed to sound "natural." In other words, it randomizes the signal phase, in a way that is (reasonably) evocative of the randomization that occurs when a sound reflects off of multiple surfaces. If you make the "diffusion" less random, or introduce a bug that results in certain resonances being emphasized, you can get something like this:

http://soundcloud.com/seancostello/bugo ... -may8-2013
I've been playing with iterative processes in the visual domain, with some rather nice results. Ever wondered what happens if you were to digitally blur an image slightly then sharpen it again by the same amount, thousands of times? This six second video animates about 27,000 iterations of blur/sharpen on a piece of text (with some video fx at the end). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwasCpuIxnA

This one puts a tiny bit of a twist in with the blur/sharpen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joiIr7-MnfQ
That's REALLY cool. The iteration generates complexity, but in a way that isn't exactly "natural." It looks kinda biological, kinda not. Now I'm thinking about ways of applying "sharpening" to an audio signal. Applying the image processing sharpening idea to a 1-dimensional audio stream ends up being a fairly standard high pass filter, so some sort of transform into another "domain" would be needed.
I think these (and tape delays / FreqEcho or even the Mandelbrot Set) are inherently enjoyable effects because they produce structure from iterative process, and we're wired up to appreciate that sort of thing, but not in the way any natural phenomenon does. 'Trippy' can be considered as meaning 'iterative but unnatural', the word describes something that hooks into our understanding of natural processes, but subverts them. Dali's melting clocks are 'trippy' because things do melt, but clocks don't.
There's a lot to think about here. Plenty of things can be put into a feedback loop of a delay, and will do...something. The key things to look at:

- Is it a cool sounding something?
- Is it easy to use?
My hunch is that a lot of other processes would sound great when combined with a delay, we only love the delay+pitch-shift+distortion combination in particular because it's the one we were able to do mechanically a few decades ago, so it has familiarity and heritage. If Roland somehow made a delay that time-stretched each repeat without effecting pitch back in the early '80s, or one that put a series of progressively less sample-rate reduced copies of a sound before the original, then we'd love those combinations too.
The time stretching one might run into some issues with causality. :lol:

Sean Costello

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valhallasound wrote:- Something else?
Yes: the warbling sounds when tweaking delay time (tape speed / playback head(s) position). Even if tape would sound perfectly clean otherwise, that can be quite 'trippy', imho.
valhallasound wrote:[...] (to be frank, I don't have much use for these Lexicon rack mounts I have running here, now that VintageVerb is out the door).
Feel free to send them over any time, I'll even pay for the shipping costs. ;)

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haha, well played!

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What's fun about tape echo is it's somewhat random. It's never exactly the same each time. Also, the degradation of the delay when using feedback and moving around the controls and making it feedback and make funny sounds! Also, the Roland and Multivox units have additional effects like spring reverbs and choruses that make them really flexible.

It would be a tall order, but I think something along the lines of EchoBoy is what it would take for me to buy a delay. EchoBoy does a lot of things and it does them well. Well, unless Sean made it because I buy all this stuff without even trying it first :hihi:

But, if you could have several delay types (bucket brigade, tape, digital, oil can, whatever else) in the same plug-in with a "simple" interface and maybe a "expert" interface for additional tweaking, that would be awesome.

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If you are looking for particular units to "examine" I'd suggest

Digital: TC 2290, Roland SDE-3000, Lexicon PCM42
Bucket Brigade: Ibanez AD202. Yamaha E1010, Dynacord VRS-23
Oil Can: Tel-Ray, Morley EVO-1
Tape: Echoplex, Roland Space Echo, Multivox Multi Echo, Binson Echorec, Dynacord Echocord, Klemt Echolette

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valhallasound wrote:Here's a question for y'all: What do you LIKE about tape echos? What is most important to you:
Brian Eno at 26:54 seems relevant?

http://vimeo.com/65663692#t=1614

(sorry not sure how to embed)

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toast wrote:
valhallasound wrote:Here's a question for y'all: What do you LIKE about tape echos? What is most important to you:
Brian Eno at 26:54 seems relevant?

http://vimeo.com/65663692#t=1614

(sorry not sure how to embed)
LOL, thread is close to dead because everyone's watchin Eno now :hihi:

Great vid! Thanks for the heads up!

:hihi:

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sws2h wrote:...Binson Echorec
Just a friendly correction: the Binson isn't tape.

Here's some info:
http://www.effectrode.com/magnetic-dela ... schematic/

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