Making an "infinite" delay with a send and return, but as an effect

[Shabdahbriah]

You can hear the filter and volume drop for a while, then sort of plateau and stay the same. My guess is he printed the delay, then duplicated the audio of the last repeat to get it to extend until the drop.

that could also have been done with a dedicated looper after the delay, or any delay which can be set to behave(*) the same as a looper.

(*) something where you can cut the input signal and have unity gain on the feedback signal

I do this (and a more complex variation) with 2x Roland Demora and 2x Scooper. Typically I have one Demora feeding two Scoopers. One Scooper just loops the original delay, and the second Demora receives synced rhythmic variations, from the second Scooper... add in 2x MN EchoPhones through a variety of mixing/send options for looped delay/feedback bliss.

[swilow11]

Printing to audio is much better for this sort of thing. Unless you plan to trigger the delayed sample regularly throughout the track, you will need to constantly start listening from whatever point the sample is triggered from to mix it properly. If you're working in, say, 8 bar sections, this will ultimately push you to over listen to your track and possibly kill it for you.

Doesnt that scenario extend to everything with a delay or reverb on it?

If the reverb was extended to be triggered once and ring through an entire track or lsrge proportion of it, then yes but that's pretty uncommon I would think... That said, I actually rarely print to audio stuff with delay or reverb on it unless it's going to be a long Dub delay.

I've made tracks where a single drum hit gets delayed and the feedback rings for say 16 bars. If I'm wanting to mix any concurrently playing instrument while taking into account the delayed sound, I've either had to play the whole 16 bars when maybe I just want to focus on the last 2, or just mix with my best guess at what sounds balanced. Neither works well. Printing to audio is effective for this though. Of course, it has downsides, but these just need to be weighed against the positives.

[Spartan138]

Wow, I did not expect this to blow up - if anyone could demonstrate these with some examples of both printing the delay vs having it modulated with feedback, that would be great. Eric tends to use this technique a lot in his tracks (not sure which technique specifically) and they can be found as early as 2006.

I haven't tried printing delay and copy pasting it, but wouldn't that be audible to hear the delay ring out but sound the same on each repeat? His tracks don't sound like he printed the repeat and played ontop of that, but maybe I'm wrong.

Eric produces almost, if not, all his tracks in Logic - he's familiar with that inside out and some of these tracks were made on ancient versions of Logic (I think logic 5.5).

If anyone's able to replicate this effect, regardless of DAW, it would be great to hear some examples.

[Uncle E]

I haven't tried printing delay and copy pasting it, but wouldn't that be audible to hear the delay ring out but sound the same on each repeat? His tracks don't sound like he printed the repeat and played ontop of that, but maybe I'm wrong.

Yes, it would sound the same on each repeat. The track you posted sounds the same on each repeat in the *LATER* repeats, after decaying naturally in the earlier repeats. My guess is he printed the entire delay, then cut out a single repeat towards the end of the decay and duplicated it.