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

[Spartan138]

So I'm a huge fan of old school delays that used to go on forever, but that would never muddy up the sound. I've heard this in lots of trance sound effects and boom sound effects/white noise risers, where it's a boom or some explosion, followed by around 15-30 seconds of a repeating delay. It almost sounds infinitely looping and as if it never messes with the signal chain.

I'm working in Ableton and I'm trying to get this infinite delay effect by having a sample play once, then have the delay of that constantly repeat through out my track, but I would also like it such that, whenever the sample is triggered again, it doesn't muddy up the mix, but rather play once more, restarting the delay. The previous delays mix with the new hit, and they continuously loop.

How might one achieve this? I have an example over here that demonstrate this perfectly:

Pryda - Lycka (Timestamp: 0:30)
https://youtu.be/bveGPbP40-0?si=olP5lI4FJf5RXyMS&t=29
Here, in this track, the single hit repeats endlessly, but is carefully played out, and rings out, and not fades away, but sits perfectly in the mix.

Is this type of delay a dub delay, or some other kind of technique? How does one do this accurately without clipping (I assume this is possible without limiters) and as an effect, but have full control of this?

How did people achieve this back in the era of 2004-2006? Most of these Eric Prydz tracks were composed around that time in Logic, but I'm unsure what is so different about Logic's delay that I can't achieve in Ableton's, or other kinds of delays.

[osiris]

Bionic Delay (Interrupter old VST plugin.) Also, Ohmboyz Infinity.

[DMG68]

It’s just adjusting the feedback to keep the sound repeating as desired. There’s a bit of low pass filtering from what I hear, but not a lot, you’d have to dial that in according to how long you want the delay repeating. I think that it can be heard so good because there’s not much else happening at the same time, not a lot of sounds for it to clash with. If a sound is repeating and you’re going to send a new sound to the delay to replace it then just drop the feedback down low and raise it again right before the new sound takes over. Also, you could set up another delay for the other sound even, it’s in the box so use more than one delay or automate it as much as needed.

[_al_]

It’s just adjusting the feedback to keep the sound repeating as desired. There’s a bit of low pass filtering from what I hear, but not a lot, you’d have to dial that in according to how long you want the delay repeating

Yeah, this is how I do it. I use Melda's MBdelay, as that gives me everything I could need, including ducking the reverb out of the way of any new hits.
But usually I just use automation lanes. One for fb, and sometimes one for the saturation knob, as that can alter the tail over time also.

Melda also gives us the bonus of using the crossovers in Transient / Tonal mode, so we can have the delay on just the transient or vice versa.

Honestly, I would advise the OP to have a look at MdelayMB. You could give me the most expensive or popular delay vst for free, and I will still choose Mdelay over that

edit:
it might be worth noting, that he may even have created the effect by bouncing the delay to audio, and copy / pasting the last delay hit. It does seem to stop morphing after a while, so he might have just done that

[soundmodel]

Yes you can patch such feedback, but plug-ins make it easier.

I also think I saw a video where dub guitar delays are in fact not necessarily a plug-in running, but just audio editing. Delay = the same sample repeated with different volumes and filtering. This gives much more control over the expressions than a plug-in will. And it will give a super clean mix, because most delayware mud the mix by introducing small extra tones due to overlapping tails.

This audio editing technique also resembles more of the old school dub delay technique, which is a tape loop and effects boxes (which you turn in real-time for the expressions).

[whyterabbyt]

riiiight, offline hand-editing is closer in 'expression' to old-school hardware than realtime plugins that are modelling that same old-school hardware.
sounds legit.

[soundmodel]

riiiight, offline hand-editing is closer in 'expression' to old-school hardware than realtime plugins that are modelling that same old-school hardware.
sounds legit.

Yes because with a tape loop you don't have things like auto-decay. You turn the volume for that. You don't have LFOs, you use your hands on knobs.

In fact, e.g. The Echo can't be made to repeat the sample unaltered. It always adds something.

The manual editing technique is from early DAWs. Like 90s something. It does mimick the tape loop.

https://www.guitarplayer.com/gear/dub-guitar-delay-echo

[whyterabbyt]

riiiight, offline hand-editing is closer in 'expression' to old-school hardware than realtime plugins that are modelling that same old-school hardware.
sounds legit.

Yes because with a tape loop you don't have things like auto-decay. You turn the volume for that. You don't have LFOs, you use your hands on knobs.

The gold standard of 'tape loop' dub delay is the RE201 space echo. Of which there are a couple-dozen plugin emulations.

[osiris]

What I've done is put on a really long delay, bounce it, put it in the track and find a good space then slice it and loop that however long you like. (It usually helps to through a reverb on there to fill up any dead space.

[Shabdahbriah]

riiiight, offline hand-editing is closer in 'expression' to old-school hardware than realtime plugins that are modelling that same old-school hardware.
sounds legit.

Yes because with a tape loop you don't have things like auto-decay. You turn the volume for that. You don't have LFOs, you use your hands on knobs.

The gold standard of 'tape loop' dub delay is the RE201 space echo. Of which there are a couple-dozen plugin emulations.

Indeed.

https://youtu.be/AzaLsB5vSEY

[Uncle E]

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.

[whyterabbyt]

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

[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.

[No_Use]

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/experim ... ack-loops/

[whyterabbyt]

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?