Generally, it is considered that a tape delay has a specific 'character' which is an artefact of the physical process involved.Barbed Wire Kiss wrote:Ok, I'm a little confused here, what is the difference between the vst emulation of a tape delay and the regular vst delay?
Emulating the characteristics of tape involves more than just filtering; for example tape has specific distortion and compression properties...Don't many have filters anyway to help in emulating the use of tape?
Thats probably what's meant, as much as anything.
Plus many tape delays use multiple playback heads. A lot of 'normal' delays are 'straight thru', ie one in, one out.
The term comes from passing buckets of water along a chain of people (to put out a fire). It refers to the fact that whilst a single capacitor can hold a signal for a short period of time, delaying it by that time, a chain of (say) 2000 of them can delay it by 2000 times that ampount of time.And addded to that, what the hell is a bucket brigade?
Chips containing these 'chains' of capacitors are called 'bucket-brigade devices' and were the basis of most pre-digital delay effects.
Again, these devices are considered to have specific characteristics which are artefacts of the process.
Hope that helps, and someone remind me to put this in the Wiki tomorrow if its not already there!
