Good points Sascha, but imho that simply calls for adding (at least) one more control, to set the 'lag' / 'response time' (for lack of a better term) for the tape (= delay) speed and/or the 'distance' of the heads (= delay taps) to adjust to changes (and perhaps another separate control for its response time when it is adjusting to clock tempo changes).sascha wrote:The delay time is a function of tape speed & the distance from the rec head to the repro head, hence we have two controls.Dip200 wrote:How much control does the user have over the speed ? Is it possible to sync the delay or change speed in milliseconds ?
Of course, tape speed also affects the overall character, the frequency response, saturation etc.
The 'distance' knobs of the 4 taps we have in the delay mode can be set to 'inches', currently.
At the moment, we have no sync function for the two parts, as we haven't found the 'perfect' work flow yet. Thing is, on Satin, 'speed' isn't just a switch; it can speed up & slow down *continuously*, all the way from 7.5 up to 30ips. The 'distance' can be set from 0 to 5 inches. Using a 'sync' button would make the speed control snap to positions where - apart from just delaying the audio - the resulting frequency response and overall texture might not match anymore with what you'd like to achieve.
But we do keep on thinking about this issue (is it really one?).
Moreover, preferably a tempo syncing feature would not 'snap' to musical time values only, but also allows to select all intermediate values between 'exact' musical time values. Perhaps you could use a 'soft snap' function for exact musical values, using a modifier key to select intermediate values. To me, it would be very useful if the GUI provides a clear indication of musical time + offset, and if it adjusts tempo in sync with the incoming (master) clock signal. Neither would require strict snapping to exact musical values, as far as I can see.
(And, yes, imho it really is an issue - or rather, a still missing yet very desirable feature for Satin's delay mode. Some other good tape delay plug-ins do have some sort of tempo sync option that handles synced tempo changes quite elegantly. Would some example screen caps perhaps be useful to illustrate?)
Btw, wouldn't it also be cool if we could slow down the tape to a full stop (i.e. all the way down to 0 ips)? Even if that would perhaps not be perfectly realistic, I bet it would still provide us with some great 'tape stop' effects. And for some tape 'scratching', how about negative speeds, i.e. reversing the direction (cf. Permut8 for an illustrative example that has nothing to do with tape)?
