Bazille's Delay and the "Center" timing...

[mholloway]

Hi folks,

I was just hoping to get a bit more explanation of the math going on in the delay unit inside Bazille.

The good news is I'm getting some very cool delay timings using this device; the confusing news is that most of the time, I don't understand how or why I'm getting them!

The only real point of confusion is the effect the "Center" knob is having on the delay timing, even with "Center Volume" set to 0. At first, I assumed if Center Vol = 0, then the Center knob would be meaningless -- not so, clearly! It still very much affects the overall delay timing of the Left and Right channels, and quite drastically at that...

The manual says the center knob "defines the overall feedback time." That's a bit confusing to me, since there is also a global "feedback" knob on the device which, sure enough, appears to define the overall feedback time. The effect I get with the Center knob seems to be more of an offset of the L and R channels, but I can't figure out exactly what that offset is or how it' working....

so, basically, any further detailed description of exactly what the Center knob is doing to the delay timing would be very helpful! I'd like to be able to recreate the results I'm getting from a place of understanding, rather than always by accident

thanks!
-M

[Urs]

Imagine a tape delay. There is a write head followed by 3 read heads, one for left, one for center, one for right stereo side. Only the center head is connected to the write head for the feedback. Still, you can (even if phasically impossible) move the read heads wherever you want.

Code: Select all

Tape >___________________________________________>
       ^                v      v         v
     Write              L      R         C
       |                                 |
in---->+<--------(FB)--------------------+

Of course it isn't a tape delay, but this is roughly what the delay consists of, less the Dry/Wet mix.

[Urs]

Ah, forgot to add, this way the distance between echoes is always the time that Center is set to, but each side can be offset to either sound earlier or later. IIRC this is what a famous digital delay from Korg did.

[mholloway]

Ah, forgot to add, this way the distance between echoes is always the time that Center is set to, but each side can be offset to either sound earlier or later. IIRC this is what a famous digital delay from Korg did.

Ok, this makes more sense to me, thanks! So essentially I'm setting the delay distance with the Center knob, then creating an offset from that when adjusting the L and R values to anything other than the value of the Center knob.

So a classic Ping Pong is possible (I just tested and got it perfectly) by setting either L or R to twice the value of the other, (say, 3 and 6) and then just making sure Center is = to the longer of those two values (6 in this case), and that Center Vol = zero. Voila, a perfect hard-panning Ping Pong on dotted eighths!

cheers,
-M

[Howard]

The manual says the center knob "defines the overall feedback time." That's a bit confusing to me, since there is also a global "feedback" knob on the device which, sure enough, appears to define the overall feedback time.

Ah yes, words matter. "Time" is ambiguous. Technically, that "Feedback" isn't a (decay) TIME, but an AMOUNT. I can/will reword those bits in future to remove ambiguity