Late Replies: how to get a delay similar to Vengeance pattern delay?

[Mr D]

Hi folks

I'm struggling to get Late Replies to give me an effect similar to the Vengeance pattern delay.

I'm trying to do the following:

On the left channel i want the first delay to come after three 16th notes. Then that should repeat again after another three 16th notes, and so on and so on (depending on the amount of feedback).

On the right channel i want the first delay to come after five 16th notes. Then that should repeat again after another five 16th notes, and so on and so on (depending on the amount of feedback).

At the moment i'm using R1 for the delay of three 16th notes.

And i'm using R2 for the delay of five 16th notes.

Then that passes into the feedback loop section. And here the problem begins. Because it seems that in this section i can't set a different feedback delay time for R1 & R2. It seems to just be a global delay time for the feedback delays.

I'm fully aware that i must be doing something wrong, because i've only been using Late Replies for a few hours so i'm a bit of a noob, so if it is indeed possible, could you point me in the right direction?

Many thanks! ........ Mr D

[Mr D]

Ok, so after some more messing around i now i realize i can do it another way.

So, i only use one reply.

Then i set the delays and feedback delay times with L1 & L2 and use a pan insert for the panning.

But now i'm coming across a weird problem which is that with L2, the maximum i can drag the feedback delay to is four 16th notes, whereas i need to drag it to five sixteenth notes.

Is there any particular reason why we're limited to only dragging the feedback delay time slider to a certain value and no further?

[Blue Cat Audio]

Each delay time for feedback loop can be set up to 200% of the base time delay, so you can just increase the base delay time if you need longer delays.

Also, you don't need to use pan inserts to pan delays left and right: you can simply use the built-in pan pots for each feedback line.

For your particular case, I would advise doing the following (starting from the default preset):
- bypass the "pattern" section: you don't need it.
- setup the base delay to 1 beat
- in the feedback loops, setup the grid to 4 (the interval between each grid line will be a sixteenth note)
- set the first delay to 3 divisions
- set the second delay to 5 divisions
- pan the first feedback delay to the left and the second feedback delay to the right
- set the "in mix" parameter of feedback loops to 0 as you probably do not need to duplicate the input signal.
- adjust the feedback for each loop.

Hope this helps!

[Mr D]

OK, thank you, that works!

Is there an option that when you stop playback in your DAW, all delays get killed / reset? This would be useful when working with more extreme feedback settings and saturation.

If that option isn't available, is there a kill switch somewhere on the plugin?

[Blue Cat Audio]

There are two options you can try, but it will require some kind of automation or MIDI control:
- there is a "buffer flush" command in the toolbar (also available via automation/MIDI) that will empty the content of the delays and feedback loops.
- you can add the Mute built-in plug-in (also controllable via MIDI) in the feedback loops to mute them.

[Mr D]

OK!

Could you please please please add an option button at the top of the plugin that will flush the buffer (kill all delay stone dead) when the DAW playback is stopped? (or when the DAW timeline loops back)

This would be so useful when one is working with long delay times.

Imagine you're working on a part of your song where you want a one-off, long delay effect, and one wants to tweak it to be just perfect. At the moment you need to keep pressing the "buffer flush" command, which is quite annoying.

Whereas if it was implemented you could just stick your DAW into loop mode over the part of the song in question, and each time the DAW loops back it would reset the delay. So then you could tweak the delay to just perfect in a really comfortable way, instead or having to continuously press stop, then "buffer flush", then play again.

I understand one could bluff it with some automation, but that's a hassle to have to set up each time, and it's something that would be much better built in hard-wired!

[Blue Cat Audio]

Maybe a dumb question, but doesn't you DAW already have the option of stopping the tail of plug-ins on playback stop? Adding an option to do it in the plug-in would be feasible but not necessarily trivial given the number of DAWs out there which do not necessarily implement properly transport stop messages...

[Mr D]

I'm in Cubase 9.5 and i'm not aware that it has that option. And anyway, can Cubase tell a VST(3?) plugin to kill it's internal audio on transport stop? I've never seen that feature in any DAW!

You said:
"would be feasible but not necessarily trivial given the number of DAWs out there which do not necessarily implement properly transport stop messages..."

Ah, i imagined that the way the transport playline was communicated to a plugin was some standard way!

I'm not a coder, but i would imagine it's doable as although various DAWs may communicate their play state differently, it should be possible to have it implemented based on a simple "IF/OR" rule (IF playback stops OR goes back in time, kill the delay).

But like i said i'm not a coder! I think Late Replies is already the best delay on the market by the way! This would just make it even better.