BionicDelay

It's 2018, and I still find myself reaching for this plugin (or its successor, Bionic Supa Delay) whenever I want something a bit more interesting that a bog-standard delay. I think it's safe to say this is my favourite free delay plugin by miles, and one of my favourite delays in general.

I don't use it much for standard delays - it's a bit wasted on that. What I love about Bionic Delay is its sound (it's a flavour delay for sure) and its interface. The interface is really well laid out, and dialling in your delay settings is child's play. There's the usual stereo tape delay settings you'd expect, with different (note-based) delay times to choose from, a ping pong mode, flutter etc. There are also handy low and high cut filters to help shape the sound of your delay.

While the delay settings are note-based, i.e. eighths etc., you can actually set the delay to other times as well using the groove knobs at the top. But really, IMO this thing shines when you want the tempo-synced delay effect. If anything, I use these options to create triplets/dotted delays, or very minor adjustments for the R and L channels so they aren't quite in sync. If I want a time based (rather than tempo-based) delay, I'll probably look elsewhere.

I recently made a dub tune, and Bionic Delay is all over that track. It's absolutely made for this kind of music, and the updated Supa Delay was developed together with dub producer Russ D. In the context of dub, it works great on anything and everything. Drums, sax, sirens etc. The key is obviously to automate the feedback.

And automating the feedback brings me to my other favourite use of Bionic Delay: it's brilliant for transitional effects. Great if you want one word of the vocal to ring out into the next section, for example. Automating the other parameters (e.g. play with the speed) also gives you nice effects that may or may not suit your track. It's worth experimenting. While I generally use this on vocals, it also works very well on impact sounds or anything else you want to sound big and filling up the room and with a lot of movement.

Downsides? Yes, there is at least one bigger issue. I don't know if it's my host (FL Studio), but Bionic Delay doesn't clear its buffers when you stop playing the track. It keeps the delay buffer stored and then plays it the next time you start the track, irrespective of where you are in the song. This is a particular problem when rendering tracks. There's often a burst of delayed sound at the start of every render. I generally leave a few empty bars at the start to deal with this. But if the feedback settings are high, the delay can actually continue to get louder and play over the entire render. Can be a bit of a bummer...

It's also a SynthEdit plugin, which may mean you'll furl your nose and say no thanks. That also means 32-bit only, but bridging seems to work fine for me.

All in all it's a great plugin, albeit best used for particular applications rather than a bread and butter delay. I was very happy to make a donation for Supa Delay.

This is a great sounding virtual echoplex. Closest thing to an analog tape delay that I have found. Been happily using it for years. Sometimes the best plugins are free. A must for your arsenal! The de-generation sound is unique and convincing. Being able to control runaway precisely is a beautiful thing. You can slam the feedback/runaway on this thing and it sounds interesting and full. Not digital sounding at all. Warm!!

This is a great sounding virtual echoplex. Closest thing to an analog tape delay that I have found. Been happily using it for years. Sometimes the best plugins are free. A must for your arsenal! The de-generation sound is unique and convincing. Being able to control runaway precisely is a beautiful thing. You can slam the feedback/runaway on this thing and it sounds interesting and full. Not digital sounding at all. Warm!!

This is a great sounding virtual echoplex. Closest thing to an analog tape delay that I have found. Been happily using it for years. Sometimes the best plugins are free. A must for your arsenal! The de-generation sound is unique and convincing. Being able to control runaway precisely is a beautiful thing. You can slam the feedback/runaway on this thing and it sounds interesting and full. Not digital sounding at all. Warm!!

Oh my God, what's wrong with me? I haven't reviewed my #1 favourite delay! Right then, here we go:

I first stumbled upon Bionic Delay when I was frantically searching for a solid tape delay to get a Pink Floyd/Animals-style effect for a song. The interface is tremendously bright, and although I like the big sliders for the feedback and effect level, the controls on the bottom are a serious setback. They're simply too small and it's very hard to dial in just a little bit of modulation or flutter, but with trial and error you can get more subtle effects (I guess the developer wasn't shooting for that!)

Now I understand the main purpose behind Bionic Delay is to get that dub sound, and that it does extraordinarily well. But I've found this to be a superior day-to-day delay, with a thick sound that manages to "stick" to your material better than most VST delays, most of which I find too soft or downright nutty to use. There's something about Bionic Deay; it just works like some cherished vintage outboard gear, and I find myself reaching for Bionic time and time again, over high-end payware delays quite often!

It is very simple to use, and it isn't really necessary to consult a manual for this one. It is very limited in the times it can do, though, restricted to tempo-synced notes and percentages in between. That's generally fine by me - I usually use tempo-synced delays anyway, but it would be nice to have more control over the times. I find this puppy has a sweet spot between 30% and 60% feedback, where it sounds best and doesn't overload. Then, if you want the dub feedback, it does this very well after 60%, and really has a nice degradation of the delay line. WARNING: it gets out of hand quick, and some solid limiting is required if you want an infinite repeat without squealing at -0db.

The presets included are excellent, very useful, give a good idea of its capabilities and come in "insert" and "send" flavours.

Another helpful element is the include low and high pass filters. As you may know, as secret to getting a delay to sit well in a mix is cutting some frequencies so it doesn't bunch up in the mix, and Bionic Delay starts up with a (unknown) percentage of EQ knocked off the bottom and top, and I find this setting is usually just right already, but you have full control here and you don't need to insert an EQ after this puppy.

The CPU could be a bit better. This is an old Synth Edit plugin, and it shows. A few of these in your project, and the CPU meter will be significantly raised, and I find Cubase gets a little choppy when I'm running many of them. But it's not bad enough to worry about, it's worth it.

Because of its great sound, and despite any shortcomings, this delay is literally on every song on my album and will be used into the future, unless I find something very similar, with better modulation, controls and lighter CPU. Until then, I urge everyone to check out Bionic Delay. Truly a classic VST effect.

I'm another fan of anything useable in dub. Always on the lookout for big uber-delays.

Personally, I'm not that keen on the GUI of this one - some of the knobs are a bit on the small side and very fiddly to set any fine parameters.

Soundwise it's OK as a general delay - not an awful lot of character but useable because of the ability to instil some wow and flutter, and also useful is the ability to tweak the delay timing off the exact tempo. But it becomes really useful when you turn up the feedback to get the repeating filtered dub delays. To be honest, you should probably ignore my earlier whining about general delays, as obviously this one is aimed specifically at being a big resonant dub delay, and at that it does a rather good job.
A reservation I have is that there is a certain point at which the feedback suddenly comes to life, but below which it is difficult to control - it doesn't seem to do an awful lot, but you pass the magic feedback number and hey presto it is immediately an infinite delay - all or nothing. When it's at "all", it's great and characterful, and the filter comes to life, and the delays go on and on and take over your mix wonderfully...sigh....but at "nothing" it is just a boring difficult to fine-tune delay.

So this is my proviso - use Bionic delay solely as a huge dub delay with lots of feedback and filtering and you'll be perfectly happy with it. It definitely has a different character than things like RetroDelay etc. It lends itself to dirty, mulched up dub delays very pleasingly. The type of delay that you bring upfront in the mix and drop out everything else for in-yer-face dub effect.

Another proviso is to have a limiter, or at least compressor after it. It will grow too big quite easily and will clip if you let it. Automation is also a good idea to bring down the feedback afterwards.

It's definitely not my first go-to delay for dub, but I wouldn't like to get rid of it. I wouldn't use it at all for bread and butter delay, but personally I don't see that bread and butter delay is the point of Bionic Delay anyway. Just every now and then, you want to go silly with a delay, and this is the perfect freebie delay to go silly with. It doesn't do much of anything that many other newer delays can't do, and it's not the best-looking on the block either, but it has its own little niche place for grunged up infinite dub, and you'd be daft not to at least give it a try if you do anything in the realms of dub or ambient. Bigger knobs and some colour other than orange would help it, but they're only minor gripes really.

It has a "grooveL" and "grooveR" function which are useful little tools to get the delays off the exact beat and tempo. Not enough delays have this type of feature - exact tempo matching with delays can sound pretty dull, and even muddy up your mix badly, so this is a welcome feature.
Another little gripe with the tempo sync is the lack of options - you've only got the basics such as 1/2, 1/4 etc - I'd like a few more options of dotted and triplet delays. But as I said before - if you use Bionic Delay for what it's good at (huge dub delays), then you're probably going to use either 1/2 or 1/4 note delays anyway.

Not alot more I can say about it really. For me, it's a one-trick pony. Ain't anything wrong with that...it's a good trick.

well i do like a good dub style delay, let me tell you. and this one sounds good and dubby. quite a pleasingly imprecise feel to it, although it of course syncs perfectly. it has the ability to sound just a bit more natural than many delays.

docs are fine, no problems, it's a bit simple to use innit, it's a delay. gui is charming, and clear. plenty of solid usable presets that do most of the things one might ask of a delay unit.

well for free i can't fault it. it eats one's cpu, i'll not deny it. but it's well worth it. you don't want to go piling on delay units, one might well be satisfied with a single characterful delay in a tune. and this is it.