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.