4 Great Delay Effects to Spice Up Your Mixes

Delay as an audio effect, is the process of repeating a sound signal with a certain amount of time delay between the repetitions. The possibilities with delay are enormous and reach far beyond the simple echo in a big valley sound that most people relate to delay.

Stereo sound, chorus effects, flanging, and more can all be achieved with the use of time delay on your audio. And what’s really the difference between analog and digital delay?

In this post, I’ll explain the difference between analog and digital delay, and share how to achieve four useful delay effects to spice up your productions and mixes.

Analog delay

Analog delay is a type of delay that typically uses a processing technique known as a bucket-brigade device (BBD).

A bucket-brigade device is a chip that sends the sound signal through a series of capacitors, creating a time delay of the signal between each individual capacitator. Due to the nature of the BBD process, the audio signal will get a bit “degraded” (typically losing some high-end) for each repetition, resulting in the “warm” analog sound we all love so much. Analog delays are usually shorter than digital delays, because of the BBD processing technique.

While analog delay traditionally is a physical device, they’re broadly available as plug-ins that emulate that iconic BBD process as well.

Digital delay

Digital delay works by using digital signal processing (DSP) chips to sample the incoming signal, storing it to a buffer, and then repeating it in a manner decided by the effect parameters.

The use of sampling to create delay effects gives far more possibilities than analog delay. Depending on what digital delay you are using, you can create simple delay effects similar to the above-mentioned analog delay. Or you can go more creative and create bizarre and twisted delay effects like a never-ending up-pitching diffused delay.

Digital delays are available both in physical and digital format, and are probably the most common type of delay these days.

Haas effect

The Haas effect is a clever delay trick that can be used to add width to a sound source. By slightly delaying the right or left channel of an audio signal, you’ll get a broader sounding signal without hearing an actual delay effect.

To achieve this, you’ll want to delay the right or left channel of your audio by up to 50 ms. Because the delay time is so short, it goes too fast for our brains to perceive any delay between the channels, and thus it is perceived as one sound.

You can either duplicate your audio, pan one to each side, and then manually drag one of the tracks to start <50 ms after the first, or you can use a delay plug-in that lets you manipulate the right and left channel individually.

Slapback delay

Slapback delay is the kind of delay you’ll typically hear on older rock and roll records but works great also today. Think in the lanes of Elvis and Buddy Holly. It’s a smacking and short delay, which can beef up vocals, drums, guitars, and most rhythmic elements.

To achieve a slapback delay, you’ll want a delay time of 60-120 ms. The feedback should be very low, and the delayed signal should be almost as loud as the original sound.

Analog delay is typically used for slapback delay, because of the way the audio gets degraded to a «warmer» and less high-endy sound. This way, it won’t interfere so much with the original sound, and the effect will be more characteristic and add more movement.

Flanging

Flanging is a kind of sweeping effect, making the audio sound as if it is kind of «moving» back and forth. Flanging works especially great for big synths but can be cool on almost any element if used right.

Flanging is achieved by having a dynamic delay time on a signal. This means that the delay time always changes. The delay time usually moves between 1-20 ms, and the tempo varies depending on how intense you want the effect to be. Increasing the feedback will make the effect more prominent.

The continuous changes in delay time make the phase of the audio signal constantly change through constructive and destructive interference, thus causing the flanging effect.

While most DAWs offer dedicated flanging plug-ins, flanging can easily be achieved with traditional delay by automating the delay time.

Chorus

The chorus effect makes sounds with slightly different times and pitches, sound as if they are one. Imagine a big choir or someone trying to sing identically to each other. They often produce «natural» chorus effects. When the chorus effect kicks in, the sound appears fuller and thicker.

If you want to create a chorus effect from a single track, all you have to do is to duplicate the track a couple of times, slightly detune them variously (1-10 cents is a good starting point), and delay them with some 20-50 milliseconds from each other.

As with flanging, most DAWs offer dedicated chorus plug-ins. But it can also be achieved with the method mentioned above or with a delay plug-in that lets you manipulate the pitch of the delay.

About Gerhard Tinius

Gerhard Tinius is a groovy producer, mixer, and audio engineer from Norway. He’s working as a mixer and mastering engineer while releasing his own music under Tinius.

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