Delay Settings for a Solo Instrument

[trond]

I've been told that using delay, instead of reverb, to process a solo instrument can yield better results - plus has the added benefit of not further muddying a mix as much as reverb would do.

What settings on a delay would one use for such an application? Say, for a sax solo, or violin solo? Settings for a specific DP plugin would be great, as that's what I'd use.

Thanks for any tips, including where else to look for such tips.

Trond

[Shooshie]

I've been told that using delay, instead of reverb, to process a solo instrument can yield better results - plus has the added benefit of not further muddying a mix as much as reverb would do.

What settings on a delay would one use for such an application? Say, for a sax solo, or violin solo? Settings for a specific DP plugin would be great, as that's what I'd use.

Thanks for any tips, including where else to look for such tips.

Trond

Better in what way? Delay is basically echo. Echo is a single slap-back of a sound from a reflective surface. If you want it to sound less like echo, then you chain a bunch of delays together and make the interval between them very short. This is, in effect, what constitutes reverb. Technically, a single instance of an early reflection is 'delay.' When the delay gets recycled and delayed again, along with the source, you've got 'reverb.' Reverb is a chain of delays which continue to bounce off the reflective surfaces of the physical space (the room) while decreasing in amplitude (decaying).

So, either you're creating a very limited form of reverb, using a delay, or you're just adding an echo. The degree to which you carry it determines how good it sounds. By the time you reach something that sounds good to your ear, you may find that a reverb will work better since it's made for that. But many reverbs -- especially those of the traditional digital electronic variety -- do have a tendency to smear the sound. There are words for those reverbs: cheap, bad, awful... But then there are reverbs that make the sound wonderful, as if you just stepped into a major concert hall. There's a word for those reverbs, too: great, fantastic, Altiverb, Waves IR1, and a few others. But in my opinion Altiverb stands out above all the others.

It's up to you. Your computer may respond better without the weight of a reverb, if it's an older computer. But in the end, if you're doing music that you want to sound "real," you should probably use a great reverb. Used judiciously, a reverb like MOTU's eVerb, or the Plate Reverb, can suffice and if you carefully balance the dry and wet sounds, you will not muddy up your music. But using a delay as a reverb? Well, again... it's up to you. It might sound good in some 60's retro, or some techno or other use, but for anything that needs to approximate an acoustic hall reverb, a delay isn't going to cut it.

Shooshie

[blue]

As Shooshie said, delay and reverb are like distant cousins but serve different purposes.

As for whether or not to use delay on a solo, it depends what you are going for. If you goal is to make something wider without making it also sound too much farther, then a stereo delay can do wonders. You can use DP's delay and set one channel to something like 15ms and the other to 20ms. That will widen the sound plenty. Experiment with the settings until you get what you want.

You can also achieve a similar effect by sending the solo to an aux and delaying the aux signal by a small amount. In addition, try adding a detuner plug and adjust the aux signal by a few cents. You'll end up with a doubling effect that will thicken out the solo quite a bit.

Delays and reverbs work well together too. Add a slap delay after a verb to widen the space. Or do the doubling effect before sending to your verb.

If you're trying to blend a dry solo orchestral instrument with an ensemble recorded in a hall, the delay/verb trick can also work pretty well.

[Phil O]

Bob Katz's book, Mastering Audio the art and the science has quite a discussion on early reflections vs reverb, the Haas effect, and how these affect stereo image. I think this is what you're talking about. Although I find Katz a bit pedantic, there are a few useful tidbits in this book.

I haven't found the holy grail of artificial reverb yet, but my next software purchase will probably be Altiverb. I can't speak for it yet, but some of the folks here swear by it.

Phil