We sure have it easy these days. The first uses of delay effects required tape machines and were done by mixing a tape delayed version of the original signal back into the song (and you had to walk five miles uphill both ways in the snow to do it!). Shortly after this, stand alone tape delay effect units came into existence. These were simply a box containing a looping tape reel. Delay times were set by increasing or decreasing the distance between the record and play back heads.
In the 1970’s analog delay was introduced, no tape involved. How this worked was the incoming signal was split in two. One was sent directly to the output and one was held back by passing it through a series of electronics. Unfortunately, this technique not only created a delayed signal but added a lot of noise. Still, they became popular being much smaller and easier to maintain than their tape predecessors.
Fast forward to the 1980’s when the first hardware digital delay units were introduced. Digital delays use computer chips to accomplish the delay. Essentially storing a copy of the original signal in memory and releasing it after an interval of time.
So as I was saying, we have it easy these days. We simply can incorporate the Sonitus Delay on an aux bus or as a track insert, and voila, instant delay!
The Sonitus Delay sports an orderly user interface incorporating distinctive features. It is a stereo delay with a range of 0.1 to 4000 ms. Settings for the left and right can be totally independent of each other. The Sonitus Delay can automatically calculate it’s delay times based on the tempo of your song! No more breaking out a calculator or running a separate program to figure out how many milliseconds equal an eighth note! There are even low/high filters available so you can do some basic EQing on the repeats right from within the plug-in!
Here is an example of how to use the Sonitus Delay on a SONAR track insert, have it automatically figure musical delay times and manually EQ the repeats.