Delay effect....what are your experiences, this doesnt work for me 🙁

Oke, this may be super easy to achive, but i cant get my head around it…
When inserting a delay effect on a prerecorded track (or via live input for that matter) this gives me a 101 copy of the phrase-same volume and velocity. What works from start are the time and repeat parameters, the gain and dry/wet parameters DONT change a thing when tweaking :slightly_frowning_face: …so is this a bug? ( i reported this) or as squarp suggested ‚use a vca with the delay’ some time ago on the forum. HOW AND WHERE VCA if so??? All i want to do is have the dry/wet a little softer and by modulating gain and dry/wet we would have a pretty awesome dub effect.

What are your experiences with the delay effect?

VCA means voltage controlled amplifier. In order to implement velocity on a modular synthesizer, you need two VCAs per voice: One for the envelop, the other one for velocity. In order to make full use of the MIDI Delay Effect, you need a velocity track (in addition to your note track; this can be configured in the track’s layout). Connect the CV out of your velocity track to your second VCA, and you are fine. The output of the velocity VCA is typically connected to the input of the second VCA who opens/closes based on the volume envelope. There exist other options to implement velocity (for example, some envelop generators have built-in VCAs or then connect the velocity CV to the cutoff frequency of a filer (a cutoff frequency of zero pretty much mutes)).

This is what Squarp meant with “use a VCA”. You are obviously not familiar with some basic concepts in modular sound synthesiss. Don’t take this as an offense - there is no tutorial, book or video covering “fundamentals of modular synthesis”, and we all had to learn these things at one point. I hope my explanations above are helpful.

I never use the MIDI delay effect to create a “delay” (for this, I prefer “real” delays, because they create overlapping, i.e. “polyphponic”, sounds), but mainly for note repeats.

Alright- couple of misunderstandings from my side upfront 1: as i have tried this before with vcas i only realised today that they need to be in parallel operation not in serial. The other thing that you reminded me of is 2: that this is only a note repeat and not really a delay (mainly also because you cannot change the repeats in any way.)

Oke… so i experimented a little with gain beneath 100% (decreasing level in repeats) thats quite satisfactory but increasing level in repeats clearly shows the limitations, because the vca can only go as loud as the vca doing the envelope-so no brutal gain changes like lee scratch perry dubs :poop:

Thnx for the inputs, i wont tell the internet police that you called me a n00b-i‘m strictly here to exchange knowledge.

Hey, you said you never use the delay but try a ratchet or an arpeggiator AFTER the delay :flushed: just messing around for 10minutes now, this got me very abstract sounding delays that very much can sound like deep dub 2019 styles :sunglasses: and the dry/wet suddenly makes sense.

1 Like

Unless you use a very strange definition of “parallel”, you need to route your audio signal through two VCAs in serial if you want to implement velocity. The first VCA adjust the overall level of your input audio signal, the second one shapes it using an envelop.

And yes, all Hermod effects are MIDI effects. The delay effect is no exception.

Any decent VCA has a gain knob, which can attenuate or amplify your input signal. Increasing level means gain larger than 1.

And no, I did not call you a n00b, you are clearly here to gain knowledge.

I did not say that I never use the delay effect, I said that I use it for other purposes than “delay”, e.g. note repeats (which can then further processed using other effects, as you point out).

2 Likes