Using delay

I've read in various threads between this forum and the recording forum about using delays to thicken up sounds. I rarely use delay so I started to experiment and can get a variety of different sounds but all are worse than the original. I'm using Pro Tools 7.3 with the stock delay plugin for these experiments.

I first tried a mono delay on a snare and that just killed all the low end and made it more hidden in the mix, didn't matter if it was 4ms, 10 ms, or 50 ms. Then I tried a stereo delay which defaulted each side of the now stereo channel to 100% left and right. That was decent but not good as two seperate tracks.

So far I've found the old stand by of making a duplicate track to be the best way to have tracks stand out better regardless of volume in the mix as delay seems to hide them in the mix. I read about this in a book called "The Art Of Mixing" by Dave Gibson but still have questions. What am I doing wrong?

Can short mono delays work at all?

Can't I do multiple delays with three points of panning with stock PT delay?

Tips on reverb vs delay (since both seem to make tracks more hidden even if used sparingly)?

Am I supposed to have multiple copies of tracks to make them stand out more and skip the delay?

I am curious as well. lately, I have been using reverb and the vocals get buried. delay on my stomp pedal works fine, VST delays bury things.

what is the secret?

I like to have a delay send to send things to and have found it to be effective at a couple of tasks.

It can make the snare and vocal and other percussive tracks sit better. Usually, I have about 150-250ms and a minimal feed back, with it hard panned and ('cause it is a send) no direct signal coming back. The only things I will send to that are snare and vocals, and maybe other percussivy kinds of things. No bass or BD or low synth parts, and nothing wihtout some transients. The return is very quiet in the mix, just kind of ambient.

To me, this helps these sounds blend better. I will also sometimes high and low pass the delay return (I am ususally using the waves native multitap) either within the plugin or with a seprate plugin later in the chain.

Like reverb, though, on the whole more of this effect will make anything sound farther away and muddier. But if everything is getting a little farther away together, and if the sources is pretty dry anyhow then it can make everything seem a little more cohesive wihtout getting muddy. It isn't there to really affect how a single source sounds; this technique is for getting things to stick together tightly.

I do this on almost every recording.

I only use it on vocals. I think the sharp transients of a snare would kill it, make it very noticeable, or produce comb filtering.

I always make sure the delay(s) syncs with the temp of the song otherwise it's noticeable.

I usually have 4 delays panned L and R (varies how extreme) on the voice track and vary the type (1/8th note, 1/4 note, etc...). Then I send that to a reverb send.

One of the things I like about PT is that it allows you to independently adjust the pan of the two halves of a stereo track. You should have been able to pan them anywhere you wanted.

As to your delay settings - 4-50ms are all pretty short - the disappearing low end was likely due, at least in part, to comb filtering. It's a good rule-of-thumb (though not a law by any means) to at least start with a value that's musically related to a song. For example, a 120bpm song has 1/4 notes that are 500ms apart and 1/8 notes that are 250ms apart.

-Dan.

Now that I finally figured out how to properly use an AUX track for stereo reverb and delay thanks to YouTube, I tried some of the above ideas. I'm not seeing the advantage of using a delay that causes the snare hit to appear an eighth or quarter not later to thicken up the original hit. I see that carrying the original sound out and making it appear again at a softer volume will span out the sound of a snare hit but not make more of an impact on the initial hit (make it cut through more without being too loud).

My original theory was duplicating the snare track and setting up one for the initial attack and the other for the body of the sound, so one had delay/reverb and one didn't (or not much). Maybe I need more experimenting with that approach now that I can use the AUX channels properly.

Are you matching the delay times to the tempo of the song?

Here's a butt-load of calculators for that purpose:

Delay Time Calculators

+1

also a little delay can be good, too much is baaaad.

One thing that might clarify why I don't think that my delay send practice "kills" transient things like snare is that I am not using it as an effect per se.

The way I use a delay can be best thought of as a reverb without a tail; after all, all a reverb is are delayed reflections that come to the listener after the main impulse of a signal, though many model what happens when all those reflections blend together. I use delay for the same things, and it has a similar (but, I feel, cleaner) effect.

That is why I don't time it to the beat of the song: it isn't there to renforce the songs beat or to thicken individual sources-- though those things can certainly be done with delay-- but to create ambient unity among parts of the song.

Which is something that I have found useful in the same way that I find a compressor useful, whereas having an audible delay beating on the 1/4 always seems like an effect, like flanging or an envelope filter or something. Good use for a delay, but not what I would do on everything, in the same way that the delay send is a useful thing.