The plugin landscape is awash with conventional delay plugins, serving up more tape echoes and ping-pongs than you could shake a stick at; but when it comes to elaborate, progressive delays for sound design and more expansive musical adventures, the field is considerably narrower. Here’s a selection of software delay effects that take that core technology and run with it in all kinds of directions, from independent per-tap editing and processing to custom algorithms, intriguing control sets and more.
As ever, this isn’t meant to be a list of the five ‘best’ creative delay plugins on the market, but rather a quintet of options that we think makes for a comprehensive collective snapshot of this particular category of effects.
Blue Cat Audio Late Replies
A regular fixture in Production Expert plugin round-ups, Blue Cat’s dazzling multi-effect is primarily an eight-tap delay, but with four insert slots on each tap, each of its two feedback paths, and the main input and output. These can be filled with any of Late Replies’ 30 built-in effects modules (including filters, reverbs, distortions, dynamics processors, EQs, shifters, chorus, flanger and more), or any VST/AU effects on your system (even in the AAX version!), for a potential total of 48 effects running within the plugin itself. Needless to say, this elevates Late Replies way above your workaday delays, but when it comes to the basics, the brilliantly graphical interaction with its taps and feedback loops makes it a quick, easy and powerful solution for echo generation at the most fundamental level, too. It’s an amazing plugin from any angle, well deserving of our 2018 Product of the Year award, and you can find out more in Eli Krantzberg’s review.
EAReckon EARebound
Looking more like a drum machine than an effect, EAReckon’s unorthodox delay plugin features 15 discrete taps, each one activated and selected for editing using the bank of ‘step’ buttons at the bottom. Each tap can be temporally adjusted as a multiple of the base delay time or freely up to 5.00s, and have saturation, filtering, modulation (‘Quad’ Chorus or Tremolo) applied, along with feedback level and panning; while a separately edited global delay line processes all the taps together, as well as the input signal, which can also be processed independently. It’s a nifty setup for designing all sorts of delay-based treatments; the saturation, filters and chorus sound great; and thankfully, what can easily end up becoming a rather complicated setup on the main page – where the parameters of only the selected tap are visible – is also presented as a fully interactive ‘all taps together’ overview in the Time and Mix pages.
With its flexible signal flow, lush sonics and clever workflow, EARebound is well worth any producer’s time and money.
Eventide UltraTap
Essentially the algorithm of the same name from their H9 Harmonizer multi-effects hardware, Eventide’s fabulous multi-tap delay is openly geared up for far more than simple echoes. Via a succinctly pared-back control panel, up to 64 taps are generated, timed and shaped, including progressive grouping for speed-up and slow-down effects, volume fading up and down, widening and narrowing, and tonal darkening and brightening. On top of that, the Slurm knob dials in pitch modulation and smearing; the Chop and Rise knobs govern a variety of LFO-driven tremolo, gating and slicing processes; and the Ribbon and Hotswitch controllers at the bottom bring a groovy performance element into play, enabling seamless transitioning and instant switching between two complete control panel states, or input volume control when the Chop parameter is in Ribbon mode.
Like all its H9 Series stablemates, UltraTap harnesses the signal processing technique at its heart – in this case, delay – and deploys it in a uniquely creative and characterful way, delivering a rich array of high-gloss swelling, reverberation, chopping, comb filtering and other effects. Eli Krantzenberg gets into the details.
PSP AudioWare PSP 608 MultiDelay
Despite being almost 20 years old, PSP’s busy-looking plugin still holds its own as one of the most powerful delays money can buy. A roughly skeuomorphic GUI lays all eight of its delay taps out together as a series of horizontal strips bristling with controls for per-tap volume, timing (up to 8 seconds of delay), panning and width, modulated filtering, tape saturation, and reverb (plate or spring). The graphical display up top, meanwhile, houses a collection of global adjustables including base timing parameters, and LFO and envelope follower settings, as well as an interactive graph overview of all per-tap settings and metering. It all comes together in a plugin that’s not only much easier to navigate and operate than it might at first appear, but actually encourages creative manipulation with its charmingly retro mixer-style layout. Weird, wonderful, a ton of fun, and also notable for being PSP’s first ever AAX plugin.
Valhalla DSP Valhalla Delay
Valhalla’s eponymous delay plugin might look and feel relatively conservative in this specific company, but that minimalist user interface belies the extraordinary range and versatility provided by the 15 Mode algorithms chugging along behind it. Alongside the workhorse Tape, Digital and BBD delay styles, the descriptively named Pitch, Reverse Pitch, Ghost, DuckTape, PitchDuck, LoFi, Phase DDL, RichPitch and others offer a smorgasbord of pitch and frequency shifting, modulating, distorting, companding, ducking and reversing delay processes. And with five left/right configuration and voicing Styles also onboard (Single, Dual, Ratio, Ping Pong and Quad), plus controls for distortion, EQ, widening, ‘Era’ (aging) and diffusion, this is an acrobatic delay effect that never fails to surprise and impress, whether called on for vintage echo textures, celestial spatialising or quirky modulation FX.
Also worth mentioning here is Valhalla Delay’s unmissable free sister plugin, Super Massive, which serves up some of the biggest delay and reverb effects you’ve ever heard.
What delay plugin do you reach for when your music calls for something beyond the echoey norm? Let us know in the comments.