Ableton Forum

recently downloaded some tape delay vst.how do i use it effectively? sounds like it just distorts the sound?? thanks

Tape delays do add saturation which may be what your hearing as distorted delay sounds. This can give the sound a unique depth. Some units cut off lower & higher frequencies slightly as well as some other non linearities to the sound too. A good tape delay changes the pitch of the delayed sound if the speed is changed unlike digital delays which time stretch the delayed sound. I am sure someone with experience of hardware tape delays can go into this in more detail.

From my understanding, a tape delay effect is intended to be gritty and messy, since it replicates the old technique of creating delay effects using a tape recorder. This adds noise, timing errors and other imperfections to the delay. It's really good for adding depth and complexity to atmospheric sounds.

If you want a clean-sounding delay, Live's Simple Delay does the trick.

What's the VST? We can have a look at what controls it has and so on to help you out.

Tape Delay effects are based on the classic analog tape-based delay boxes from the 60's and 70's. They do often add a lo-fi character, but the main love of them is how the feedback degenerates, pitch warbles, etc. They also had aggressive filters on them too. The original Dub pioneers got a lot of mileage from these devices.

Here is the most famous of them all - Roland RE-201 Space Echo
http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/re201.php

The King Dubby free VST is inspired by it.
http://www.lowcoders.fr/category/kingdubby

King Tubby - Dub pioneer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8Xcjsql5IM

You can see one in this vintage pic of Lee Scratch Perry's studio from the 70's
http://deepartnature.blogspot.com/2011/ ... ing1_l.jpg[/img]