Talk:Delay (audio effect)
Reorganization
The delay article is a little too all-encompassing (but at the same time incomplete), and possibly should be broken out into various types opf delay methods/systems, including speakers in rooms, spring systems, tape systems, analog and digital circuits. Delays are not just used for discrete echoes or repeats, but also for diffuse reverb, chorusing, and flanging effects as well. So, instead of merging echo chambers into this, I think it all needs to broken out more, or have a LOT more material added to this article.x 04:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
- That's a good point. If you have some good sources of information on the various delay technologies, by all means, create main articles for them and change this article to summary style. There are already articles on chorus, flanging, and phasing (linked from the "uses" section).
- However, I don't think plate/spring/digital reverb are necessarily related to delay -- those generally use much different methods to generate repetitions, and they generate tens or hundreds of individual echoes, while delays tend to generate only a handful of discrete (and audibly separate) echoes. I have been meaning to create a similar article Reverberation (audio effect) for some time but I haven't got around to it yet. --Ptkfgs 04:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
And before anyone comes back with "delay is not usually used in those contexts man" that's true for the standard guitarist or roadie, but for engineers, the opposite is the case.x 04:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
- elaborate. --Ptkfgs 04:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
This shows the kind of misconception I'm talking about. Reverbs are achieved by delaying the signal a large number of mutliple times; whether by plate, spring, DSP, or speaker and mic, it's still fundamentally a delay effect first. "Delay" as used in a guitar-pedal label only covers a limited use of the overall delay effect that may not be commercially labelled as such, but technically is a delay effect. Audio engineers, well real ones, know this. It's a flaw of "common wisdom" that reverbs, flanging, and chorus are not known as types of delay effects by a regular musician.x 15:16, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
- Propagating vibration through a physical medium -- as in a spring reverb or plate reverb -- is a very different method of simulating echo than recording and playing back a signal. Those are much more comparable to a vibrating string or a cymbal. There are significant aesthetic and acoustic differences between what people call delay and what they call reverb. Obviously they are related in their presentation of particular sounds repeatedly and with measurable latency -- they are designed to emulate aspects of natural echo, so it is inescapable that they would have some similarities.
- I suspect you are getting at the fact that "phasing" is ambiguous. Obviously phase inversion is not what we're talking about, but Phase shifting.
- I think the differences that Doktor Who points out are significant enough to warrant a serious reconsideration of the phrasing we had here before. In fact, I think that it would be much more accurate to describe phase shifting, chorus, and flanging as modulating effects first, and only incidentally as delays.
- I'm not sure what you mean by "regular musician" and "real engineer", or what relevance those have here. --Ptkfgs 15:57, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Phasing and flanging
With regard to phasing and flanging, the information here is not fully correct, those effects are both obtained when the delay time-lenght is modulated by mean of a sine wave. Sorry I can't fix it for now, maybe later.--Doktor Who 12:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
- you know what, you're right. i'll comment it out. --Ptkfgs 13:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you, as of this afternoon (in my local time) I'm not even capable to write properly here in the talk page :) . Anyway I will support a great improvement of the content and the subsequent split. --Doktor Who 13:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
- It's not always a sine wave, it's often saw-tooth as well. But "phasing" isn't a delay effect. "Chorus" is though.x 15:15, 29 July 2006 (UTC)