sneak wrote: Hi,

I want to use some delay effects to add more depth to my mixes.
Does anyone have some tips ?
Maybe it's good to pan for example a guitar track a little bit to the left and add a delay and give the delay more volume on the right side ?

Thank you in advance.

Yep...that would work....

Set your delay to 8th or 16th notes........plenty of feedback(repeats)...panning automation of the delay returns helps add movement also...

Just be careful to watch for phase issues ... comb filtering can occur at very short delay settings .... 40ms or less. Keep in mind that a signal delayed and panned to the other side will appear to be not as loud as the dry signal panned to the other side, even though they are the same level.. the human ear senses things that occur first as being the loudest. This is how we use these cues to locate things in the real world..

I prefer to use short reverb settings instead of delays ...

Okay, thank you. That's indeed what I'm hearing now on my guitar track, comb filtering, with the use of a short delay at 30ms.

I will try that reverb right away, and will experiment with panning the reverb.

My thoughts are: If I let the reverb come from another direction than the sound source, it will add space and depth.
Just very busy with getting every instrument in it's own space more and more :)

sneak wrote: Okay, thank you. That's indeed what I'm hearing now on my guitar track, comb filtering, with the use of a short delay at 30ms.

I will try that reverb right away, and will experiment with panning the reverb.

My thoughts are: If I let the reverb come from another direction than the sound source, it will add space and depth.
Just very busy with getting every instrument in it's own space more and more :)

yeah but that's wherr the fun comes in .... enjoy!

Depth is the perception that something is far away from you. Reverb, or delay adds depth because the reflections are delayed so it sounds like you are in a big room.

Another kind of depth puts that original sound farther back. Try distance miking some instruments, and/or adding room mics to some instruments. The small time delay (plus more room sound on the distance mic) will add depth to your mix.

Yes, there will be comb filtering when you combine a close and distance mic, but you can work with the distance to make it work for you (like adjusting the delay time on a device).

Almost every guitar track that I record has a room mic track. I'll usually have another mic setup in the room for talkback that I arm. It never really matters where it's placed. Then I pan the two and put the room a bit lower in the mix. It really makes them sound big. I opt for this method over stereo guitar micing almost all the time. Of course a decent sounding room definately helps...

Josh

(Not squarely on topic)
Or very very short delays. 3-12ms and 90% to 99% Regeneration. Use juste a taste (relative to the direct signal); or more. On acoustic and clean electric guitars especially. Flood (The Smashing Pumpkins) use's this to great effect.

Cedar Flat Fats wrote: Just be careful to watch for phase issues ... comb filtering can occur at very short delay settings .... 40ms or less.

"Comb Filtering" will occur at any time differential, any time you have two frequencies occuring at the time, even if one of them is the delay of the first one, some kind of comb filtering will occur.

What I think Kurt is trying to say here is that you may run into "Haas effect" stuff at under 19ms. The "Haas effect" is that the brain perceives any delay or reflected signal [like an acoustic reflection in a room] that arrives to the listener in under 19ms as part of the original signal. Sometimes this is a good thing... other times this is bad thing.

Delays in the 30-40-50ms range will be heard more as an ADT [Automatic Double Track] than as a "delay"... to make a sound "larger" by using delay it's usually best to keep those delays timed to the music... 8th note, quarter note, stuff like that... then add a smidge of either or both delays to the sound [I generally pan the delay returns to 9 and 3 o'clock, in other words not completely hard left and hard right but enough so you can feel the delay moving around].

One of the ways I've found this to come out best is to bring the returns up so you can hear the delay... then drop them down 3-5db each so the effect isn't really noticable in the track [until you mute the returns and wonder why the sound of the instrument going to them suddenly got tiny and whimpy].

There are lots of ways to use delay to get things to sound larger without your mixes sounding too wet [like if you used a bunch of reverbs]... experimentation is the key.

Best of luck with it.