Multitap delay custom unit/chain? like rainmaker or tapographic delay

I thought it might be fun to try to build a multitap delay unit/chain like the rainmaker or tapographic delay.
wondering if anyone has attempted anything like this on the er301.
i’m thinking cascading a bunch of pitch shifting or clock delays (or combination) might get in a similar territory.
i guess the tricky part is routing control and setting the right cv offset to all the delay lines to make controllable and useful.
If any one has some tips or ideas or has tried anything similar let em know thanks!

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Yep! :crazy_face:

My only advise is to just go for it and experiment. That’s what @Joe and myself did when developing Evil Twin.

Great idea by the way!!

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I did a quick experiment in this vein - see Share your ER-301 Music - #183 by josker

First impressions were that it’s totally possible, not that difficult, and very very cool :slight_smile:

Brian let me know a great tip in that thread: ” One recommendation is to put a (soft) limiter after EACH delay stage to get more even dynamics.”

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I feel like I’m getting somewhere, but the pitch shifting delay has some artifacts or clicking. Is this being improved? Also why is there a 1 sec max delay. I feel all the delays on the 301 could have a much longer maximum delay time. What’s the limitation for?

from my point of view, a tape loop is a delay, so a looping sampler unit can be a delay too.

could give an example how you would delay without looping using the looping sampler?

Are you referring to the granularization artifacts or is this actual clicking? May I have an audio example of this please? :bowing_man:

It’s just taking me time to come up with a UI for specifying the maximum delay. Remember, I can’t predict how many delays a user is going to create (same problem with a pedal looper). It would not be nice if every time you created a delay it gobbled 30s of sample memory that you then didn’t use. The good news is that new menu system introduced in v0.3 should make this a piece of cake now.

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FYI, the other delays (Fixed Delay, Clocked Delay and Variable Delay) are being reworked slightly for v0.3.09.

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a clocked tap delay with length and number of taps restricted only by cpu with 12 cv control options available for individual taps filtering, volume, time and pitch is something that does not exist in hardware at the moment. The extensive cv control sets the er301 apart.

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I’d love seeing a multi tap delay employing the Verbos Electronics scan, width, and tilt control scheme for individual tap settings (ie pan, filter, etc) (random amount and offset would also be very useful). That would simplify the UI by a great deal and provide meaningful, more powerful control in my opinion. In order to minimize size, each parameter could have a simple offset knob but also a submenu that could be expanded for the full settings or verbos-style settings.

Hm, Mark Verbos has just introduced his multi tap delay thingy - why not just getting one of these when they are ready to go? It probably will have scan and width control as it’s a bit of a Verbos signature feature.

I am not sure if developing a unit that mimics existing eurorack modules will lead into a good direction. Especially when those modules have just been announced by showing a prototype. But I am pretty sure that you could build something like that in a chain by using multiple delays and a bump scanner.

The prototype shown contained no scanner — if you look closely you’ll see a three input mixer and some attenuverters for delay time control.

Although this is a bit ironic as I referred to it as Verbos-like, I don’t think this control structure in some way belongs to them. It seems like Buchla initially came up with it, and it’s been used in a bunch of other euro modules since then (RxMx, Mixiplexer, Fumana).

At it’s most basic the idea is to map a function with few parameters to a large array of parameters. And I think that makes a lot of sense in the context of a digital interface — one where you select and edit rather than physically grab a slider — adjusting 16 times n parameters can get wearying. It also provides cv-controlability, because applying cv to each element of that array is just very messy.

  • You will want to place the delay units in parallel, not serial. If you place them in serial, modifying the time of a “tap” earlier in the chain will affect later taps. This can, of course, be a desired effect :slight_smile:
  • To do the tap scanning, you will want to place a VCA after each tap and use a Bump Scanner unit to change the level of the VCA.
  • Most presets that I build on the Rainmaker only end up making use of 2-4 taps. I would suggest just putting together a Custom Unit that combines a Pitch Shifting Delay (or Variable Delay if you want feedback) with a VCA, Panner, and Filter. That way, you can just drop a few of those in quickly and use only as much CPU as you need for the patch.
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thanks this was very helpful info… im still having trouble understanding these Bump units, how to use them… ill have to try doing more research on them again and try to wrap my head around them.
thanks again!

I made a video a while back about the bump scanner. Sorry, have not updated the wiki page for a while so it’s buried in a thread somewhere. Maybe it will help.

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