Infinite Delays

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I'm currently re-writing an old, simple delay plugin. In the original version, I had feedback scaled so that it could never reach 1. This was to avoid infinite delays thus reducing the possibility of clipping.

In the re-written version, I don't do any scaling on the feedback; it can go all the way to 1. I find this to be kind of cool for special effects.

There's the danger or clipping, though, as more and more audio builds up in the delay line, with things getting hairy pretty fast with really short delay times.

Should I go back to scaling the feedback to reduce the likelihood of clipping? Or give the user the freedom of having infinite delays and just hope they use their power wisely? :)

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Lots of neat vintage sounds came from echoplex and other tape delays with infinite decay. Echoplex was intentionally designed with an eq curve tailored for guitar, so over time, the constantly regenerated timbre would mutate. Also the soft clipping and natural distortion of the tape would gradually mutate the timbre over time into various abstract "science fiction" sounds.

So you could put optional eq and/or smooth saturation in the feedback loop to get the same effects without obvious hard clipping. For clean clipping avoidance, a peak limiter in the feedback loop.

It might be interesting to add either send/return ports, or direct hosting of a vst chain inserted on the feedback path. Thataway, about any kind of user selected mangling could be inserted in the feedback loop.

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You might experiment with various filters and non linear processes what kind of results you can get with infinite decay. I love what the Monotron delay can do with feedback at maximum.

However, I wonder if it can be more interesting to put these parts in the feedforward path instead of the feedback one

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Infinite delays are fun, I highly recommend doing it. The sound that really rocks my boat is the URSA Major Space Station -> digital delays + analog feedback + lots of modulation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgqhYPHzMIU

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