{"id":6315,"date":"2019-06-04T14:36:26","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T18:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/?p=6315"},"modified":"2026-01-14T15:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T20:12:12","slug":"delay-audio-effect-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/delay-audio-effect-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"The impact of delay (audio effect)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Illustration: Laura Bee<\/a><\/h6>\n

A straightforward concept with huge potential, delay has become one of the most recognizable and widely-used audio effects in music production today.<\/h1>\n

As its name suggests, delay stores an incoming audio signal and plays it back after a certain amount of time. You can even feed some of that delayed signal back into the system to create a long, repeating echo. In this post, we\u2019ll overview the key principles behind delay and explore how it has shaped music over the years.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s delay in music?<\/h2>\n

On the surface, delay is pretty easy to understand, consisting of just a few key parameters to keep in mind. First, the incoming audio signal is stored in memory for a certain amount of time before it’s played back. This constant is known as the delay time<\/strong>, and it can range from a few milliseconds to a few seconds or more. Next is feedback<\/strong>, which you can use to control how much of the outgoing signal you\u2019d like to feed back into the delay. No feedback means you only get that initial echo – add more and you\u2019ll start hearing additional echoes, each separated by the delay time. Add too much feedback and the resulting feedback loop can get out of hand though, so be careful. There are a lot more parameters that can shape the sound of your delay, like filters, but these two are the ones to remember.<\/p>\n

The history of the delay effect<\/h2>\n

Delay had its humble beginnings in the world of magnetic tape recording in the early 20th century. Because tape runs at a consistent speed, you could adjust its length along with the read and write heads of a tape machine to achieve unique delay effects. Employed early on by avant-garde composers like Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, tape delay eventually made its way into recording studios as standalone hardware units and exists to this day as digital VST plugins<\/a> that seek to emulate the once-laborious effect. The slapback-style echo heard in Elvis Presley\u2019s 1955 release “Baby Let\u2019s Play House” is a great example of the influence delay had on popular styles like rockabilly.<\/p>\n