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Bitwig Delay-1 Device - Audio Delay, Echo, Looping, and FX Processing

Bitwig Guide | Mär 10, 2023

Delay One in Bitwig Studio is a versatile device that allows you to offset incoming audio in sync with your BPM or manually in milliseconds, with flexible controls for feedback, filtering, and mixing. It can function as a simple delay, echo, looper, or even create glitchy and reverb effects by using the feedback FX chain to process and alter the sound in creative ways. This makes Delay One a powerful tool for offsetting audio, crafting evolving patterns, and experimenting with sound design during both production and live improvisation.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

Short Overview

With Delay-1, I can easily offset my audio by a chosen amount, either synchronized to the project’s BPM or set manually in milliseconds. The device gives me simple controls for mix, feedback, and filtering, making it perfect for creating echoes, quick time shifts, or even live looping and improvisation. By adding FX to the feedback chain, I can experiment with interesting effects like pitch shifts and granular textures, or use it to create reverb-like diffusions. Its versatility means I often find new creative uses for it in sound design and arrangement.

Overview of the Delay One Device

In this video, I explored the Delay One device in Bitwig Studio, which is a simple yet powerful tool to offset incoming audio by a set amount of time. I described how this device works, its key functions, and some creative ways to use it in music production.

Core Functionality

Delay One's core job is to delay the audio signal. You can set how much you want to delay the signal by dialing in time units. This can be done either by inputting a value in a number box or using a manual setting.

Synchronization with BPM

One notable feature is the ability to synchronize the delay time with your project's BPM. When this is enabled, entering a value of 1 will delay by 1 sixteenth note, 2 by 2 sixteenth notes, and so on. If you're looking to work in a strictly tempo-locked environment, this makes delay timing straightforward. Disabling synchronization lets you specify delay in milliseconds or seconds, ranging from a minimum of 10 milliseconds up to 5 seconds.

Manual and Sync Modes

With manual mode, the delay setting in beats is disabled and you work in pure time units, giving you full freedom. Switching back to sync mode reactivates beat-based delay and introduces another powerful option: the "Delay Offset," which allows you to offset the delay as a percentage. This is helpful for adding swing or shifting rhythms in subtle, musical ways.

Filtering and Signal Mixing

Beneath the delay settings, there are high-pass and low-pass filter controls to shape the delayed sound, letting you filter out unwanted frequencies from the wet signal. There's also a mix control to blend the dry (unprocessed) and wet (delayed) signals, offering flexible sound layering possibilities.

Feedback, Echo, and Looping

The feedback knob controls how much of the delayed signal is fed back into the device’s input, turning a single delay into an echo effect. At 100% feedback, the delay acts like a looper, continuously repeating the buffer until the feedback is reduced. With lower feedback, the repeated signal fades out gradually, which is great for building textures or live improvisation.

Using Feedback for Looper Effects

I demonstrated how, by carefully setting feedback and timing, the device can function as a looper. This can be especially effective for live improvisation: you can loop a pattern, play new notes over the top, and let older patterns naturally fade away. Although you're limited to a maximum of 16 sixteenth notes as a loop, this constraint can actually foster creativity.

Creative FX Routing in Feedback Loop

One standout feature is the feedback FX chain. Here, you can insert audio effects modules or plugins into the feedback path itself. This means every repeated delay pass through the effects chain, enabling creative feedback processing like pitch-shifting, granular processing, or diffusing with all-pass filters for reverb-like results.

Pitch Shifting in the Feedback Loop

Placing a pitch shifter in the feedback FX section can create dramatic effects. For example, setting a pitch shift of +7 semitones will raise the pitch of each delayed repeat, creating upward-resolving echoes. Using octaves can preserve musicality. You can also modulate pitch grain settings for glitchy or granular effects, producing more experimental sounds.

Using Delay One as a Reverb

Introducing an all-pass filter ("Pure" device) into the feedback FX can diffuse the delayed signal, acting like a primitive reverb generator. Adjusting delay timing and modulation provides various reverb flavors. Perfect sync of timings can "erase" distinct echoes and yield a more seamless reverb wash, while imperfect settings can create characterful, textured reverbs.

Practical Applications

I outlined several practical uses for the Delay One device:

Best Practices and Tips

While Delay One is simple at first glance, I emphasized how much can be achieved by carefully adjusting parameters and inserting effects in the feedback loop. One caution: adding gain within the feedback path can quickly result in infinite or runaway feedback, so levels must be managed carefully.

Conclusion

Delay One is much more than a basic delay. Its ability to sync with BPM, finely control timing, shape and filter signals, feedback with infinite or fading loops, and incorporate creative FX in the feedback path makes it a versatile tool for both subtle enhancement and bold, experimental sound design. Whether you’re offsetting a bass, echoing a vocal, looper-style performing, or designing custom reverb, Delay One offers rich possibilities with an easy workflow.

Full Video Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by Whisper, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

Click to expand Transcription

[00:00:00] The delay one is a simple delay device that offsets incoming audio by a certain amount and
[00:00:07] she can dial in by how many in time units with this number box here also with this manual setting
[00:00:14] on top and also here with the v-delay offset where you can you know offset more earlier and more later
[00:00:21] and this number box is interesting because it's synchronized to your bpm of your transport so when
[00:00:29] you dial in here 120 bpm right it's changing accordingly so this one here delays basically by
[00:00:39] 16 nodes so one is one 16 nodes two is two 16 nodes three 16 nodes and so on so if you have the
[00:00:48] feedback down and also the mix all the way up it just offsets audio to a later state so three 16
[00:00:56] nodes basically if you don't want to synchronize here the delay by yeah synchronize to the bpm you
[00:01:05] can also switch to manual mode so then it becomes inactive or disabled here as you can see it's
[00:01:12] grayed out now we can use the time delay which is seconds and milliseconds and then you can offset
[00:01:20] the audio basically or yeah it starts with 10 milliseconds that's the lowest as you can go
[00:01:26] with this and the highest is let's see it's probably five seconds exactly so you can offset the audio
[00:01:34] here by five seconds double click and go back to the initial default value if you switch this back
[00:01:41] on synchronized mode you can also use now here this beat the delay offset that's that's in percentage
[00:01:50] so we can say one 16 node offset and also 33 percent earlier so you can use this here maybe to
[00:02:02] integrate some kind of swing if you modulate this back and forth all the time so you make the delay
[00:02:09] a bit swing right if you want to so you can do that and below that we have a just normal regular
[00:02:17] high pass controls low pass controls just to filter out audio content if you want to a mixing
[00:02:25] node where you can bring in the dry signal and combine it with the delayed or offset signal
[00:02:34] then we have a feedback so you can create instead of having just the delay you can
[00:02:40] make it like sounding like an echo where you have multiple delayed tabs ringing out over time slowly
[00:02:46] you can do that too and you can also go here to up to 100 which is basically infinite delays or
[00:02:54] infinite delay tabs or infinite echo tabs or however you want to call it a delay for me is
[00:03:00] basically just delaying the audio one time and then using a feedback here it becomes an echo
[00:03:06] where you have like this echoing slowly degrading sound happening so this is basically delay and
[00:03:15] this is an echo more or less and then we have a feedback chain FX chain where you can put in
[00:03:22] some additional FX some audio effects from pittwick studio or maybe vst device to alter the signal
[00:03:30] in the feedback loop so this works like a normal echo basically you have audio coming in then the
[00:03:37] audio goes out into the FX chain here and then if you dial up the feedback the output of that is
[00:03:45] going back into the input of the feedback delay right with a certain certain gain amount here
[00:03:52] and then it becomes a bit quieter goes back into the feedback chain and so on and it's a feedback
[00:03:57] loop going in and out of this device until it's not audible anymore so this is how this works and
[00:04:05] you can put in here basically some effects to alter the sound but to show you in a minute how
[00:04:09] the sounds just a you know the overview how this device works so to give you some examples
[00:04:18] maybe increase here also the the sizing of this so we have you just just in synthesizer with just
[00:04:28] some sounds that's better and now we have this delay device here and then we bring this in and
[00:04:41] just play sounds you can hear it's just as before for you at least but for me when i press the keyboard
[00:04:48] it takes some time until i hear the sound because i delay it here already you can see the input sound
[00:04:55] here and then it takes some time and then you hear the output here because it's delayed by
[00:05:00] three uh 16 notes right if i bring in the dry signal you can hear the delay
[00:05:05] but if you have the mix knob all the way up to 100 it's just offset for you also here the filter
[00:05:16] is all the way up so there's basically no low cut and also barely a high cut so it's a
[00:05:25] complete path through through the delay one here without any changes whatsoever only the time offset
[00:05:34] is happening in this configuration i use this most of the times for bass lines when i just want to
[00:05:46] offset the bass line maybe to an offbeat state or maybe for percussion where i have say a lot of
[00:05:53] percussion lines that are on the beat all the time and i want to offset certain tracks
[00:06:01] to for certain amounts i use this delay device because it's pretty handy for that and it's easy
[00:06:06] to do but maybe i'll show you this later on um so here we have a pretty four 16 notes delay
[00:06:13] and you can also dial in now the feedback what i told you so now we have basically echo
[00:06:23] and if you put this at 100 percent or zero db
[00:06:36] it never stops it's an infinite echoing yeah device that always plays to the delay buffer here
[00:06:48] over and over it takes some time until it rings out
[00:06:57] but you can hear it slightly alters the signal a bit
[00:07:11] if you put this here on 16 16 notes now if you clear the buffer here with going back to zero
[00:07:19] so now the buffer is clean you can even kind of use that as a small little loop or device
[00:07:27] or recording device so it records basically a buffer up to 16 16 notes which is pretty long
[00:07:35] so we can play some patterns
[00:07:40] and it plays this buffer over and over
[00:07:48] until you bring the feedback back down to zero db and it clears the buffer basically
[00:08:02] and if you maybe go a bit lower than that maybe zero minus one or two db something like that
[00:08:09] you have basically also a looper but the patterns slightly go out over time or fade out over time
[00:08:18] so you can use this maybe also for live purposes where you play certain patterns live
[00:08:24] and over time they slowly fade out and you bring in new patterns you play on top of that right
[00:08:31] so it's not only just the echo device or offsetting audio you can also use this as a looper
[00:08:37] or live looper kind of device sure you are a bit limited with the 16 16 notes but you know
[00:08:45] limitations make you creative so you can try to do that actually did a lot of times when I do some
[00:08:55] improvisations on top of my tracks so here I'm using a quantizer basically to quantize my midi
[00:09:01] notes to the bpm here so everything I play is basically quantized so I can play easier so maybe
[00:09:08] let's play here some higher notes then I play some lower notes below that
[00:09:33] you can hear the top notes I played earlier are slowly fading out because of this feedback
[00:09:38] setting here and the newer notes the bass notes are basically much louder because they are played
[00:09:45] later so it's a perfect device for live improvisations or this kind of stuff right or maybe when you
[00:09:58] create a track you're in the creational phase and you want to improvise with something you can use
[00:10:05] that basically to come up with certain type of patterns and it's also fun to do so it's also a
[00:10:14] live looper basically not only a delay and an echo so then in here you can put in a pitch
[00:10:23] shifter basically with the pitch shifter I explained earlier in another video you can
[00:10:30] lift basically the incoming audio and because we have this delay feedback fx thing here
[00:10:38] every time we pass basically this fx chain we
[00:10:41] pitch up the audio signal by seven semitones maybe okay so let's do that we have here also
[00:10:51] feedback thing so just let's play one note
[00:11:04] okay so we go in we delay the audio signal by 16 16 now it's going to the feedback fx section here
[00:11:16] pitch up by seven semitones spit out the audio at the back of the delay one and also go back into
[00:11:24] the input take this pitched up signal delay it by 16 16 notes go back into fx section here
[00:11:32] and then use the pitched up signal and pitch it even more up right so this is what you hear this
[00:11:37] going up in tonality or in pitch
[00:11:50] so this can be also yeah a nice effect on top of your track seven semitones is maybe not that
[00:12:04] good for musicality maybe used pure octaves right so it's always the same note just one
[00:12:11] octafire or one octave lower you can also pull down your the grain which brings in a nice effect
[00:12:27] or you can do the trick i chose you also in the pitch shifter video can pitch shift shift up and
[00:12:42] also pitch shift down at the same time and then maybe use here a random mod uh to modulate the
[00:12:49] grain because i really like how that sounds and i use two different um random mods here to have
[00:12:56] a different seed for the modulation also yeah not sure how the sounds
[00:13:08] so you can create kind of more like glitchy effects or granular effects or however you want to call
[00:13:23] it um some microstatus in there so a lot of options also with the feedback fx here also nice
[00:13:30] you can use the pure device which is just an all-pass device and it's also um yeah a basic
[00:13:39] module of reverb so you can diffuse the signal here as you can create some kind of reverbs with that
[00:13:45] let's try that
[00:13:55] maybe more blur
[00:14:01] maybe bring the mix down here
[00:14:07] yeah
[00:14:13] i need to find the right timings here but you get the idea you can diffuse the six note bit
[00:14:23] and create some kind of um yeah reverbs with that
[00:14:34] can hear it's more diffused it's more like a reverb maybe different with delay timing here
[00:14:43] so you can still hear the delay echoing in the background and you
[00:14:56] want to completely remove that if you want to have a clean reverb so you need perfect timings
[00:15:02] for all of these things but maybe you don't care so much to have a clean reverb and you still like
[00:15:10] how the sounds so you can come up with your own reverbs maybe of course in there could be also
[00:15:18] nice um slow modulation
[00:15:32] so yeah something you can try out maybe like this more like this and pull down the feedback
[00:15:41] so yeah if you put something in the feedback fx chain you have to make sure that you don't
[00:15:47] surpass the feedback volume if you actually amplify the signal a bit more than it goes in
[00:15:56] so the output is higher than the input of the feedback fx chain then the feedback becomes louder
[00:16:01] and louder right until um yeah until you run out of um tinnitus
[00:16:09] so yeah you can also create some kind of weird reverbs with that so like i said delay one is a
[00:16:23] fairly interesting uh device because first it's simple and second you can still do a lot of
[00:16:31] things with that you can offset audio you can create echoes with that you can create reverbs
[00:16:38] and some weird glitchy granular effects all just with one device and in combination with
[00:16:44] the rest of the bitwig devices it's a yeah fairly fairly powerful device