Exploring Delay Effects with Bitwig Studio
Tutorial | Mar 15, 2021
In this video, I demonstrate how to use delay in Bitvic Studio. I explain how to use the delay one effect to offset audio signals, create echo effects, and even create phasing effects and filters. I also discuss the feedback FX box and explain how to use it to create glitch effects by pitching and filtering audio signals.
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Questions & Answers #
Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:
What is a delay effect used for? #
Delay effects are used to delay audio signals by an offset in time, creating an echo-like effect. It can also be used to recreate chorus, flanger, and phaser effects by modulating the delay time with an LFO, as well as creating feedback loops by feeding the output back into the input.
How can I create a phaser effect with a delay? #
You can create a phaser effect with a delay by modulating the delay time with an LFO. This will offset the original signal by a varying amount of time, creating a phased sound. Additionally, you can use multiple delays blended together to create a more complex phasing effect.
How can I use the feedback setting on a delay? #
The feedback setting on a delay is used to create a feedback loop. This means that the output of the delay is fed back into the input, creating a loop. The feedback setting allows you to set how much the signal is attenuated each time it passes through the loop, so you can control the amount of decay in the effect.
Transcription #
This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, 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.
[00:00.000] Welcome back to another video, today it's all about the delay and not only delay of
[00:04.920] Bitvic Studio, more like delay in general, because most of the audio effects you can use
[00:11.120] today are based in one way or another on a delay.
[00:15.040] So it's an interesting, super simple effect and I want to show you what you can do in Bitvic
[00:20.320] Studio with the delay one and also some delay settings in the grid.
[00:25.600] So it's a super long full packed informative video for you about the delay, grab some
[00:32.960] pier or some coffee and enjoy the ride.
[00:35.840] Okay, so delay settings, how do we start?
[00:39.320] I have this super simple drum loop here, but it's a 90 ppm drum loop, it sounds like this.
[00:50.120] And there's no effect on the chain and we're gonna add a delay one.
[00:56.320] And the ended settings for the delay one looks like this on my end here, I have the low
[01:01.700] cut all the way down, I have the high cut all the way up and the mix at 100% feedback
[01:07.700] at minus infinity and a three beats delay, okay.
[01:12.680] So when we play back this drum loop here again, it sounds exactly like before.
[01:20.040] The only difference is that we have now an offset to the drum loop or to the audio signal
[01:25.400] by three beats, okay.
[01:27.960] And if we bring in here the tri-signal, you can hear the offset.
[01:34.000] So now we have the tri-signal and the delay signal and we mix them back together.
[01:48.360] And now we have basically two trix, one is delayed and the other one is not delayed
[01:54.680] and we brought them back together.
[01:56.840] If you want to visualize this with trix, we're gonna just disable the delay, duplicate
[02:02.880] this and then we're gonna offset this by one, two, three beats and Fee hits play here.
[02:16.760] It's exactly what we heard before, but we have the tri-signal here and we have the delayed
[02:22.060] signal just with an offset by three beats and then we mix them both back together so
[02:30.120] you can hear both playing.
[02:31.880] So this is what you can do virtually with the delay, with the most basic setting, so
[02:41.280] maybe the delay, the deleteers here, bring this back.
[02:51.080] So you can delay audio signals and you can choose your of course different delay settings.
[02:56.600] They are all synchronized to the beat grid so when you change the BPM here on your track,
[03:02.240] it's perfectly fine.
[03:11.760] So when you have the feedback at minus infinity, you have the filter completely removed and
[03:18.200] you have to mix all the way up, you basically just offset your original audio signal by some
[03:24.240] amount of time.
[03:25.680] You can also step out of the grid settings here and just go just for milliseconds and
[03:34.440] this is maybe sometimes helpful if you want to counter some latency from an external device
[03:41.400] or from some plug-in or I don't know, you want to change the groove of certain instruments
[03:48.080] on some tracks to some other tracks so you can use this of course.
[04:00.840] And you can't hear a difference but when you mix in here, the original tri-signal,
[04:05.680] it's maybe more useful.
[04:21.680] So the only downside to this delay here is that you can't go lower than 10 milliseconds
[04:27.920] and sometimes for some effects it's crucial to go below than 10 milliseconds.
[04:33.720] For instance if you want to create or recreate some kind of phasing effect or chorus or
[04:39.360] flanger effect because when you mix in the signal here and the tri-signal is basically
[04:46.200] 10 milliseconds slower or before than your delay signal.
[04:51.160] But you can counter or kind of solve this by using two delays, let's bring the mix all
[04:59.000] the way up and hit Ctrl and G to put this in an FX layer here and duplicate one of these
[05:06.280] layers.
[05:07.280] So we have now two delays, so we have two delayed audio signals.
[05:11.560] The first one is delayed by 10 milliseconds and the second one also delayed by 10 milliseconds.
[05:16.680] So it shouldn't change anything.
[05:21.120] It just becomes louder of course, maybe put the limiter on the master section.
[05:28.040] It becomes, it's basically twice as loud or raised by 60b because you have two of the
[05:34.240] same signals with the same loudness mixed together so you have an increase of 60b I think.
[05:41.120] So yeah, what you can do now is you can delay one signal maybe by 10.1 milliseconds, right?
[05:49.240] So it's slightly super slightly delayed by 0.1 milliseconds.
[05:57.600] When you're at it's now some kind of comp filtering happening, maybe we go in 0.2 and maybe
[06:11.520] you can already start to hear it when we modulate now this time setting here by with an LFO maybe
[06:19.480] let's go for classic LFO here and just slightly modulate this here by a super tiny amount and
[06:27.440] see it on the left side here in the inspector so 0.0
[06:54.120] Maybe you can hear it, it starts to sound like a phaser phasing effect, right?
[06:59.080] And that's basically all a phaser does it offsets the audio, blends it back together and then
[07:06.240] you modulate basically the time or delay setting of one audio signal and yeah, that's a phaser
[07:12.200] so you can create some kind of phasing effect with a delay or with some random delay you
[07:19.440] can use.
[07:22.240] So we have basically the delay is used in a small simple stage you can use just to offset
[07:29.880] audio signals to delay audio signals and if you bring in multiple delays and you modulate
[07:38.400] the timing setting you can create kind of a phaser chorus or flanger effect.
[08:02.200] I think you can also just multiply this in multiple times it just increases the effect
[08:09.640] right so maybe we tune this down here by some dp or maybe 10.
[08:38.160] So sometimes it creates some kind of interesting effect but you can also just use a phaser
[08:45.760] for this of course.
[08:52.280] So because you are mixing two out of phase signals or the same signals out of phase back together
[08:59.720] you can create some kind of comb filter with the delay if you want.
[09:05.280] So adding back here delay 1, there's also a setting here for feedback as you can see
[09:14.200] and we have this completely at minus infinity and this means there is basically no feedback
[09:20.840] happening.
[09:21.840] So what's feedback?
[09:23.200] Feedback is if you can imagine a feedback like an loop at circle or a closed path so when
[09:32.920] you feed in the audio signal in this case we have our drum loop or the audio signal
[09:38.480] of the drum loop goes into the delay at the front in gets delayed by a certain time setting
[09:46.560] here gets filtered by the filter section here and then if you when you raise the feedback
[09:53.000] here it goes out of the delay and back in at the front okay so it's a loop basically
[10:01.840] so you feedback the output of this back into the delay and you can kind of change with
[10:10.040] the feedback setting here by how many dB you want to lower the signal each time it goes
[10:18.040] around the circle or around the loop.
[10:20.840] So in this case here we want to have the feedback to be minus to be minus 1 dB lower each
[10:30.440] time it passes to the loop.
[10:33.760] So in this case we just take a bit here of the audio signal so you can hear it better.
[10:42.760] Maybe take a longer time here with this.
[10:52.400] The linear the audio signal of this kick drum here goes basically into the delay is delayed
[10:57.720] by 549 milliseconds goes out of the delay one and goes back into the day one with only
[11:08.680] one change or two changes it's delayed by one and secondly it's lowered in volume by
[11:17.080] minus 1 dB okay so you can hear it every time it passes to the cycle or the loop it becomes
[11:23.480] quieter and quieter so when you have this at 0 dB here you have an endless infinity looping
[11:30.840] sound so this goes on for error basically it's just like an sampler maybe turn this down
[11:50.960] you can hear it's slightly or slowly fades away so it's like a mini sampler without
[11:59.520] the stop or play button it's just the feedback buffer or basically the cycle or the loop
[12:07.360] you have and you let this run forever.
[12:10.640] So in this case we have to mix here at 100% so we haven't mixed or blended in the original
[12:18.280] tricycle we only hear the delay signal and then we hear the loop going on forever.
[12:34.720] So maybe turn this down a bit bring back your original drum sample to the fullest and
[12:41.840] then maybe go to 10 dB here and then let this player or blend it in with the tricycle.
[12:59.240] So this is more like an echo effect right you have an original tricycle and then you
[13:04.720] have the delay signal and you can hear the feedback buffer with some kind of random delay
[13:12.520] time setting so when we set this here to a synchronized setting maybe two beats or three
[13:19.320] beats it becomes more interesting for the rhythm we have also the change here a chance here
[13:35.680] to kind of offset the synchronized beat setting or synchronized delay setting here by some
[13:39.880] amount so it doesn't hit the same snare drum with the original snare drum right so we
[13:46.880] can kind of mix and match here a bit.
[13:55.440] So in fact you can remove some of the phasing effects you can hear with the setting here.
[14:10.720] You can hear when some of the hi-hats or snares basically doubling up with kind of a
[14:16.920] small delay it's you get some kind of phasing effect right okay so this is pretty nice
[14:33.960] so we can basically have an offset for some audio signals we can create some echo effect
[14:41.680] we can create phasers or just with the delay and now we're gonna use here maybe the snare
[14:47.840] drum let's use this maybe use your custom time setting minus or 10 milliseconds use the
[14:59.400] feedback to minus 1 dB mix it all the way and just see how it sounds
[15:23.320] you can almost hear that you can create sounds with this right you can't obviously go lower
[15:30.200] than 10 milliseconds here we can create can't create shorter sounds that are doubling
[15:39.920] and creating some kind of sounds from it but what you can do is you can use for instance
[15:44.680] here the grid or this let's go to grid x grid inside the grid we have just an audio input
[15:55.760] here an audio output right and we can also use here and delay but this delay is just
[16:04.120] a delay there's no feedback setting like on this one here right so we have to use something
[16:08.600] different or maybe create our own delay maybe can just do this so we have here the signal
[16:15.880] we can delay the signal and then we have to use some kind of feedback setting here so
[16:20.040] we have to bring in this output signal back to the frontier and blend it in so you can
[16:27.520] only do this in the grid here with the with the long delay and the long delay has as
[16:32.600] a shortest amount of delay time here zero dot zero dot two milliseconds we have to use
[16:38.880] this to create some kind of yeah loop loop setting so we have to go out into this and
[16:45.000] you can back into this but now we have to lead it here our original tricycle so we have
[16:50.360] to use a blend so we can blend in the original tricycle with the delay the delay signal
[17:04.080] like this right and maybe maybe we use also a volume knob I don't know let's try this
[17:12.520] first maybe equal power here
[17:42.520] maybe use a volume knob and we can amplify here a bit the sound by
[18:07.520] so it's hard to find a sweet spot here it's probably 4.15 or something like this
[18:32.960] as you can hear with the delay setting or with the time with the delay time can kind
[18:39.040] of create some kind of note right so it sounds like you're pitching up and down a sound
[18:44.480] even though you just yeah repeating a short amount of time of some audio signal right so
[18:52.280] rhythm becomes a frequency at some point and it's probably below 10 milliseconds that's
[18:59.360] probably why we have to tell you milliseconds constrain here so there are some different
[19:09.600] tools you can use for instance when we remove this grid here again and use the comp filter
[19:15.400] it looks like this and we have a hard setting here and the feedback setting and a mix knob
[19:23.080] and the comp filter is nothing different than just delay with a shorter amount of time
[19:29.720] of possible delay settings and you also have the delay time not in milliseconds but in
[19:38.640] hertz this is nothing more than just delay time here on this on this delay right but
[19:46.960] instead of milliseconds you have hertz here so the delay time is mapped to a frequency
[19:53.080] and if you open up here the online help can see this we have here the feedback and we
[20:01.480] have here the frequency 20 hertz to frequency for comp filter implemented as a corresponding
[20:08.400] delay time so this is just the delay time this is basically just delay with the feedback
[20:15.240] so when we use this here on this one you can't hear anything but you have to use the feedback
[20:25.360] here so we can create another feedback loop and we can change the frequency here okay so
[20:41.120] when you want to have for instance a C3 node it maps it to the correct delay time and then
[20:52.760] you just raise here the feedback signal and you get a nice signal out of it right you
[21:04.280] can also use here for instance the supermassive while hello supermassive which is a VST
[21:13.000] and it's free to use but also in this one here you can go with the delay time to zero
[21:18.160] milliseconds you can also go with the feedback down here and maybe go with this down and
[21:24.360] we have the mix knob here so we bring this up and maybe let's try this out so we raise
[21:37.680] the feedback maybe to 99 percent we get the sound and when we change the delay time
[21:43.560] here we can change the note maybe go to zero dots or that's also an interesting Bob setting
[22:01.280] here I adjust the delay length relative to the delayed setting and you can also introduce
[22:07.680] some yeah pitch modulation which is just modulation of the delay time so it wobbles around
[22:16.640] a bit and maybe go to zero dot three so if you want you can just sample this like I did
[22:43.080] in some of my streams and you have some random note here you can put this into the sampler
[22:53.800] maybe detect root key here it actually would work but you can't then play this on the piano
[23:12.880] we can create kind of sounds for the sampler with the delay and super short delay times
[23:20.240] in high feedback rates you can also go to the comfort filter try this with this one
[23:31.120] bounce this host filter we have a sound use the sampler put this into the sampler should
[23:37.960] be see three right yeah you can also add here of course again delay at the end and you
[23:57.160] can create sounds with this super easy so not only that you can delay or offset beats
[24:03.880] or sounds with the delay one you can create echo effects you can create phasers you can
[24:08.560] also create kind of filters with it and you can create a create sounds with it so it's
[24:16.080] a super yeah highly versatile effect actually and the comp filter here is actually not the
[24:23.560] filter it's at its core just in delay with the delay time mapped to the frequency and
[24:33.040] there's also here inside the inside bit big studio the phaser which is nothing more than
[24:39.360] just the delay blending two signals together one is just slightly offset by some short amount
[24:47.400] of time and then yeah mix together so the phaser and delay or the comp filter is actually
[24:53.840] just the delay if you if you look at the patch or at its core patch there some small
[25:00.960] differences but at the core it's just delay so we have this and the last thing I want
[25:09.880] to talk about on the delay is the feedback FX box which is now clear what it does it's
[25:16.440] basically just an insert box in the feedback cycle so as I as we talked earlier the audio
[25:28.160] goes out and back into the delay one input here you can hook up something in the tween
[25:34.600] so we can say maybe let's pitch up the signal every time it passes the loop so we have
[25:41.520] still here this now maybe I go for the kick it's maybe better we choose your synchronized
[25:48.360] time setting so you can hear the the echo slightly fading out because we have here minus
[26:04.120] 4 minus 3 dB okay so we put into the FX box now a pitch a pitch shifter and we pitch
[26:11.880] here the signal up by 5 semi tones okay so every time now the signal passes this loop
[26:20.440] or the feedback buffer it's it's getting pitched up by 5 semi tones and it sounds like this
[26:36.240] and you can also utilize the filter so every time it passes the feedback loop or the feedback
[26:41.560] cycle it gets filtered up more and more so maybe put us here on the whole drum loop
[27:12.040] so with some slightly double changes here to these you can create some kind of some kind
[27:28.040] of glitch effects right because the grain setting is also interesting on the pitch one so when
[27:34.480] we just add this here to the signal almost also sounds like a phasing effect but with the
[27:53.080] grain setting all the way down it sounds like a grain rainy delay so maybe let's see
[28:17.320] so basically pitch it up and then we pitch it down back again but what we got is the grain
[28:24.160] yet grainy effect of of these two pitch shifters here so we put this back into the feedback
[28:29.560] fx here maybe try this out
[28:59.560] so you can imagine you can create some nice glitchy effects for this also reverbs if you want
[29:06.920] maybe let's try to do something like this and use here a blur just kind of just an all-past
[29:16.360] device yeah it's just an all-past device yeah garen actually did the nice video on the blur so
[29:27.560] I'll get you a link for this for this video here maybe up in the corner
[29:57.560] maybe we just modulate here at the late time
[30:17.080] lf or just modulate this here just a bit just a tad
[30:31.160] so you can create kind of a super simple delay by diffusing the signal using or utilizing the
[30:46.680] feedback fx box here and inserting diffuser every time the signal passes the cycle
[30:52.680] but we also can do is maybe you see at the pitch shifter
[31:23.000] so yeah you can experiment with this we have a lot of small little modules inside bitvig studio
[31:38.520] can put into the fx box here of the delay one and create some super nice effects and what I want
[31:46.680] to say with this video is that the delay one actually is a super interesting device because
[31:52.040] delays are a fundamental component of all kinds of audio effects like phasers like chorus
[32:04.600] pitch shifters all-past devices there are all delays in there at some point in the patch and
[32:11.000] with the feedback setting here and the feedback fx insert here you can create a lot of interesting
[32:17.800] effects so at the end of the video I want to give you some inspiration ideas for what you can
[32:22.680] do with the delay one so we know that we can delay the audio signal by a certain amount of time
[32:27.800] I showed this in the first example so I have created a preset earlier with some video
[32:33.960] here on my channel and I think it's called fxfader fxfeedfader fxfader you can download this for free
[32:41.720] I think and this preset basically just creates multiple layers here and you can put devices on these
[32:52.520] layers so nothing special then normal fx layer but you can use your the fader you can use the
[33:02.040] fader and you can see you can switch your through or fade through the layers okay you can see anything
[33:10.040] because there's no device on there but when you turn this knob you're basically you fade from
[33:14.040] layer one to two the three the four and so on so you can blend in only one layer and you fade
[33:19.720] in with a nice transition maybe put the delay set it one delay here at layer one
[33:25.080] maybe set it to two maybe insert here one two maybe one to three four so let's let's just
[33:40.600] create four layers right and in each layer I use a different setting maybe three maybe two there
[33:47.480] maybe four okay so now we can play back the strum loop or maybe in the first first layer actually
[33:57.560] I just use nothing then just two because I want to have the first first line I want to have no
[34:06.520] delay or no offset in the first line here and because we use the synchronized setting
[34:35.400] and have a different setting on each layer we basically blend between different versions of
[34:42.680] the strum loop but different offset times which create some kind of beat repeater or you know
[34:49.400] breaking tool where you can create some break beats just by blending between different delay
[34:57.000] delay devices with different settings here and you can do this with the fx fader yeah like I did
[35:03.160] it or you can just use an fx grid and use a long delay here
[35:17.160] maybe use a merge the first setting is basically without changing without altering the signal
[35:26.200] what the second one here is delayed by three beats maybe use more inputs let's go create four
[35:37.000] this one is delayed by four it goes into here and then we have another one delayed by maybe six
[35:45.080] so now we have original signal we have and three offset offset audio signals here going into
[35:53.000] with the long delay and then we need to use maybe a value knob here switch between the inputs
[36:01.960] you can see but you can see now we have your slightly fading over from one to the other but I
[36:08.840] don't want that I want to switch switch between the inputs so this should work so now we put this
[36:19.560] here into a macro and modulate your the values lighter and call this maybe delay
[36:30.280] go okay we can close this down so now we have the in and setting we have the original
[36:34.440] tri-signal because it goes straight out but when we turn the snop here we switch between
[36:38.680] different versions and it sounds like this
[36:57.960] so you can create some kind of weird yeah it's it's the same as before but the fx
[37:04.920] fade-out just made in the grid basically here with the merge module but you can create a nice
[37:09.720] beats with this kind of trick by just using multiple delays and switching between the different
[37:15.800] versions okay we delete this back to the delay one and maybe we just switch here with a random
[37:27.480] um the random modulator and we use here this yeah smooth all the way down so we have some
[37:37.160] rectangle shapes here for the modulation we choose your 16th notes it's also synchronized to
[37:43.960] the beat grid and of course we modulate this area here maybe two three so we change the delay time
[37:54.360] here synchronized delay time also synchronized to the beat grid should be sound interesting
[38:24.360] oh maybe go to your off grid setting modulate this
[38:41.960] hey this almost sounds like a tape right so maybe we can create something interesting like a
[39:01.240] flutter effect we don't need this super expensive tape plug in so let's go for an LFO here
[39:08.120] and just unipolar and maybe delay this here it's a bit slower
[39:15.640] ah
[39:30.840] Ah, bring it, effect down.
[39:43.240] Sounds almost like a cassette tape. Maybe we'll remove some frequencies here.
[39:54.840] Right, when the batteries die out, so you can create a flutter effect by just
[39:58.680] modulating the delay time slightly. And yeah, you can also of course use a rotary device.
[40:13.960] It looks like this, you have a rate setting, you can offset here, I think the delay time.
[40:27.880] I think it delays the signal on the left and the right channel a bit differently.
[40:44.120] So this is a nice interesting device to bring in quick nice modulations to your sound.
[40:49.240] Also interesting the use here on the reverb in the tank FX or wet FX box of course.
[41:04.920] So this should be interesting, so you can create some kind of flutter effect with this.
[41:09.560] And what else can we do with the delay?
[41:12.200] Yeah, you can spice up the rhythm basically of every drum loop.
[41:29.160] So you can add additional hi-hats by just filtering out here the high end and
[41:44.520] beating it back in just delayed by three beats and you know sounds kind of interesting or more
[41:50.600] interesting.
[42:51.560] This is without.
[43:01.560] So you can spice up some rhythms, maybe you have some percussion loops and you want to fill out the
[43:06.920] space. You can just use your delay different delay settings, delay time settings, play around with
[43:15.480] feedback with the filtering and bring back in the delay signal and it sounds more full and rich
[43:22.040] and interesting. So you can do a lot with the delay in BitwigStudio alone, you can also utilize
[43:29.960] some VST plugins like I used here the super massive because you can all the way down to zero
[43:38.520] milliseconds delay, not every delay can do this. So in Bitwigit's possible, also in the grid you can
[43:48.280] go down to zero dot zero to milliseconds and supermassive you can all the way go down to zero
[43:56.520] milliseconds here, I don't know if this is actually correct but it shows it that way.
[44:02.840] That's it, thanks for watching, please leave a thumbs up if you liked the video,
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