Circular Delays Settings (ala PCM-70)

[Merlinstudio]

Hello All

am wondering if there is anyone who has ever achieved this sound.
It was called Circular Delays and it was found on the Lexicon PCM-70.
I have seen a few guitar player forums that mention it as being sadly missed
(short of carrying around a PCM-70)
I have a feeling that the Eventide TimeFactor is the best option in a pedal format to re-create this set of parameters

or perhaps it might now be do-able in the H-90 ? (but I am currently a TimeFactor owner)

Below I have copied and pasted the best description I can find,

______________________________________________________________________
“Circular Delays:

It’s a 3 tap delay ( so it’s one delay with 3 taps, and NOT 3 individual delays as many, including I, thought in the past ). No high or low cut on this one either.

The first delay is 292ms, damped 3db, and panned to the right

Second one is 584ms, and panned to the left.

Third one is 888ms, and panned to the middle.

The way it’s panned etc, it sounds like the echos cross from one side to the other in a circular manner. If you would record a stereo clip of this preset, and then convert it to mono, the repeats would appear to come in groups of three. The first one (292ms) is damped 3db ( which is like cutting the volume in half), the second one (584ms) is not damped and is 3db louder than the 292ms, and the last one (888ms) is 3db louder than the 584ms. So each repeat in a group of three gets twice as loud (3db) than the previous one. The reason for the last (888ms) getting twice as loud as the one before (584ms), is because its’ panned to the middle, which means it’s sounding through both left and right, instead of just one. When forcing this to mono, it means that this third (888ms) repeat gets twice as loud as the second (584ms) because the second is only sounding through one speaker.It has about the same number of repeats as the other one ( around 10), maybe just slightly less. The real magic is the diffusion control. It makes the delays sound fuzzier and fuzzier with each repeats. It basically schmears the high transients in the sound. Some liken it to sounding like a pseudo-bit reducer. This parameter isn’t all that common, but other units can do it, the Axe-FX Ultra being one of them. I seem to remember other Lexicon and some Eventide units have this parameter as well. Basically, if a unit can do a 3 tap delay with diffusion, it can do the Circular Delay thingy just as good as the PCM70s. You can create something similar by just rolling of the high cut, or adding some drive in the feedback loop if your particular unit allows that. To be honest, if you in a live setting set the level of the delay as low as Luke, you probably ain’t going to be able the difference between the diffusion or some regular high cut. Luke uses this instead of reverb, and has it alot lower then the Panned Delays presets.

 

 

[apalazzolo]

Leon Todd demonstrated what he called a circular delay in his demo of the H90 with the HEADSPACE algorithm.

 

 

[brock]

I had submitted a long, detailed reply to this, and … something went terribly, terribly wrong.

I don’t know that you can recreate Circular Delays with a single TimeFactor, or H9.  The way the algorithms are constructed, some aspect will always be lacking.  A 3rd delay, diffusion, proper panning position, balance over levels, or some combination of those.  A second delay or H9 will round out the emulation.  Here’s an earlier thread with some good information & preset attempts:

https://www.eventideaudio.com/forums/topic/circular-panning-delays-with-h9s-ultratap/#post-153892

And yes, the H90’s Head Space is probably the best all-in-one (Preset) solution.  As stated in the video above, you’ll still need to ‘fake’ the diffusion with other parameters.  And note that Feedback seems to sum to mono, so you will only generate a single “circle”.

I have some H90 Head Space and alternate Program templates that I’ll save for a followup reply.

[apalazzolo]

Nice!

[rck]

Have you shared this Program templates somewhere, did I miss them? Thanks Brock.

 

brock wrote:

I had submitted a long, detailed reply to this, and … something went terribly, terribly wrong. I don’t know that you can recreate Circular Delays with a single TimeFactor, or H9. The way the algorithms are constructed, some aspect will always be lacking. A 3rd delay, diffusion, proper panning position, balance over levels, or some combination of those. A second delay or H9 will round out the emulation. Here’s an earlier thread with some good information & preset attempts: https://www.eventideaudio.com/forums/topic/circular-panning-delays-with-h9s-ultratap/#post-153892 And yes, the H90’s Head Space is probably the best all-in-one (Preset) solution. As stated in the video above, you’ll still need to ‘fake’ the diffusion with other parameters. And note that Feedback seems to sum to mono, so you will only generate a single “circle”. I have some H90 Head Space and alternate Program templates that I’ll save for a followup reply.

[brock]

No you didn’t miss them.  I have 3 or 4 variations that I put together right away; with different algo combinations.  I was close to satisfied with the results, but they all still in need of some refinement & documentation.

Good enough, but not as good as I know they can be.  I will upload them to the H90 PatchStorage area soon (Circular 1, 2, 3 .. or similar.), but some life events have now pushed that out another week or two.

[Author]

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