Fun Music

Delay time calculator

Tempo
BPM
Note value
Beats per bar
Delay time 545.45 ms
At 110 BPM
Times to dial in
Quarter note 545.45 ms
Eighth note 272.73 ms
Sixteenth note 136.36 ms
Dotted 818.18 ms
Triplet 363.64 ms
As a frequency 1.833 Hz
One bar 2.182 s
Pre-delay a 1/16 · decay about a bar

Reverb has two tempo-relevant settings. Pre-delay is the gap before the reverb starts — a sixteenth note keeps the dry signal clear before the tail arrives. Decay is how long the tail lasts, and setting it to roughly one bar means the reverb clears just as the next bar begins rather than smearing across it. Both are in the list above.

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Tempo-synced delay times come from the beat length. At 110 BPM a quarter note is 545.45 ms, a dotted eighth 409.09 ms and a sixteenth 136.36 ms. Reverb pre-delay of a sixteenth and decay of about a bar keeps the tail out of the way.

How to set delay to the tempo

1 Enter the track tempo.
2 Pick a note value for the feel you want.
3 Dial the milliseconds into the plugin or pedal.
4 Set reverb pre-delay to a sixteenth and decay to about one bar.

The dotted eighth is the workhorse of tempo-synced delay and worth understanding rather than just copying. Because it is three sixteenths long, repeats land on the off-beats between quarter notes rather than reinforcing them, which fills space without thickening the pulse. That is the sound on an enormous amount of guitar music, and it is why a plain quarter-note delay so often sounds like it is competing with the drums rather than sitting beside them.

Questions

Three quarters of a beat. At 110 BPM that is 409 ms.

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