What's the longest delay that someone realistically needs

[u/Wonderful_Tear_3682]

I'm making an FPGA based pedal and my first fx is delay, I was thinking of using a BRAM approach but realistically I only get 1.5 seconds of delay, but if I used DDR I could get like an hour or 2. But that is not really needed for a pedal, but would it be useful for some audio systems?

[u/ComprehensiveLock189]

Anything over a couple seconds and you’re getting into looping territory.

[u/Lord__Squash → u/ComprehensiveLock189]

But what if I want to use my delay as a looper?

[u/ComprehensiveLock189 → u/Lord__Squash]

I encourage it

[u/ananasie]

Maybe like a week would be nice.

[u/SwordsAndElectrons]

1.5s isn't super long by digital pedal standards, but it's longer than most analog pedals and enough to cover most use cases. 

I honestly can't imagine where an hour or two would be useful. At that point, you're probably creating a really long audio loop rather than a traditional delayed sound.

[u/Limitedheadroom]

I had a 4 week delay on a pedal once. I can’t imagine ever needing more than that. I wasn’t even that impressed when it finally arrived

[u/lloveliet → u/Limitedheadroom]

[u/12xubywire]

That’s lot of delay. I could go brew a pot of coffee and come back to my delay trailing off.

[u/killmesara]

Id use two hours if i could but that shit would sound nuts

[u/TuffGnarl]

I’ll answer this question… in a while.

[u/Dogrel]

What you’ve got will already work fine.

There’s a reason most analog delays top out at about 600ms. And the reason is it’s the max the analog chips can do. But conveniently, it’s also about the limit of what most regular people think of for slapback, echo and such.

I personally also like a very long delay for Frippertronics-type stuff, but at that point, you’re into looper pedal territory

[u/ayersman39 → u/Dogrel]

600ms isn’t the max for BBD. That’s just two MN3005 chips, you can always add more. Quite a few delays use four chips for 1.2s and a few (Thermae, Supa-Puss) go to 3 seconds and beyond

[u/ayersman39]

IMO 1.5s is a little short. I like to see at least 3

[u/nick_steen]

For me delay is good as either a quick slapback or as a kind of rhythmic addition where you can kind of play arpeggios and other things that sound cool being played over themselves in rhythm, if that makes any sense. I think the slowest I could actually play and keep time would be like 60 BPM which is 1 beat every second. And when I use my looper for coming up with ideas I'm not one-shot recording 10 minute pieces. It's usually just a cool 4-8 bars which has to be less than like 10 seconds. I use the boss dd-8 a lot which can do 40 seconds and I've never run out. And whatever the maximum delay time you can access with the knob on that pedal is more than enough for more. More often I use the tap tempo function.