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The Ripley Space Delay combines delay and reverb with unique sound shaping and deep modulation — it’s a delay with character. Watch Ryan delve into the depths of delay, reverb, and everything else there is to know about this new device.

Explore Ripley Space Delay’s full feature set on the device page.

Transcript

Intro

Okay, I have got a big task ahead of me, and that is to take the Ripley Space Delay, deconstruct it into its component parts, and then put it back together into the sound design powerhouse that it is — for you. Because that’s the thing about Ripley: it’s a series of simple little effects that add up to one big, cool one. Understanding how each piece works, how they relate to each other, and how they can be routed will have you reaching for Ripley whenever you need to spice up sounds or completely transform them. So let’s dive right in by looking at Ripley’s front panel.

The basics: Ripley as a delay

Let’s ignore — well, nearly everything — on Ripley’s panel to get at the heart of it: Ripley is first and foremost a delay, and delays excel at adding rhythm and sonic interest to otherwise simple musical phrases. So check out these chords — pretty boring so far. And even if we try and add some exciting drums, we still end up with exciting drums playing alongside boring chords.

But watch what happens when we add Ripley Space Delay, even when we reset it to its most basic setting. Sure, there’s much more we could do, but already Ripley has taken the flat chords and given us movement, and most importantly, a mood — because music is all about the mood, and well, Ripley brought that mood.

Delay time and sync mode

But so what’s happening to make this? Well, this is a simple addition of a 3/16-note single delay effect. You can always see the delay time setting on Ripley’s LCD screen, and if we wanted to work in milliseconds instead of musical note divisions, we can simply toggle off the Sync button. Personally, aside from when I’m doing dub-style delays — where being slightly off helps it sound more authentic — or when I’m working in music that’s not recorded to a click, I’m most often syncing my delays to musical note timing.

Dual delay: independent left/right times

Just a bit south of the Sync button is the Dual Delay button, which you’ll see changes Ripley’s delay time control to become two independent delay controls, for the left and right speakers. And right away, if we make some adjustments to the delay time of the left side to something faster than the right side, our chords start getting even more interesting.

To enhance this effect even more, we’ll increase the delay’s feedback to hear more repetitions of the delay.

Tap tempo controls

There are tap tempo controls that I can use if I’m feeling the delay time I want to hear, but I don’t actually know if it’s maybe triplets, or 3/32nds.

The freeze button and delay buffer

Next to our feedback control is a button to freeze the delay buffer, and if those words didn’t make enough sense to you yet, allow me to explain. When signals pass through a delay, they are stored in a little buffer of delay memory, which is what is then used to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat the sound, the sound, the sound.

And those buffered repetitions will repeat for a number of times that directly relates to the feedback setting — more feedback, more repetitions. And what the Freeze button does is capture the delay buffer and repeat it infinitely, without the normal feedback decay tail, like this — this will just keep going until I unfreeze it, and then it will pick up with the feedback decay like normal.

And this button is where the experimental nature of Ripley starts to show up in fun ways. I like to sometimes play with freezing and unfreezing the buffer, almost like a DJ mixer effect. And in fact, sometimes if I can clip the buffer really quickly on the sound, in a way that would technically be wrong, it actually makes for a cool sound — let me try it for you. Yeah, like that.

The multiply switches: pitch-shifting the buffer

From here on out, Ripley departs from the traditional, rigid delay techniques and gets into sound design, supplemental effects layers, and experimentation. The experimentation side of that shows up already just to the left of our delay settings, in the multiply switches, and to check them out, let’s take a look at another song idea.

Let’s check out the chopped piano track in the song, which has a Ripley delay on it — that’s a pretty simple 5/16 delay to start off.

Multiply switches in action

Let me first demo the multiply switches with this nice and obvious sound. Remember that feedback delay buffer? Well, while that buffer is stored inside Ripley temporarily, it can do some other stuff with it — specifically, it can pitch-shift the audio buffer. So we’ve added that ability to speed up, or multiply, in other words the buffer — sound higher, which will take it up an octave, playing twice as fast, or down an octave, twice as slow.

And there’s little hacks and tricks you’ll find if you like this type of experimentation. For example, if I set the multiply switch to 2x, right away I can move the buffer to one-quarter speed for a weird resample and texture potential — I don’t know what that is, but I like it, and I could totally use that in the beat. And of course, let’s not forget the multiply switch can be automated, and so that means I can’t wait to hear what weirdness you guys figure out for that little trick.

The feedback filter

The next section is where we can start sound-designing the quality of our delay. The feedback filter is, what its name suggests, a filter you can apply to the delay feedback repetitions. Without any filters applied, the delay feedback sounds the same as the piano that’s going into Ripley — in fact, it sounds too much like it, to the point where my chopped-up sample just sounds like it’s being re-triggered, rather tastelessly, I might add.

Let’s activate the feedback filter, and let’s roll off the highest highs and the lows, for a more muffled type of sound on the repeated delays, like this. This is useful for adding some quick color to your delay.

Frequency bands: boost and cut

But if you wanted to add more unique color, we can switch to the other band filter mode. Here we’ve got frequency bands, not unlike an old graphic equalizer, that we can boost or cut from the repetition portion of our sound — getting the best of both worlds with some low-frequency, muted wooliness, and some high-frequency sharpness to our sound, that ends up having a nice, kind of hollow quality to it.

And these frequency bands aren’t just passive cutting bands — they’re active boost bands as well, which means that if we boost a frequency, that boosted signal will now pass through the next repeat each time, getting more and more boosted, and more colored-sounding. Let’s go over the top to demonstrate what I mean.

Now, this also demonstrates why there’s a limiter on this section, because things can get carried away to the extremes.

Shifting the filter band frequencies

We can also use the frequency shift knob to take this custom, sculpted EQ band contour and shift it up or down in the frequency range. Let me demonstrate this with the one and only cheesy rock guitar chord you’ll hear in this video — because trust me, as a guitarist, I am avoiding the temptation to do this whole video as a guitar tribute. But listen to this one, that has a fairly hollow-sounding set of feedback filter bands on it — if we shift those frequencies down, we get a similar hollow quality, but now happening lower in the frequency spectrum.

And I can also adjust the offset left/right control to shift these bands differently in the left and right speakers, for a stereo-widening effect.

The space section: adding reverb

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program — no more rock tone. I’m going to take this filter band contour and do a little of that offset left/right, to add some of that width, and I’ll modify the frequencies for a custom bandpass kind of shape.

Let’s move over now and look at Ripley’s next big effect section: the Space section. The Space section is where we can apply reverberant ambience. We activate the effect, we choose an amount level, and our piano is bathed in a creamy reverb. Aside from the normal controls for reverb like amount, size, and decay, I also have the option for how my spatial reverb is routed inside Ripley — this is a concept we’ll revisit throughout this video, because Ripley’s effects often present us with choices about where exactly an effect gets applied to the signal chain inside of Ripley.

The parallel button and reverb routing

With the parallel button inactive, the original signal does not pass through the reverb stage, while the feedback delay repetitions do. But if I activate the parallel button, the opposite routing happens — the delay repetitions don’t pass through the spatial reverb, while the initially occurring sound, before the delay starts repeating, does get sent through the reverb.

For this idea, I probably want parallel off, so that my already vibey piano delay gets even more vibey with my full mix.

Ah, but so when might be a time that you do want the parallel button engaged? I’m glad you asked — well, vocals could be a good example, so let’s check out this vastly different song idea that’s in the works.

The vocal hook to the song has a few elements to it, as modern vocal production often does — there’s a couple of BVX vocoders making thick bands of harmony, and those sit underneath a non-vocoded version of the hook that is running through Ripley. And you’ll see that all the sections we’ve covered so far are activated: we’ve got the delay running in sync mode as a dual delay, for separate left and right times; the feedback filter bands are giving us a custom, contoured delay coloration; and the Space reverb is active. And here’s the part where it differs from our last example: this time the parallel button is on.

Let’s turn off our vocoder so we can hear just this signal, to explain why: with parallel on, our initial vocal goes through the reverb, but our repeats do not. The result is that even when these effects are applied pretty heavily, the intelligibility is still pretty clear.

Turning off parallel has the opposite impact — the initial vocal has no reverb on it, and all our repetitions are now swimming in it. Listen to how much more sonically confusing it feels, where the repetitions are now taking over space and attention from the initial vocal.

So to apply reverb to this vocal chain, but still retaining the clarity in the delay repetitions, I activate the parallel button on our vocal, so it can be heavily affected the way songs tend to be in today’s mix aesthetic, but still tasteful.

Okay, so are you starting to get the concept of Ripley’s internal routing? Because the whole right half of Ripley employs those kinds of choices to help you sculpt your delay sound — so let’s dive into them.

Sound design coloration: Distortion, Digital, and Noise

The right half of Ripley is a sound design signal coloration unit, but one that specializes in complementing and integrating with a delay signal. There are various tools here that help us color, and often degrade, our delayed sound in ways that give it more character — let’s check them out using a new sound example.

Let’s put Ripley into the banjo’s insert path and reset it to a default setting. And then, in order to understand what these effects do on their own, we need to first hear them on their own, so I’m going to actually turn off the delay section, so that our signal passes straight into these coloration effects. I’ll also make sure to turn the output wet/dry control up to 100% wet, so that we’re hearing the full impact of each effect, with no dry signal blended in.

Distortion

We’ll start with Distortion, because everybody understands distortion — I’ll turn it on, and we’ll already hear a little bit of it. Since the effect section has its own wet/dry control, I’ll need to do the same thing here, maxing it out for full effect. I mean, that’s really it — it’s a distortion where I can adjust the drive and the tone of the distortion.

Digital (bit crush)

Similarly, Digital is a lo-fi bit-crush type of coloration, and like many digital and downsample-type effects, you can either opt for a 1990s, 12-bit sampler kind of subtlety, or you can go for a real circuit-bent sound.

Noise modulation

Now let’s talk about Noise. The Noise section isn’t like a noise oscillator that you might find on a synthesizer — it doesn’t just inject static or pink noise into the signal alongside your audio. Noise is a type of noise-based modulation: select one of the five noise algorithms, and that noise will be used to modulate your signal.

It’s perhaps easier to hear this happening on the low-frequency option, because it’s a lower, and thus more slower-moving, style of noise modulation. At 100% wet, like this, it’s got an almost broken tremolo sort of feel to it, but moving through other noise algorithms, you’ll hear other flavors, with more of a true noise type of sound in the way the signal gets chewed up.

I’ve got a Character control too, that will add further characteristic variations to this flavor of noise algorithm. For this banjo part, I kind of like Germs’ ability to add sizzle without completely degrading the tone of the instrument itself — and that’s at 100% wet too. I could dial that back, and I could combine these effects too, like adding some of that creamy distortion back in, which I can also dial back on the wet/dry control as well, to blend to taste.

Delay signal path staging and routing

Cool, right? Okay, why have I been showing you coloration effects on the delay with the delay turned off? Well, it’s because now that you understand what they’re doing, we can bring the delay back into the picture, to discuss the final piece of the Ripley puzzle: the delay signal path staging that you can choose for these effects.

Check out this acoustic guitar hook that I’ve already applied a Ripley delay effect to. You can see the things we’ve covered so far here in play — we’ve got a 3/16 delay, we’ve applied a custom low-end rolloff to the delay repetitions via the feedback filter bands, and I’ve activated the Space reverb in parallel mode, which means that our delay repetitions are staying clean as they bypass the space signal path, leaving us with a nice, reverby guitar that has extra rhythmic spice thanks to the clean delay repeats.

One thing I’d like to improve here is the way that all those little click sounds in the guitar performance can start to stack up in the delay signal, and get, well, pretty clicky-clacky. You hear all that stuff? If I activate the onboard EQ and roll off a lot of the high end, you’ll notice something else right away — our whole signal is getting EQ’d, which means that our reverb sounds more muffled too.

So what I’d really love to do is EQ the delay signal without touching the space signal, since they’re running in parallel. Well, fortunately, Ripley has a menu under every effect stage that gives us exactly this type of routing consideration. I can have this EQ set up to impact the input stage, where then everything that follows will get the EQ’d version of this signal. By contrast, the output stage, which is what we’re hearing now, applies the EQ as a master output effect.

If I choose Delay Out, then this EQ only gets applied to the output of the delay part of the signal, and leaves the parallel reverb signal every bit as bright and shimmering as I want. The choice called Space Out would do the opposite, letting me EQ the reverb path and leaving the delay alone, which in this case I don’t want.

If I choose Feedback instead, we’ll get a similar result to Delay Out in the sense that our Space reverb isn’t getting EQ’d, but instead of happening on the delay’s output, our EQ gets applied inside the delay feedback signal, so that each subsequent repetition of the delay will get EQ’d more and more each time — just like the feedback filter bands that could amplify a frequency each time. Using the Feedback routing here does the same reinforcement each time — if we boosted the mid frequencies, you’ll hear the resonance of that mid frequency grow each time.

For my guitar here, I want to choose Delay Out. The other effects offer similar choices, and you’ll want to make similar considerations for your own sound design — for example, maybe we could add some of that digital bit crush to the Space Out, so that our reverb sounds more like it’s a 1990s digital algorithm. I’ll set it up with a more extreme wet setting so we can hear what it’s doing to the reverb, and I’ll temporarily turn off the delay path so we can hear the verb better.

Okay, so I like that flavor, I just need to dial it back with the dry/wet control, and we’ll turn our delay path back on to hear a rather sculpted and refined-sounding delay-verb effect that gives this acoustic guitar some extra bounce on life.

Routing choices in Noise, Distortion, and the Ducker

These same routing choices exist in the Noise effect, the Distortion, as well as the Ducker — which I haven’t really explained today, because duckers are pretty standard in delays, but it is worth pointing out that this Ducker does have the same routing choices about which part of the signal path is feeding the Ducker.

What’s next: LFO and Mod Matrix

But okay, that is where we are going to leave it today. Despite all I’ve covered, I still haven’t even completed by Ripley roundup — we didn’t explore the LFO section, we didn’t dive into the advanced Mod Matrix possibilities, nor did we talk about this curious little control hiding in the matrix assignment section, labeled simply “button.” Yeah, what is that thing? Well, the good news is that it just means I’ll be back with another advanced Ripley video to go even deeper.

For now, you hopefully understand the concepts behind Ripley’s main panel settings, the routing choices you can make, and the ways that you can sculpt advanced-sounding delay and multi-effects textures using Ripley Space Delay. The best way to really understand different ways these routings can work together is to browse the many included presets with Ripley, and try them out on your own material — trust me, this one is really fun to play with. So I hope you do exactly that: play with it, push it, surprise us with what you discover it can do, because I’m sure you will. Take care, and now go make some music.