Minimal Audio - Cluster Delay

[long jewel]

"""
Introducing Cluster Delay, a delay plugin with a personality. Create unique musical effects that blend seamlessly into your tracks.

• Complex delays, effortless control. Cluster Delay's easy-to-use interface allows you to ramp, space, and scatter up to eight processed delay taps in time.

• Lush spaces and echo soundscapes. Explore ambience and transform any dry sound into expansive spaces. Use integrated diffusion and modulation to create reverb type effects.

• Six integrated FX and more. Create nuanced and unique sounding delays with six routable effects. Keep your mix clean with built-in ducking, filters, and mid-side control.
  """
  Read more: https://www.minimal.audio/products/cluster-delay

[nocturne patio]

This seems like a great, functional delay, but the bar for what is needed to stand out is extremely high and I don't think this does enough to raise it above the rest for 50e

[long jewel]

It's no Other Desert Cities, that's for sure... But it's pretty easy to get interesting delay patterns out of this one.

[nocturne patio]

I've always found I like the idea of using a multi tap delay much more than I actually have a need for them. I think because a multitap delay forces you to feed it with very simple rhythms as the multiple taps multiply the rhythmic complexity of the source, if the input is too busy it turns into an indistinct mush of sound

[long jewel]

Video courtesy @stoic moth https://youtu.be/t7IOD83galA

[shy fog]

This looks very cool. Sadly, my music account balance is $0 for a couple of weeks.

[alpine idol]

It looks like a very nice delay. How does it compare to delay+? Anything in there, that delay+ (plus bitwig) cant recreate?

I saw cluster has a kill switch. Is it automatable?

[long jewel]

Cluster Delay makes it quite easy to get complex delay patterns, definitely more complex than I would reasonably expect from Delay+. I can't say if the delay effects are meaningfully different from the FB FX since I don't actually know how they're being applied internally.

[long jewel]

Unfortunately not.

[alpine idol]

@long jewel 🙏 thank you

[tough bridge]

except if you use extremely short delay times and essentially use it as a reverb instead of a delay plugin

[tough bridge]

delay+ is one of the greatest delays in existence. but i wouldn't compare these two, as this one is not focussed on modularity but on making handling a shitton of delay taps easy

[surreal carbon]

You can create your own multi tap delay in Bitwig using any delay or combination of delays you want. I like ysing a combination of Delay+, IK Space Delay (I think it’s the best space so far) and PSP 285, which for me is maybe my favorite delay plugin of all time.

[unborn pilot]

you can also develop your own delay plugin... theres are much deeper ways to accomplish the same feat, the reason Cluster Delay is cool is: convenience

its extremely hard, a notable feature to create a brand new audio fx tool nowadays

but its also hard and as notable feature to create really convenient tools that handle complex tasks in a fun and musical way

I think Cluster Delay accomplished that

[nocturne patio]

I think a key feature of multitap delays is being able to set a single synced delay length then have the taps automatically distributed over that delay length, then have controls for skew, volume ramp, perhaps diffusion etc. I think achieving this with native devices isn't possible, or at least I haven't figured it out

[surreal carbon]

Creating a mulitap delay using fx sends is nothing like developing and coding a plugin. Talk about false equivalency. I didn’t say anything about cluster delay being a poor product.

[surreal carbon]

There is a old post on gearspace which describes how to do exactly that.

[nocturne patio]

Great, please do share it

[unborn pilot]

You missed the point

Neither I said you said that

[surreal carbon]

https://gearspace.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/949884-secret-way-amazing-fx-multitap-delay.html

[surreal carbon]

Reviewing the conversation, respectfully, I do not think I missed the point. Good day.

[nocturne patio]

That's a really interesting post so thanks for sharing it, but unfortunately it doesn't answer any of the questions I have about making a multitap delay in bitwig with simple but powerful controls, I still don't see how it's possible. There are two main issues:

1. If I want to set the delay in quarter notes it needs to be converted into ms so the length of taps can be evenly divided by the number of taps -1.
2. That ms delay value then needs to be mapped to the delay parameter on one of the grid delay modules, and these knobs aren't at all linear. I think this is probably possible to solve using a few curve modules

[surreal carbon]

Yes, got to use ms. At least I always use ms. I don’t really do much in the grid though. Sorry that wasn’t more helpful.

[nocturne patio]

Yeah using ms it's easy enough, it's a shame I'm going to keep thinking about it. I figure there has got to be a way to convert from quarter note phase into a mapping for the ms delay

[unborn pilot]

You did, I just meant that there are multiple ways to accomplish the same feat

And pointed out why cluster delay was cool in that aspect

[alpine idol]

So, anyone that own it. Do you still use this a lot? I watch polatities streams and he just uses delay or delay+ even tho he own cluster delay 😄

[stoic moth]

dont be bothered by that, i have over 200 plugins. if i use one of them i surely get a comment why i dont use just only bitwig. when i use only bitwig i get comments why i dont use this or that plugin. its just random and too many options. and in the end, it doesnt matter. you can do so many things with everything 🙂

[alpine idol]

Haha, ok. But you still like to get called out when DoubleClicking clips instead of tab, right?😎

[stoic moth]

😂 habits dont change over night