Whats Wrong With Stock Plugins? ReaDelay!

In which I take a look at ReaDelay, Reaper's stock delay plugin, and examine what it can do, and what it can't.
Other plugins mentioned in the video (not sponsored):
Valhalla Freq Echo (free): valhalladsp.co...
Fabfilter Timeless2: www.fabfilter....
Pulsar Echorec: www.pluginbout...
UVI Relayer: www.uvi.net/re...
If you like this type of content and you want to see it more often, consider signing up for Channel Membership: / @danworrall
Video edited with VEGAS Pro 17:
{affiliate link)
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[@deividasgnedinas7592]

At last Dan remembered his youtube password!

[@t7H2si0vß2]

Hes back!! I was worried he caught the rona. Hope you're feeling well Dan!

[@LDdrums20]

I like how Dan is completely aware of his powers. Go Worrall!

[@SarmadGhafoorOfficial]

It's double L, he's very particular about it.

[@LDdrums20]

@@SarmadGhafoorOfficial ah you are right shame on me

[@BigMTBrain]

"I like how Dan is completely aware of his powers." Indeed! Across space and time, Dan is the MASTER of sound design, mixing, mastering, analysis, and teaching.

[@mikewoolley2358]

Why did KZbin wait so long to send me this notification?! I could have watched this 17 hours ago...

[@HazyJ28]

Reaper's UI reminds me so much of "Cool Edit Pro 2.1" (before the Adobe buyout and transition into Adobe Audition). I mean this in the best of ways. There's something so 1997-2004 about it, and reminds me of my early career. I love it.

[@benhuskinson3564]

Great to see you back - you’re a step above everyone else in knowledge detail and quality. Nice one!

[@PedroGerardo]

Great videos Dan on the Reaper stock plugins. Such things I've been asking for a long time in the forum. All stock plugins should get some love from Justin and schwa. Maybe with these videos it will create some impact. thanks for helping the community ;)

[@simongunkel7457]

Great Video! The only thing I would have liked to see is this trick: Go to project settings, check "allow feedback in routing" and then add another channel, disable master send, then set up a send to this channel from your delay channel and another send from this channel to your delay channel. Set the feedback in the delay to 0, and move the fader down on your new channel. Any effect you put on the new channel is now in the feedback loop. Saturation would be an obvious choice, but pitch shifting can give you things similar to the Valhalla (and of course ReaPitch allows you to do separate formant shifting). A transient shaper can be interesting for drums. Gates in the feedback loop can cut out repetitions for the softer notes and only leave the accents with an actual delay. That simple checkbox to me is the biggest selling point for Reaper, you can crash it if you're not careful, but you can do all kinds of things that most DAWs will stop you from doing.

[@victorblakey4260]

One trick I use is to set the delay to a single delay (no feedback), and then set a post fade bus out from the delay channel back to the input bus of the delay, effectively setting up the feedback through the ‘console’. This was a trick I would use a lot in my live days. You then ride (with automation in your DAW) the output of the delay, and it controls the feedback. More delay = more feedback. A second benefit is that when you kill the delay, you kill the feedback , so feedback loops also come under control. The other benefit is that you get the tonal variations stacking up in a similar way to how they do in an old analog delay. It can be a bit of a PITA to set it up, but the results can be extremely worth it.

[@katabatica]

Love the depth and intelligence of your videos Dan. They really open my eyes up to more possibilities. Fantastic stuff

[@aCeruleanStateMusic]

I missed these vids. Great you're back!

[@Hermiel]

Dan reveals latent comedic prowess? Delay humour FTW. 🏆

[@theguy700]

So Happy to see your video after a long time! almost a year. After I realized that you are a really good teacher with great mind, I watched all of your videos to get some of your wisdom. and oh man I was waiting for your next video. wondered what would be the cause for no new videos. and again it is great to see you uploading a new video. it feels like I found a precious material maker. and sorry if my english was bad, btw YOU ARE A GREAT MAN !

[@DanWorrall]

Your English is excellent

[@defman9414]

I posted your video over at the Reaper Forums... with feature requests... so hopefully it will come to the attention of the right people to consider your suggestions. Welcome back. Glad you are on the road to recovery. And thank you for saturating my brain with concepts I understand at a 1st grade level. Headed towards an elementary school degree!

[@Zet237yt]

Back at it again and starting it off with a clever joke, I didn't realize I had missed your videos _that_ much Dan. 😍

[@CAMMYSINCLAIR]

Glad you're feeling better, welcome back.

[@rpgaleksy]

It's so nice to hear you again! I have waited for a new video of yours for quite some time now since it's always a pleasure to listen to and learn new things one almost exclusively gets to see here in that way! Especially since I am switching to Reaper more and more myself, very useful stuff in there.

[@ArthurMcArthur]

Great video as usual, Dan. Please do a video on what's wrong with ReaSamploMatic5000 - my pet bugbear is I find the volume envelope to be nearly unusable. There's no hold parameter, or ability to change the curve of the attack or decay segments. The decay segment has a built in curve which makes it impossible to separate the transient portion of a sound onto another track and have them sum to sound the same.

[@colonelporridge8974]

I hope your well Dan, thoughts and prayers are with you bud

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

It's really good to see you back. I've been watching your videos from this channels and the one you did for others nonstop for the last few weeks.

[@TheEkern]

Great to have you back Dan!

[@TadDoylemusic]

Thanks Dan, glad you are well. Thanks a millions for sharing your experience.

[@lawrenceotoole5992]

Great video Dan. I hope you are feeling better. Never knew about the filter xover mode.

[@Tarnith]

Great and thorough exploration as always. Love to see your takes on different effects.

[@thomasberner5282]

Good to have you back!

[@Rhythmattica]

You need to do audio books, on....... Audio. That soothing, sultry voice is a given for ASMR. And Id wake up more knowledgable.

[@BadGatewayMusic]

Or a podcast!

[@LDdrums20]

Now that I would listen the heck out of it

[@nichttuntun3364]

Nice you're back. Hope you're fine, safe and sound. Cheers

[@elblopex]

One minute in and I'm amazed already

[@jamesberry5968]

I double TAPPED to write this comment, but what if my second TAP took its input from the second TAP. seriously, great video as always and good to hear you back.

[@jamesberry5968]

messed that up didn’t I lol. I meant from the First Tap. that’ll teach me to experiment with a sense of humour

[@draztiqmeshaz6226]

I kept thinking about Audio Damage when you got to the bucket brigade part, but things seem to have mutated a lot since Discord 1 dubstation or whatever. I see one of their other offerings in between two reaplugs there near the end. I loved that one. Great to have you back. Sorry I ducked out as well. I'm making up better ways to gain stability.

[@andylatham4277]

Looking forward to the next Reaper update ;) ReaDelay is my go-to clean delay, but it would be really nice to add some grit to the feedback loop. In a perfect world the feedback loop could host it's own plugin chain.

[@MrAlFuture]

Yay! Welcome back, Dan! I second all your feature requests for ReaDelay!

[@thegigisup_studio]

HOLY MOLY, HE'S BACK! Hope you're well Dan :)

[@MCAlvesPortugal]

welcome back :) For me this is the best digital delay in the market

[@daxu9605]

You are back!!!

[@StevieInsane]

I glad to see you are back

[@tothefinlandstation]

Would love a detailed analysis of saturation/distortion plugins. What exactly is going on in them besides pre- and post-EQ, waveshaping, and oversampling?

[@Vegan_Kebab_In_My_Hand]

Always in the mood for some Dan Worrall audiopsy

[@tacosalpaxtor]

Dude thats a great way to describe it 😂 “audiopsy”

[@AftertuneMusic]

Welcome back to you Dan!

[@ErikNolander]

Great video, and some awesome suggestions on how to improve ReaDelay. Here's hoping Justin is watching!

[@iliatilev]

The additions you've mention are great. I would also love to see the stock plugins to have a little more modernized GUI.

[@AlbertSirup]

i'm quite a fan of leet delay for it's simplicity and slightly more analog feel. it's not stock, but a js plugin from reapack.

[@BonoboBerry]

Reaper stock plugins are very nice, but it would be cool to get some updates and features just as the DAW itself does. Great content Dan!

[@xeximaxi]

coool i like your videos as always. i think readelay need two things. setting output for each tap to any other tap ( selectable outputs/inputs for taps) . global wet signal. . with mutliple outputs would be possible to send delay taps to many fx at single track for each tap with use of multi outputs. somehow i am addicted to duck function in delays.

[@sam-you-is]

whoa the filter thing is really pretty slick!

[@5argon]

Your EQ8 video got me subscribed. I am glad I did !!

[@martifingers]

Hope you feeling good. This is great!

[@joachimokeefe8277]

Very helpful, and riveting. Hope you're well:)

[@autobotsNdecepticons]

Very educational as always. Thank you.

[@AhmadAliff]

Glad to watch your video again.

[@maxceelen2202]

Good stuff Dan, nice to see you back.

[@temptemp633]

love some of flstudios delays for frequency cuts. The 'cutoff' moves with the feedback, making the feedback fade out with the cutoff. With the sampler channels 'midi delay', same happens with pitch... so each delay hit goes up or down in pitch.

[@Henriquealexps]

We missed you Dan!

[@mimidhof2179]

Yeah Dan is back!!!👍🌞

[@jurgenschuler8389]

😂👍 Everybody should watch your videos... I mean not just here, but on all the channels your videos or videos featuring you appear. And I'm a Studio One user.

[@MichaelToddFutureTodd]

Hadn't heard of Thorus till it popped up here, seems really nice!

[@autotel]

the feature I miss the most in reaper is being able to feed back the output of a plugin back to the beggining of the fx chain or any point before the same effect. This would let you do so many weird delay effects with any kind of sidechain

[@andylatham4277]

There's a workaround but it's annoying: Create a second bus track that accepts signal from the delay bus and only sends back to the delay bus (don't send to the master). You're right though, it would be real nice to click a "send to track input" button somewhere.

[@samirelkadmiri]

Simply the best! Thank you Dan

[@broklanders4730]

i'm all with you on your feature requests, especially on the feedback routing. in readelay as it is, one can't even create a true pingpong delay, where the fed back signals are not summing up as mono, thus creating a signal that is occasionally centered. but _if_ the reaper guys do listen and implement these features, in order to create a _real_ ping pong delay they mandatorily need to implement a user definable input routing for each channel where one can sum up the signal that exclusively feeds the wet path of the left and the right channel to one side only and turn off the other channel input. as, if you don't do that, you'll end up with no signal of the delay, if the input signal is fed to the one side where there's no input routed. so if you have some extreme panning modulation going on (or an arpeggator sound that alters the panning to the maximum with each played note) before the delay plugin, you'll end up with the delay not getting any signal - hence not outputting anything every time the automation pans the signal to the max on the channel that has no input. there's not many delay plugins that correctly do that (even the uvi delay misses that feature). the logic delay has that feature and back when i was using logic, this delay was my lifesaver when it came to real ping pong delays.

[@SSITM]

Actually, I don't understand why nowadays some delay plugins don't come with ducking. I don't know if it's a technical limitation in some type of delays, but if not, they should all have it. And why not reverbs too for that matter. Also, that's why it sounded so weird when I tried compressing the send. Great video, as always.

[@kevinnel7038]

always love a new dan worral video!

[@CaseyConnor]

Great video as always! (always always always always always....)

[@simonr7097]

I came for the knowledge, I stayed for the puns!

[@alexthi]

Cool video! 11:06 How about using the "dry" slider of ReaGate as a range control ?

[@DanWorrall]

That works, but you have to compensate by turning down the wet level to avoid making the overall effect louder, and you never really know how much ducking you're actually applying. In theory you can completely replicate a range control by balancing dry and wet levels, but in practice it sucks!

[@Beatsbasteln]

you have some pretty cool ideas. have you tried making your own plugins or working together with a developer yet?

[@JohnSmith-pn2vl]

highest quality content on KZbin!

[@tunairaiol]

Incredible video!

[@justingoers]

offset to tempo is a great feature!

[@arthurmee]

The name 'Dan Worrall has me behaving like one of B F Skinner's laboratory pigeons. I peck, I mean click the play lever, and out comes my reward: pigeon food. . . OOPS, I mean more gems of audio engineering knowledge.

[@whitex4652]

Yeah, make dem Justin genius build da ultimate dub-machine outta Readelay... (input ganja smiley here) 😝

[@JanSandahl]

Plus for global feedback control. No, make (relative) global controls for everything. :)

[@chrisickman]

love your videos!

[@samkitt]

Return of the king!

[@seenbelow]

That trick at 9:50 - I really wanted that feature and asked around on the forums. Been told I can't do feedback loop unless we disable PDC in Reaper, which then messes up the delay times and all around processing in a session... I'm still sad about it as that's one of the major gaps Pro Tools still has over Reaper. Then got recommended some JS plugins through which we can loop the signal around by a Send/Receive feature, but it's not continuous and I couldn't make it work really well. I really wish at least they would create some options how to route feedback within the taps and allow a controlled loop.

[@DanWorrall]

I totally get you, but I know just enough about the DSP behind the scenes to know how hard that would be. You know how your cpu load goes up when you decrease your buffer size to get lower latency? Well, you're asking for a buffer size of one sample! That's the only way feedback could work the way you want. This is one of the ways in which analogue still has an advantage: proper, instant feedback! And it's the reason why one of my main criteria for judging delay plugins is the stuff in the feedback loop, because that can't be recreated with other plugins before or after it in the chain.

[@seenbelow]

​@@DanWorrall Guess we'll have to accept that the per-tap routing is not an option... however - I just did some more digging and I stumbled upon the option to allow routing loops (Project Settings > Advanced > Allow feedback in routing), and it's almost as good as that. I have to assume this is something recent as last time on forums nobody could tell that this is possible.

[@DanWorrall]

@@seenbelow that's been there for a while, but the feedback will be delayed by 1 buffer, and it breaks PDC as far as I'm aware.

[@seenbelow]

@@DanWorrall Yes indeed, I didn't realise it at first but seemed to have stumbled upon the same thing as before...

[@mfkrwill]

hey Dan i hate to ask on a random video but im having issues with my memory or searching abilities: Wasnt there a video you did where you talked about Voxengo plugins or utility plugins or something like that? And using one of them to create pretty wide sounding mixes? the video is in my head but im having issues finding it again.

[@DanWorrall]

Was it this one? kzbin.info/www/bejne/q4uciIR6pM-Eqpo

[@LoopConnection]

He's back!

[@krass76]

nice! reapers stock plugs, as functional as they may be, still are a little basic. these are some good and achievable suggestions, however if people use VSTs anyways, coding hours spent on the DAW itself would seem much more important to me. On the other side, better stock plugins could draw in more users.

[@DanWorrall]

Its a good point. Notice I didn't request analogue style delay time modulation! All my suggestions are (I think) easy to implement with no new DSP required.

[@LFOVCF]

Not sure how I missed this one, but Dan nudges listener's IQs up a few points. Does anyone know if Dan's suggestions were implemented?

[@evlli2342]

as if 6.31-2 it still looks as if nothing has changed

[@HighwayNegative]

A ping pong mode would also be nice!

[@DanWorrall]

It would. But, while ping pong delays are great for making a synth patch sound big and impressive, I find them less useful in a mixing context.

[@alrecks619]

with the right amount of feedback and LPF, you can make tape style delay with this.

[@raverone909]

Welcome back, Dan! With dad jokes and all.

[@DerekPower]

You mean Dan jokes 😁

[@swingset1969]

I was just enjoying the track used to demonstrate all this so much I didn't hear a word of content. I think it was spoken word poetry or something.

[@Herfinnur]

Is there any delay out there that lets you route every successive delay through independent internal effects, e.g.: first repeat through a compressor, second repeat through eq, third pitch modulation, fourth reverb, fifth saturation, etc.?

[@D-osOrg]

welcome back :)

[@Reflectives]

Actually readelay type of delay is more elaborated than tape style. Tape style delays is the first thing you get in digital, granular style requires more work

[@thedormantmonkey]

DAN IS BACK!!! :D

[@gadget348]

Complaining about stock freebie plugins is a bit like looking a gift horse in the mouth... one of the first videos I ever watched on KZbin was somebody taking the piss out of Microsoft Paint! The next video I watched was a timelapse of somebody using it to paint the Mona Lisa. Also there is a saying in photography, the best camera is the one you have on you, if you use one of these effects and it sounds great don't wast three hours downloading and testing others or you'll spend more time knob twiddling than making music.

[@The-Bloke]

Awesome!

[@davidhine8870]

legend legend legend (legend legend legend....)

[@alkazaryyy]

YESYESYES!!

[@yakuviolin]

Dudde thanks!

[@juwonnnnn]

👍

[@KamilKisiel]

You mention that the filters must be in the feedback path, but then when playing around with the sweeps the feedback is set to -inf. So I guess more accurately they would be post-delay but before the feedback?

[@DanWorrall]

Pre or post delay wouldn't really make a difference. The important point is every time the signal passes through the delay again it also passes through the filters again.

[@KamilKisiel]

@@DanWorrall The main difference if it was only in the feedback loop is that the first time out of the delay line would be unfiltered

[@cURLybOi]

i dont have my reaper at hand now, but couldn't you just route the track to itself to achieve that global decay? and whatever plugins you put after the readelay would be imprinted in that sent signal? so non-linearity, saturation, anything really?

[@DanWorrall]

Feedback routing is disabled by default, and I prefer to leave it that way. There would be a buffers worth of latency inside the feedback loop for a start, but more importantly if you enable feedback routing you break PDC, and that's a deal breaker for me.

[@blcsmith9080]

Yay!!!!!!

[@riktascale4]

I'LL BE BACK and......he IS BACK!

[@public_hell]

cool!

[@XRaym]

Interesting! Installing a better delay is indeed one of first thing I do to new people on REAPER :P HY-Plugins Free Deay is nice and hack ducking etc. Cocoa Delay also... There is lots of nice free delays. And of course, Supermassive, And lots of premium affordable ones with nice concept like Sphere delay.

[@XRaym]

@@praashek Ok I double check, the spelling is "Cocoa Delay" tesselode.itch.io/cocoa-delay

[@xeximaxi]

overall i think with actuall state of readelay many is possible by track routings but somehow single track fx chains with readaly combined with other fx for many taps would be faster to handle. and yeah i dont like there is no music values jump trough time slider. i dont likt that manual writing values each time when set music values of time in readelay.

[@joebowbeer]

When is Timeless coming to iOS?