We last looked at FabFilter's Timeless delay plug-in an astonishing 11 years ago. Then, it was on version 2, and its developers have just given it a major overhaul, to version 3. Timeless 3 boasts all the features we raved about in our April 2010 review, but it gains a number of useful extras, plus a streamlined user interface.
You can now invoke up to 16 individual delay taps, and these are represented in the display as vertical lines showing their amplitude, panning and delay time. Also new is a feedback effect section. Here, you can apply up to five different effects (Drive, Lo-Fi, Diffuse, Dynamics, Pitch) to the feedback path, for progressively grittier, dirtier, 'reverb-ified', squashed or pitch-shifted delays, with each effect being governed by a single 'more or less' knob. Each effect is available as a modulation destination too, so you can control them using Timeless' LFOs, envelope followers, X/Y controllers, or good old-fashioned MIDI CC.
Timeless 3 ships with an all-new preset library, which FabFilter say has been built up especially to take advantage of the new features, but the plug-in is still compatible with presets for earlier versions, so you should be able to use it in place of Timeless v1 and v2 in your projects without any sonic surprises.
Timeless 3 requires a VST, AU, AudioSuite or AAX host, and costs £94. It's available now, and there's a free 30-day trial available from the FabFilter website.
