Not sure which type of delay might best suit your song? German plug‑in developers HOFA might be able to help you solve that dilemma, as their Colour Delay not only offers a choice of Tape, Bucket Brigade, Digital and Destruction delay types, but also allows these styles to be combined before further treatment by some onboard effects. It supports all the common plug‑in formats for Mac and Windows machines, and can be authorised to run on two computers.
The delay types are depicted as blocks, with one or two controls relating to that specific delay type. For example, the Bucket Brigade has adjustable noise, while Tape offers drive and wow/flutter. Bucket Brigade also offers a choice of four types, ranging from vintage to modern. Digital has adjustable digital word length (ie. ‘bit depth’) and sample rate, which allows it to emulate early 12‑ or 8‑bit delays — but with a minimum resolution of three bits, it has the range to take you into seriously lo‑fi territory (the maximum is 16 bits). Destruction emulates tube distortion and also has an adjustable clipper.
The delay time, feedback, modulation and delay polarity (Inv) controls apply globally, and there’s a small selection of ping‑pong options for when using the stereo version of the plug‑in. The colour‑coded delay style blocks have on/off buttons and blocks may be dragged into any order — this can deliver noticeably different results when using two or more blocks. The effects again offer only one or two controls each, along with tempo‑sync options where available and, as with the delay type blocks, they can be dragged into any order. Variable diffusion adds an almost reverb‑like atmosphere to the delays, then there’s a phaser, chorus, auto‑panner and ducker to explore. Wet level and stereo width controls are displayed as horizontal sliders at the top of the interface, along with an overall output level control. The delay time and auto‑pan rates can be set freely or tempo‑sync’ed, with a maximum delay time of five seconds. A Tap button also allows for entering the delay rate by repeated clicking.
An upper display section shows the position of the delays over time, using vertical bars that get smaller as the repeats decay, and an audio waveform is visible in blue behind them. Here, the dry/wet levels, delay time and delay feedback can be adjusted by click‑dragging. The display’s lower section hosts a spectrum analyser and an EQ curve, with up to four bands of fully parametric EQ. Points on the curve can be dragged to adjust the frequency and cut/boost, at which point a parameter box pops providing access to all three parametric values. A number of shelving, cut/boost and band‑pass filter shapes are available. Note that the diffusion, phaser, chorus, auto‑pan and ducker affect the wet signal after the feedback loop, providing overall colour and shaping.
It’s extremely simple and intuitive, and capable of convincing emulations of the various delay types.
There’s lots going on here, then, but how is HOFA’s Colour Delay to use in practice? Well, for starters, it’s extremely simple and intuitive, and capable of convincing emulations of the various delay types. But it also gives you the ability to push things much further, since any combination of delay types affect the signal being fed back to create the repeats. This allows you to make things very colourful when needed — hence the name! While it is simple to control, the effects work very well for adding interest to the delay sound, so it takes very little effort to move from convincing emulations of the main delay types, via various style of analogue and digital lo‑fi, to some useful ambient washiness. It’s well worth grabbing the free time‑limited demo to try it for yourself.