The short guide
Understand the idea
Delay and reverb are space effects: they add quieter copies of a sound after it plays. A delay makes distinct echoes you can count, each arriving a set time after the original. A reverb makes so many tiny reflections so close together that they blur into one smooth tail that fades away. The dry sound is the original on its own; the wet sound is the added effect.
What you can explore
- Compare the same phrase dry, with an echo and with a room tail.
- Set when the first echo arrives and how quickly the repeats fade.
- Balance the effect amount against the dry sound and describe the result honestly.
A worked example
Three plucks with a one-beat echo
Three warm triangle plucks, A3, C4 and E4, play on beats 1, 3 and 5 at a fixed 120 BPM, so a beat lasts 500 ms and the plucks are 1000 ms apart. Each pluck sounds for about 160 ms. The worked example uses Echo with the first echo 500 ms after each pluck, Repeats at 25% and an effect amount of 50%.
- First echo
- 500 ms (1 beat) after each pluck. It ends at 660 ms, well before the next pluck at 1000 ms.
- Repeats
- 25%: each later echo keeps a quarter of the previous echo’s signal level. The sixth is below a thousandth of the first; quieter repeats continue until the preview fades out.
- Later echoes
- The second echo of the first pluck lands at 1000 ms, alongside the next pluck. Later repeats overlap too.
- Effect amount
- 50%: the dry plucks play at 50% and the effect at 50%.
- Length
- One play lasts about 5.2 seconds, because the last pluck’s echoes need time to fade.
Echo or room: countable copies or a smooth tail
An echo is a copy you can point to on a timeline. Change the echo time and every copy moves. A room tail has no separate copies to count; it is a dense wash that starts right after the sound and fades out. That is why the lesson draws echoes as blocks and dots, and the room as a soft fading shape.
Treat the first echo as an answer to each pluck. A late 750 ms echo lasts another 160 ms, leaving 90 ms before the next pluck at 1000 ms. The Quick, Middle and Late positions leave 590, 340 and 90 ms respectively. These are planned first-echo gaps; later repeats can overlap other sounds.
Repeats, sometimes called feedback, sets how loud each echo is compared with the one before. At 0% you still hear one echo, the first one, and nothing after it. Higher repeats keep more echoes alive for longer. Repeats stop at 40% here so the echoes always fade.
The room in this lesson is a designed, finite tail: a made-up shape that fades to silence after the tail length you choose, from 250 ms to 2000 ms. It is not a measurement of a real room, its size or its RT60, and it never rings on forever.
Balancing the effect amount
The effect amount splits one level between the dry plucks and the effect. At 30%, the dry plucks play at 70% and the effect at 30%. On Both, echo and room each receive half of that effect amount. These percentages describe signal level, not perceived loudness. At 0% the effect is silent and only the dry plucks play.
Because the dry part gets quieter as the effect gets louder, Dry can sound louder than a version with space. Louder is not the same as better, so compare by character: clear, distant, smooth or busy. Finishing on Dry is a valid answer and the review says so.
Changing any setting stops the sound, and you press Hear phrase to listen again; the phrase plays once and never loops. Hear Dry plays the same plucks without the effect for comparison and does not change your settings. Once your sound has space, a gradual change of the effect amount over a section is a job for automation.
Common questions
What is the difference between reverb and delay?
Delay repeats a sound as distinct echoes you can count, each a set time later. Reverb blends many quick reflections into one smooth tail. In this lesson Echo is the delay and Room is the reverb.
Why do I still hear an echo with repeats at 0%?
Repeats only controls the echoes after the first. At 0% the first echo still plays once at the echo time, and nothing repeats after it.
Why can the dry version sound louder?
The effect amount takes level away from the dry sound as it adds effect. At 50%, the dry plucks play at half level, so turning the effect off can sound louder even though it has no space.
What can this lesson not do?
It uses one fixed phrase, does not record, upload or export audio, and the room is a designed tail rather than a real measured space. The recipe download is a text description of your settings, not a sound file. Your work is saved only in this browser.
Published by TunePal. Interactive examples for beginner music producers.