Dub FX & Delays

Tape delay emulation: Echo with Noise, Wobble and filter in the feedback

Echo is the Space Echo in Live: dual delay lines (linked or stereo/ping-pong), a filter that sits inside the loop, a Reverb section, Modulation (wobble = pitch wobble of the delay time, like a tape transport), a Character panel with Noise and Wobble amounts, Gate and Duck. Set it up once as a return and it is a tape delay for the whole set.

1. Echo on Return A. Mode Stereo with L/R linked, time synced 3/16 (the dub delay; try 1/4D and 1/8D). Feedback 55–70 %. Input gain where repeats just start to warm up the Saturator stage.
2. In Echo's Filter section, enable it: HP ~300 Hz, LP ~3.5 kHz. The filter is in the feedback loop, so each repeat is band-limited again — exactly what a tape head and the pre-amp do per generation.
3. Character tab: Noise 10–20 % (tape hiss, modulated by signal), Wobble 20–40 % with Wobble rate ~0.3–1 Hz (tape transport wow — pitch wavers slightly on each repeat). Turn Duck on (see throws) if the delay is on an insert; leave it off on a return.
4. Modulation section: Rate 0.4 Hz, Mod Delay 10–15 % (adds the flutter), shape sine; mod → filter at small amounts for a moving tone.
5. Reverb section inside Echo: amount 15–25 %, location Post (reverb on the repeats only) or Loop (reverb inside the feedback — gets washy fast; this is the Space Echo spring mode). Decay 1–2 s.
6. Saturator after Echo (Soft Sine, 2–4 dB) so repeats compress and warm as they pile up; EQ Eight to trim any build-up at 400 Hz. Return fader at −6 dB; send amounts are the performance.

Variations: Echo in Ping Pong mode with L 3/16 and R 1/4 for wide dub techno; Echo Mode Mid/Side with the side delay longer for stereo depth without losing a mono centre.

Spring reverb: Hybrid Reverb convolution springs and a Corpus spring

A spring reverb is a transmission line: a transient enters, bounces between the ends and arrives as a "boing" with a dispersive chirp (high frequencies travel at a different speed). Hybrid Reverb's Convolution mode ships spring impulse responses; Corpus can also fake a spring with a long String resonator.

1. Hybrid Reverb: Algorithm/Convolution Blend fully to Convolution, choose a Spring IR from the browser (the Springs category). Decay 1–2 s (shorter than you think — a real spring tank rings ~1.5 s). Pre-delay 0 — springs have none.
2. Enable Vintage mode (reduced sample rate/bit depth in the reverb for the lo-fi spring tone). Bass Mult/Bass X low so the spring does not boom; Shape to taste.
3. EQ Eight after: HP 250 Hz, a narrow boost 1.5–2.5 kHz for the metallic chirp, LP 5–6 kHz. Utility to mono: real spring tanks are mono, and the mono splash sits in the centre behind the snare where dub puts it.
4. Saturator 2 dB to simulate the tank driver amp distorting on hits. Send the snare at −10 dB for a constant halo, and throw it to 0 dB on the hit you want to "crash".
5. Corpus spring: Resonance Type String, Decay 90 %, Material 60 %, Tune to a low pitch (around 40 Hz fundamental so the harmonics are dense), Inharmonics +30 %, Brightness 80 %, Dry/Wet 50 %, Off Decay off. It is not a spring IR but it chirps, rings and overloads like one. Put it in a return with the Echo before it for a spring-after-delay echo chamber.

Variations: Kick the spring: send a very short noise burst (Drum Rack pad with a 5 ms noise one-shot) to the spring return at full level on a snare hit for the "spring crash" without the snare itself.

Dub sirens: Operator or Analog with LFO pitch, Analog FM, filter and the echo

The siren is a single oscillator (sine, triangle or square) with an LFO driving pitch over a wide range, with the LFO rate and depth under your hands, dumped into the delay. Original units were a 555 timer and a transistor oscillator; the sound is two knobs and a delay.

1. Operator siren: Osc A Square (or Sine for the police-siren purity), level 0 dB, others off. LFO on, shape Triangle (up-down siren) or Saw (the rising "wee-wee" ramp) or Square (two-tone alternate), Rate free-running 2–8 Hz, LFO → Pitch amount 12–36 st (Operator's LFO has a dedicated Pitch destination amount; 24 st = two octaves sweep). Amp env: A 10 ms, Sustain 100 %, Release 300 ms.
2. Operator Filter LP 12 at 2–3 kHz with Res 20 % to round the square; Tone slightly down. Spread 0 — sirens are mono.
3. Analog siren with FM: Osc 1 Saw, Osc 2 Sine, enable Osc 2 → Osc 1 FM (Analog's oscillator FM: set the mod amount in Osc 1's panel), Osc 2 pitch an octave below. LFO 1 → Osc 1 pitch with large amount (semitones), rate 3–6 Hz triangle; LFO 2 → FM amount at 0.5 Hz. The FM adds the gritty rasp of an overdriven transistor siren.
4. Map LFO Rate and LFO pitch amount to two Push encoders; the performance is sweeping rate from 0.5 Hz (slow sweep) to 20 Hz (trill) while holding one pad. Map Operator's Coarse or Analog's transpose to a third for octave jumps.
5. Send 100 % to the Echo return, feedback 70–80 %; stop playing and let it decay. A siren with no delay is a test tone.

Variations: Dubstep laser: Operator Sine, LFO Saw at 30 Hz → pitch 48 st, amp Decay 200 ms, no sustain — a zap, into Echo 1/16. Jungle: same, pitched up +12, 1/32 delay.

Dub chord throws: send automation, Echo Gate and Duck

The throw: a chord stab is sent to the delay at full level for exactly one hit, then the send drops back to zero (or the source is muted) and the echo plays out alone. Three ways to do it in Live, from most to least manual.

1. Send automation: on the chord track, automate Send A from −inf to 0 dB for the duration of a single stab (draw a 1/16 block) and back. Every chord passes through dry; only the automated ones throw. In Session view, record this by riding the send knob during a clip-launch performance.
2. Echo Gate: with Echo on an insert, enable Gate in the Character section, threshold so the delay input only opens above a loud stab. Play the chords at normal velocity and accent the throw at max velocity: only the accented stab enters the delay. Release of the gate 50–100 ms.
3. Echo Duck: enable Duck: the delay's wet output is reduced while the dry signal is present and swells back up in the gaps — the automatic dub mix that keeps the repeats behind the playing and brings them forward in the rests. Amount 50–80 %, Release 200–400 ms.
4. Mute-based throw (the desk method): chord track plays constantly into Return A at a fixed send; perform the track mute (or Utility gain to −inf via a macro). Mute on = only the echo is heard. Mute off = chord re-enters. Record the mute automation.
5. Return A feedback goes to 80–90 % only during throws — map feedback and a return filter cutoff to macros (see rack) and ride both.

Feedback runaway controlled with Limiter (and Echo's own saturation)

Pushing feedback past 100 % — or 95 % with saturation inside the loop — makes the delay self-oscillate. It is the drop moment in dub mixing, and it needs a ceiling.

1. Echo feedback goes above 100 % (Echo allows it). The loop filter HP/LP decides what the runaway becomes: a narrow band 400 Hz–2 kHz produces a howl at the filter's resonant frequency; a wide band produces a wall of mush.
2. Saturator after Echo with Soft Clip on, 6 dB Drive: the pile-up compresses into a thick sustained tone rather than growing. This is what a tape pre-amp does when the loop runs away.
3. Limiter after it, ceiling −3 dB, Release 100–300 ms, Lookahead 3 ms. The limiter is the safety: no matter what the feedback does, the return never exceeds −3 dB. Keep it on every dub return permanently.
4. Perform: raise feedback to 100 %, let it howl for 2 bars, open the Auto Filter resonance, then kill the feedback to 0 % — the howl cuts to its last repeat and stops. Or lower the Echo time (in Repitch-style sense via the Delay device) while it runs for the pitch dive.
5. Alternatively limit the loop inside Echo: lower the Input gain so the loop never reaches full scale; Echo's internal saturation (the Character section's drive behaviour) then holds the runaway level naturally.

Filter sweeps on returns: Auto Filter (12.2) and EQ Three kills

On a dub desk the engineer rides a high-pass and low-pass on the echo return, not on the source. The 12.2 Auto Filter redesign has a morphing filter type, drive, and a more musical resonance; EQ Three is the DJ-mixer kill EQ.

1. Auto Filter after the Echo on the return. Type Morph (12.2) set to LP→BP, slope 24, Resonance 20–35 %, Drive 2–4 dB. Cutoff 8 kHz as the open position.
2. Map Cutoff to a Push encoder. The dub sweep: close it slowly to 300 Hz over 4 bars during a breakdown (repeats go underwater), then snap open on the drop.
3. Auto Filter's envelope follower → cutoff at 20 % means each repeat opens the filter briefly — a filtered delay that still has attack.
4. EQ Three: the Low kill button (the on/off per band) on the return — punch it out on the drop so only mids/highs of the delay are left, or kill High to mute the hiss build-up. Map the three kill switches to pads.
5. For a second return (spring), use a HP on the Auto Filter instead; the sweep up with high resonance makes the spring whistle.

Shifter dub pitch effects: octave echoes, pitch-shifted feedback, dive bombs

Shifter's built-in Delay with feedback gives repeats that climb or fall in pitch; the Delay device in Repitch mode with Delay Time swept gives the tape pitch-dive; both are dub vocabulary from the digital-desk era.

1. Shifter Pitch mode, Pitch +12 st (or −12), Delay section on, time 1/4, Feedback 60 %, Dry/Wet 50 %. Each repeat is shifted another octave: the first +12, second +24… The Tone/Window control at dark setting keeps it smooth. With Pitch −12 the repeats sink into the bass — HP them.
2. Pitch +7 (a fifth) with Feedback 40 % and the delay in the chord's rhythm: harmonised echoes that spiral through the circle of fifths. Two repeats are musical; four are noise. Set feedback accordingly.
3. Shifter Freq mode at +5 to +15 Hz with 1/8 delay and 70 % feedback for the slowly detuning, beating repeats of a drifting tape loop.
4. Delay dive bomb: Delay device mode Repitch, time unsynced 350 ms, Feedback 60 %. Map Delay Time to a macro from 350 ms down to 20 ms: sweeping it drops the pitch of everything in the buffer like slowing a tape. Sweep back up for the reverse. Record the macro automation on a throw.
5. Shifter's LFO (sine, 0.3 Hz, small amount) on Pitch adds a slow tape warble to any of these.

Auto Pan-Tremolo (12.3) in the dub chain

The 12.3 redesign of Auto Pan splits pan and tremolo (amplitude) with their own shapes and rates. On the delay return it is the echo "spinning", and as a tremolo on the chord it is the classic dub organ/guitar shimmer.

1. On the delay return: Pan mode, Rate synced 1/8D (a different dotted value from the delay time, so the pan and the repeats drift against each other), shape sine, Amount 50–70 %, Phase 180 (true stereo pan). Repeats circle the room.
2. On the chord source: Tremolo mode, Rate 1/8 or 1/16, shape triangle or square (hard tremolo = the "pulsing" dub keys), Amount 40–60 %, Offset so the tremolo does not fully gate. Put it before the send so the delay repeats inherit the pulse.
3. Rate free-run at 6–7 Hz, shape sine, small amount, on the siren for the warble; or map Rate to a macro and sweep it into audio rate (20–50 Hz) for the ring-mod rip.

King Tubby / Scientist-style desk approach with sends and Session view (style only)

The classic dub mix is a four-channel performance: drums, bass, chords, voice/melody, each with a send to Echo and a send to Spring, plus a HP on the desk channels and mutes on everything. Not a recreation of any specific record — the method.

1. Four tracks (or groups). Each gets a HP filter (Auto Filter, HP 24, mapped to a macro 20 Hz → 1 kHz) as the last device — the desk's high-pass "thinning" move — and a Utility whose Mute is mapped to a pad. Bass gets no sends.
2. Three returns: A Echo (3/16 tape, from recipe 1), B Spring, C a second Echo at 1/4 with Shifter +12 after it. Every return has the Limiter and an Auto Filter for sweeps.
3. Session view: scenes for Intro / Verse / Version / Breakdown / Outro. Within each scene, the clips are long loops (8–16 bars); the mix is done with sends, mutes and filters, not with clip launching.
4. Performance grammar: drop-out (mute drums, let echo of the skank carry 2 bars, drums back on the 1); throw (send a vocal phrase to A at full, mute the vocal); thin (HP the whole drum bus to 400 Hz for 4 bars, then release); crash (spring send on one snare at full); runaway (feedback to 100 % on A, limiter holds, filter closes, cut).
5. Record the whole performance to Arrangement with automation on. The first take is the arrangement; edit only the mistakes.

Dub techno delay chains (Basic Channel style): HP/LP in the feedback, long 1/4 and 1/8 chains

Dub techno strips the reggae rhythm out and keeps the delay physics: a chord stab (see the dub chord rack) into a delay with heavy band-limiting in the feedback, feedback at 70–85 % so the repeats never fully die, straight 1/4 or 1/8 times, and a second, longer, darker delay feeding a reverb. The result is a chord that is 20 % stab and 80 % echo.

1. Return A: Echo 1/4 (L) and 1/8 (R, unlinked) for the stereo tumble, Feedback 75–85 %, loop HP 400 Hz, loop LP 2.5 kHz — tighter window than reggae dub because the techno kick and hats take more space. Wobble 10–15 %, Noise 10 %.
2. Return B: Delay device, Ping Pong, time 3/4 or an unsynced 580 ms (slightly off-grid for drift), Feedback 70 %, Filter in loop LP 1.5 kHz. After it, Hybrid Reverb Dark Hall, Decay 10–15 s, Dry/Wet 30 % — the delay smears into fog.
3. Chord track sends to A at −12 dB constantly (the halo) and to B at −20 dB; throws push A to 0 dB. Use Echo's Duck so the stab itself stays in front.
4. Glue Compressor on each return with sidechain from the kick, 2–3 dB, Release 0.4 s: the delay clouds breathe with the kick, which is the dub techno pulse.
5. Chord stab itself: short (decay 150–300 ms), filtered Analog or Wavetable saws with Chorus-Ensemble — the dub chord rack. The stab is deliberately plain because the delay is the sound.

Dubstep / grime dub influence: delay as space, Shifter +12 skanks, siren drops

Early dubstep and grime inherited the dub toolkit at 140 BPM: half-time drums with huge empty space filled by 3/16 delays on the snare and the skank, spring on the snare, sirens in the intro, and the "wobble" bass sitting dry in the middle where the bass always was.

• Snare delay at 3/16, feedback 40–50 %, high-passed at 500 Hz so the repeats are only the crack. At 140 BPM 3/16 = 321 ms. The repeats land on the "e" and "a" of beats, filling the half-time gaps.
• Skank stab (short organ/chord, Wavetable or Electric) sent to a 1/8 delay with Shifter +12 after it — the "digital" high repeats behind a dark stab.
• Siren intro (recipe 3): 8 bars, echo feedback 85 %, cut dead 1 bar before the drop. The silence is the drop's run-up.
• Bass stays dry. Any delay on the sub smears the pattern; if you need space on the bass, send only a HP'd (300 Hz) copy of the growl layer.
• Grime uses the same on square-wave leads and vocal stabs: 1/4 delay with 2–3 repeats, no reverb, dry and aggressive; the dub part is the throw-and-mute on vocal phrases.

Performing dub FX live with Push macros

The dub FX rack below is built to be played with two hands on Push 3: 8 encoders for the macros, pads for the momentary throws and mutes, and the touch strip for the master return filter.

1. Put the rack on Return A so the Push device view shows its 8 macros on the encoders when the return is selected. Lock the return to the device view (Push: hold the Device button, select the rack) so flipping to tracks does not lose it.
2. MIDI-map the Throw macro to a pad with the mapping set so the pad is momentary (in the MIDI map browser, set the mapped range so note-on = 127 and note-off = 0; since macros respond to note velocity when mapped, a pad press pushes it up and the release drops it back). Same for Mute macros on the source tracks.
3. Map the Filter macro to the touch strip. Map Feedback to an encoder with a soft-takeover so you can grab it at its current value.
4. Session view performance layout: tracks with their clips on the left, the Mute/Throw pad row, scenes for sections. Record Session automation to Arrangement.
5. Rehearse the five gestures from the desk recipe until each is one movement. Dub is choreography.