Voice Recorder Echo Effect Free Download
Tawanda Eschbaugh
Record your voice in all its glory and uniqueness. Play it back with pitch control to explore outrageous highs and lows. Flip the switch to keep the fun on repeat. Frankie also comes with two silver knobs that control the delay echo effect for extraterrestrial sonic weirdness.
Delay is an audio signal processing technique that records an input signal to a storage medium and then plays it back after a period of time. When the delayed playback is mixed with the live audio, it creates an echo-like effect, whereby the original audio is heard followed by the delayed audio. The delayed signal may be played back multiple times, or fed back into the recording, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.[1]
Delay effects range from a subtle echo effect to a pronounced blending of previous sounds with new sounds. Delay effects can be created using tape loops, an approach developed in the 1940s and 1950s and used by artists including Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly.
The first delay effects were achieved using tape loops improvised on reel-to-reel audio tape recording systems. By shortening or lengthening the loop of tape and adjusting the read-and-write heads, the nature of the delayed echo could be controlled. This technique was most common among early composers of musique concrète such as Pierre Schaeffer, and composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, who had sometimes devised elaborate systems involving long tapes and multiple recorders and playback systems, collectively processing the input of a live performer or ensemble.[2]
American producer Sam Phillips created a slapback echo effect with two Ampex 350 tape recorders in 1954.[3][4] The effect was used by artists including Elvis Presley (such as on his track "Blue Moon of Kentucky") and Buddy Holly,[5] and became one of Phillips' signatures.[4] Guitarist and instrument designer Les Paul was an early pioneer in delay devices.[6][7] According to Sound on Sound, "The character and depth of sound that was produced from tape echo on these old records is extremely lush, warm and wide."[8]
Tape echoes became commercially available in the 1950s.[9] Tape echo machines contain loops of tape that pass over a record head and then a playback head. An echo machine is the early name for a sound processing device used with electronic instruments to repeat the sound and produce a simulated echo. The time between echo repeats was adjusted by varying head position or tape speed. The length or intensity of the echo effect was adjusted by changing the amount of echo signal was fed back into the signal recorded to tape.[10]
Before the invention of audio delay technology, music employing an echo had to be recorded in a naturally reverberant space, often an inconvenience for musicians and engineers. The demand for an easy-to-use real-time echo effect led to the production of systems offering an all-in-one effects unit that could be adjusted to produce echoes of any interval or amplitude. The presence of multiple taps (playback heads) made it possible to have delays at varying rhythmic intervals; this allowed musicians an additional means of expression over natural periodic echoes.
Thin magnetic tape was not entirely suited for continuous operation, however, so the tape loop has to be replaced from time to time to maintain the audio fidelity of the processed sounds. The Binson Echorec used a rotating magnetic drum or disc (not entirely unlike those used in modern hard-disk drives) as its storage medium. This provided an advantage over tape, as the durable drums were able to last for many years with little deterioration in the audio quality.[20] In later years, tape delay effects remained popular for the way the tape compresses and distorts, "creating the impression that the echoes are receding rather than just getting quieter".[21]
The effect resembles an echo, but the whimsical nature of the storage medium causes variations in the sound that can be heard as a vibrato effect. Some early models featured control circuitry designed to feed the output of the read wiper to the write wiper, causing a reverberant effect as well.
Delay effects add a time delay to an audio signal. Blending the delayed audio with the original audio creates an echo-like effect, whereby the original audio is heard followed by the delayed audio.[5] The delayed signal may be treated separately from the input audio - for example, with an equalizer.[33]
Short delays (50 ms or less) create a sense of broadening the sound without creating a perceptible echo and can be used to add stereo width or simulate double-tracking (layering two performances).[33] The effect is known as the precedence effect or Haas effect, after the German scientist Helmut Haas.[33]
Doubling echo is produced by adding short delay to a recorded sound. Delays of thirty to fifty milliseconds are the most common; longer delay times become slapback echo. Mixing the original and delayed sounds creates an effect similar to doubletracking, or unison performance.
Slapback echo uses a delay time of 60 to 250 milliseconds with little or no feedback.[c] A slapback delay creates a thickening effect. The effect is characteristic of vocals on 1950s rock-n-roll records. In July 1954, Sam Phillips produced the first of five 78s and 45s that Elvis Presley would release on Sun Records over the next year and a half, all of which featured a novel production technique that Phillips termed slapback echo.[34] The effect was produced by re-feeding the output signal from the playback head tape recorder to its record head. The physical space between heads, the speed of the tape, and the chosen volume being the main controlling factors. Analog and later digital delay machines also easily produced the effect. It is also sometimes used on instruments, particularly drums and percussion.
Flanging, chorus and reverb are all delay-based sound effects. With flanging and chorus, the delay time is very short and usually modulated.[35] With reverberation, there are multiple delays and feedback so that individual echoes are blurred together, recreating the sound of an acoustic space.
I just installed the apogee duet on Logic Pro (Leopard OS). The problem that I am having is that when I go to lay down a vocal part in logic i am hearing like a doubling effect or echo type effect while recording. When i play the vocal part back it sounds fine, there is no doubling effect...only while im recording is when i hear it in the headphones and it is really throwing me off vocally. Now i tried to figure it out on my own and i believe it has something to do with latency. In Logic i set the i/o buffer size to 128. Before that it was set to 256 and it was much worse. I set it to 128 and i dont hear it as much and it sounds a lot better, but i can still hear a slight doubling effect while recording. I tried to set the buffer size to a lower number like 64 but this just doubles worse, so im thinking the setting is supposed to be at 128. The options are from 32 - 1024 for the buffer size. When i record an instrument track from my keyboard, i DO NOT hear the doubling effect. Only when im recording vocals. Im not sure if its a setting in Logic that i should change, or if theres some kind of setting on the Duets preferences that I can change to resolve this. Also in Logic in the audio prefences i have the Process Buffer Range set to Medium , I/O safety buffer is unchecked, Independent Monitoring level is unchecked, ...
To grasp why tape-loop echo units sound so musical, it helps to look at the analog tape recorders that inspired them. Even today, people love the sound of analog tape. Still, a technical analysis confirms that it has more imperfections than modern digital systems. The magnetic properties of tape cause it to compress and distort the sound at higher recording levels. In addition, repeated use of the same piece of tape results in a loss of high end performance.
Tape machine mechanics and circuitry combine to create a tape loop echo device such as the RE-201. When they do, desirable characteristics of analog tape color the sound in a way that musicians interpret as sounding warm and musical. Users create repeating delays by feeding some of the output from one or more of the replay heads back to the input. Each time the signal is re-recorded, it loses a little high end, gets more distorted, and accumulates more analog tape degradation. This has the effect of making the repeats sound as though they are melting into the distance as they die off.
The wow and flutter in a well-designed studio tape machine may be low enough to be quite inaudible. Still, many well-loved tape echo units suffered from noticeable amounts of pitch modulation. Sometimes this was down to sloppy engineering or wear and tear. Another cause was more specific. Unlike a tape recorder, the rubber pinch roller that held the tape in contact with the capstan often remained in contact when the machine was not in use.
Adjusting the motor speed adjusts the delay time. Producers used the resulting pitch change effects from adjustment as special effects. The RE-201 employed three evenly-spaced reply heads. Users could set up rhythmic repeats by using the heads in different combinations. Rather than tapes on reels, most tape echo units employ a loop of tape that continually moves past the heads. This saves the tape from ever running out, but does increase wear.
This had to do with the frequency response of tape, limitations of the recording process, and the side-effects of any noise reduction. They caused each successive repeat generated by a tape-loop echo device to lose a little clarity and to take on a more distant character. This replicates the way echoes die away in a natural space such as a canyon. The Roland Space Echo also includes EQ to allow users to control the character of the repeats over a wide range.
760c119bf3