Before the invention of audio delay technology, music employing a delayed echo had to be recorded in a naturally reverberant space, often an inconvenience for musicians and engineers. The popularity of an easy-to-implement 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. Tape based Many delay processors based on analog tape recording , used magnetic tape as their recording and playback medium. Electric motors guided a tape loop through a device with a variety of mechanisms allowing modification of the effect's parameters."RE-201 Space Echo", Vintage Synth Explorer. 1997. Retrieved on July 30, 2006. Popular models included Ray Butts' EchoSonic (1952), the 1959 Echoplex by Mike Battle, "whose sounds are still being experimented with today . ", and the Roland Space Echo (1973) , In the Echoplex EP-2 , the play head was fixed, while a combination record and erase head was mounted on a slide, thus the delay time of the echo was adjusted by changing the distance between the record and play heads. In the Space Echo, all of the heads are fixed, but the speed of the tape could be adjusted, changing the delay time. The 1959 Ecco-Fonic had a spinning head. Often incorporating vacuum tube-based electronics , surviving tape-based delay units are sought by modern musicians who wish to employ some of the timbres achievable with this technology. Solid-state delay units using analog bucket-brigade devices became available in the 1970s and were briefly a mainstream alternative to tape echo. The earliest known design , was prototyped at a Boston-based sound reinforcement company in 1976. The core technology used a Reticon SAD1024 IC. In the 1980s, this design was used by Boss Corporation for their mass-production products and the Rockman amplifier. Though solid-state analog delays are less flexible than digital delays and generally have shorter delay times, several classic models such as the discontinued Boss DM-2 are still sought after for their "warmer", more natural echo quality and progressively decaying echos .
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 popularity of an easy-to-implement 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. Tape based Many delay processors based on analog tape recording used magnetic tape as their recording and playback medium. Electric motors guided a tape loop through a device with a variety of mechanisms allowing modification of the effect's parameters."RE-201 Space Echo", Vintage Synth Explorer. 1997. Retrieved on July 30, 2006. Popular models included Ray Butts' EchoSonic (1952), the 1959 Echoplex by Mike Battle, "whose sounds are still being experimented with today ", and the Roland Space Echo (1973) . In the Echoplex EP-2 the play head was fixed, while a combination record and erase head was mounted on a slide, thus the delay time of the echo was adjusted by changing the distance between the record and play heads. In the Space Echo, all of the heads are fixed, but the speed of the tape could be adjusted, changing the delay time. The 1959 Ecco-Fonic had a spinning head. Surviving tape-based delay units incorporating vacuum tube-based electronics are sought by modern musicians who wish to employ some of the timbres achievable with this technology. Solid-state delay units using analog bucket-brigade devices became available in the 1970s and were briefly a mainstream alternative to tape echo. The earliest known design was prototyped at a Boston-based sound reinforcement company in 1976. The core technology used a Reticon SAD1024 IC. In the 1980s, this design was used by Boss Corporation for their mass-production products and the Rockman amplifier. Though solid-state analog delays are less flexible than digital delays and generally have shorter delay times, several classic models such as the discontinued Boss DM-2 are still sought after for their "warmer", more natural echo quality and progressively decaying echoes .
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