RJ-Delay · Manual

RJ-Delay: Manual

Version 1.0Updated 2026-07-06

RJ-Delay is the delay I always wanted: one where I don't guess the echoes, I draw them. No time knob, no global feedback knob, just a canvas where every point is an echo. I put it where it should land, drag it quieter, give it its own feedback tail. What you see on the canvas is exactly the pattern you hear. It's my sixth plugin, and it's the one that's the most fun to use.

Overview

RJ-Delay is a multitap delay built around a drawable tap canvas. X is time, Y is level, up to 16 points. Every point carries its own pan, its own stereo spread and its own feedback. A single point plus feedback becomes a slapback or a whole echo train. On top sit a 6-band EQ and a saturator with seven characters, each routable Pre, In or Post. Then the colour: Valhalla-style diffusion, delay modulation, drift, a continuous ping-pong, ducking, micro-detune and five analog characters from Clean through Tape and BBD to Oil Can.

EQ and saturation share their algorithms with RJ-Spaces. If you know the reverb, you'll feel at home here immediately. Everything runs across two views in the suite look, DELAY and EQ, in cream and burgundy.

The Interface

At its heart is the tap canvas on the DELAY tab, the cream panel in the centre.

X = time from the left edge (0) to the right edge (the current canvas range). Y = level, 0 dB at the top down to −40 dB at the baseline. Horizontal dB lines sit at 0, −6, −12, −18, −24, −30 and −36 dB, the 0 dB line drawn a little darker.
Each active tap is a stem rising from the baseline to a numbered burgundy head. The selected tap gets a ring.
Taps with feedback wear a small loop marker on the head. A tap with stereo spread throws two faint ghost stems to the sides, the L/R read positions. A panned or selected tap shows a small L..R pan bar underneath.
At the bottom floats the info bar with the selected tap's values: number, TIME, LEVEL, PAN, SPREAD, FB, SWING, NUDGE and a small x to delete. Active values are burgundy, inactive ones grey. FB is greyed at 0, SWING entirely in free mode.
On the right sits a slim vertical stereo output meter.

Editing happens directly on the canvas:

Double-click an empty spot to add a tap.
Drag moves it in time and level at once. In sync mode it snaps to the grid, with Shift it goes free.
Cmd-drag pans the tap.
Alt-click or double-click a head to delete it.
In the info bar you change any value with the mouse-wheel, by click-dragging the cell (Shift = fine), or by double-clicking for direct numeric entry.

No two taps may share the exact same position, they nudge each other apart. You can't go past 16 taps, at which point the bar reads "Alle 16 Taps belegt".

Up top you switch between the tabs:

DELAY – the tap canvas.
EQ – a frequency graph from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

Controls & Parameters

The Tap Canvas (per tap)

Time and feedback deliberately have no knob. The two interact, so they live per tap on the canvas.

TIME: position on the X axis, shown in ms (free) or beats (sync).
LEVEL: −40 … 0 dB
PAN: L … C … R, hard pan of that tap.
SPREAD: −25 … +25 ms, offsets the L/R read position and draws the ghost stems.
FB (Feedback): 0 – 110 %. Each point recirculates its own echo train through the whole In chain, so the colouring accumulates every pass. 100 % and above approaches self-oscillation, with the tail capped for the host.
SWING: 0 – 100 % (sync only), leans the tap toward the triplet spot of its grid pair.
NUDGE: −25 … +25 ms, rushes or drags the tap against the beat, in any mode.

Sync, Free and the Canvas Range

The SYNC toggle in the header switches between free (ms) and tempo-synced (note values). RJ-Delay reads BPM from the playhead, with a fallback of 120.

The range/note dropdown is a pure zoom of the canvas. When you switch it, it rescales every stored tap fraction, so the taps stay put in absolute time and never wander.

time_ms (free): canvas range 10 – 4000 ms, selectable as 250 ms / 500 ms / 1 s / 2 s / 4 s.
time_note (sync): pattern length from 1/16 to 2/1.
grid (sync): snap resolution, from 1/4 to 1/32.

Left Knob Column

DIFFUSE (0 – 100 %) – four Schroeder allpasses per channel on the write path, the Valhalla recipe. At 0 % the delay runs bit-transparent.
DIFF SIZE (0 – 100 %) – allpass length, roughly 4 to 45 ms. Time-compensated: the tap and feedback times are shortened by the diffusion delay so the echoes stay on time as size changes.
COLOR (0 – 100 %) – intensity of the chosen analog character. No effect on Clean.
DRIFT (0 – 100 %) – random wander of ±1 ms so the repeats never land sample-exact. Off at 0.

Right Knob Column

MOD DPT (0 – 100 %) – modulation depth on all read positions, up to ±3 ms. Classic delay chorus or vibrato.
MOD RATE (0.05 – 8 Hz) – LFO rate, R runs in quadrature, staggered per tap so nothing locks together.
PINGPONG (0 – 100 %) – continuous morph. The send folds to mono-left and the recirculations cross-feed so the repeats bounce L to R to L. At 0 % it's bit-identical.
DETUNE (−50 … +50 ct) – micro-pitch on the wet, L +c / R −c, an H3000-style thickener. Bit-identical at 0.
WIDTH (0 – 200 %) – M/S width on the wet.

Character (Analog Modes)

The Character dropdown picks the colouring that runs inside the loop and darkens with every repeat. The COLOR knob only scales internal constants and never touches your own parameters.

Clean – fully skipped, bit-identical.
Tape – gentle low-pass voicing, a head bump at 78 Hz, a fixed HP at 50 Hz, plus wow and flutter.
BBD – resonant low-pass with a signature peak, triangle wow, the classic bucket-brigade timbre.
Vintage Digital – a Butterworth low-pass plus 12-bit quantization of the write signal, with no internal modulation, rigid like 1978.
Oil Can – a thin HP at 250 Hz and a dark LP, plus a strong disc-rotation modulation, the Tel-Ray sound.

Each mode brings its own preset loop saturation, which stays independent of your user Drive.

EQ (6-band pool, EQ tab)

The same engine as in RJ-Spaces. The frequency graph runs logarithmically from 20 Hz to 20 kHz at ±24 dB. A double-click in the graph adds a band, you drag the handles Pro-Q style, and a double-click on a handle bypasses it.

Type: Bell, Low Shelf, High Shelf, Low Cut, High Cut
Freq: 20 Hz – 20 kHz
Gain: −24 … +24 dB
Q: 0.1 – 10
Slope: 12 / 24 / 36 / 48 dB/oct
Channel: Stereo, Left, Right, Mid, Side
Route: Pre / In / Post. "In" places the band inside the feedback loop, so every repeat is re-EQ'd.
Dynamic EQ (own DYN popover): Threshold (−60 … 0 dB), Range (−24 … +24 dB), Attack (0.05 – 250 ms), Release (5 – 2500 ms), Smooth (1 – 6), Source Self or Sidechain, with a live GR read-out and a breathing ghost region on the curve.

Saturation (Pre / In / Post)

The SAT popover opens the saturation, the same one as in RJ-Spaces (minus the Warm/Colour mode).

ON – stage on or off.
Placement: Pre / In / Post (default: In). "In" saturates every loop pass.
Character: Soft, Air, Crunch, Round, Tube, Triode, Iron
Drive: 0 – 12 dB
Amount: 0 – 100 %

Ducking

The DUCK popover pulls the wet down while the trigger plays, so the echoes bloom in the gaps.

ON – on or off.
Trigger: IN (input) or SC (sidechain bus).
Amount: 0 – 100 %
Attack: 1 – 100 ms
Release: 50 – 2000 ms

LOCK (Mix-Lock): while engaged, preset switches, factory presets and reset never touch the mix. The send balance survives preset browsing. The lock itself is preset-persistent, only the DAW session stores it.
MIX: 0 – 100 %, dry/wet, smoothed per sample.
IN: −24 … +24 dB
OUT: −24 … +24 dB

There is no dedicated bypass button, use your DAW's instead.

Signal Flow

Briefly, because it explains why the thing sounds the way it does. First a dry copy is taken. The send runs through Pre-EQ and Pre-Sat. Then the tap engine: the write path sums the send plus every tap's feedback, pushes it through the In-EQ, the In-Sat, the Character colouring and the diffusion, and writes it into a single delay line. All active taps read from that line. Because colouring, saturation and diffusion sit on the write path, like a tape record chain, even the first repeat is coloured, and the k-th repeat is coloured k times. After that the wet still passes through micro-detune, Post-Sat, Post-EQ, width, ducking, the dry/wet mix and the output gain.

Practical Tips

Slapback: one tap, small feedback (5 – 35 %), Character on Tape, a touch of Drift. That's your rockabilly slap.
Echoes drifting off the grid in sync? Check each tap's Nudge and Swing. Swing only works in sync mode.
DIFF SIZE never moves the echoes, it's time-compensated. So turn it up freely when you want to smear the tail. Only on very short patterns can a large Size audibly add time, and that's the documented exception.
"In" routing darkens every repeat the way a real tape echo does. Pre and Post, by contrast, shape the send or return only once.
Everything optional is bit-identical when off: Sat off, EQ unused, Diffusion 0, Mod 0, Character Clean, Ping-Pong 0, Detune 0. You only hear what you actually switch on.
For a dub wash: several taps with rising feedback, an In-EQ low-cut routed "In", and plenty of diffusion. Every repeat gets darker and wider.

Installation & Activation

RJ-Delay runs as VST3, AU and AAX on macOS and Windows.

Download and run the installer, then reopen your DAW.
On first launch you get the 30-day, fully functional trial, no limitations.
After purchase, enter your license key in the plugin's info area. The key is valid for Mac and Windows alike.

Questions about activation or workflow? Just write to me directly. I build these tools myself and I'm glad to help.