Vintage Digital Delay

[BigRalphN]

I did a search (I swear forum searches are useless) but could not find n issue I am having. Is anyone getting clipping from the Vintage Digital Delay? I plan on doing a support ticket but wanted to make sure I am not doing it somehow. The Vintage Digital was one of my favorites but after the .01 patch it clips for me on the delays. I tried various adjustments and no issue. I thought about a reflash of the firmware but I sort of figure an update will appear soon as it has been awhile so I thought I would wait until then. If it is an issue need to get it reported.

[kensington]

Yes, some people seem to get it. Not sure how they manage to provoke it, it doesn't happen to me.
There's been some posts and a lot of discussion about it on the facebook page.
Anyhow, Line6 is aware, so I'm sure it's a bug they'll fix shortly ;-) 

[duncann]

This is news to me. I've been using this delay a lot lately and haven't noticed any clipping. Does it happen on any settings, or more likely on some specific settings? It's possible to get an increase in level, which could cause clipping, if the mix is quite high. I'll certainly be keeping an ear out now that I've read this.

 

And yes, the forum search results suck big time.

[phil_m]

Yes, some people seem to get it. Not sure how they manage to provoke it, it doesn't happen to me.

There's been some posts and a lot of discussion about it on the facebook page.

Anyhow, Line6 is aware, so I'm sure it's a bug they'll fix shortly ;-) 

 

It's not a bug... It's per design. I didn't take the time to search for it on the Facebook group, but Ben Adrian, the Helix sound designer, explained it there. Basically, when you turn the bit depth parameter down, it actually lowers the headroom for the block, and instead of remaining a 32-bit floating point algorithm, it actually means the signal for the repeats block is being sampled at whatever frequency and bit depth you choose. So the key to not clipping at the low bit depth settings is to have a lower signal going into this block. I assume you have it after the amp and/or cab block, so just lower the channel volume parameter in the amp block, and you should be good to go.

[STPLE]

Thank you!!   I had the same problem.  Just that one delay clipped - enough I had to stop using it on some tones.  I basically turned down the channel volume on the tones and sure enough it disappeared.  I really should pay more attention to the unity gain principles when creating tones.

[phil_m]

Thank you!!   I had the same problem.  Just that one delay clipped - enough I had to stop using it on some tones.  I basically turned down the channel volume on the tones and sure enough it disappeared.  I really should pay more attention to the unity gain principles when creating tones.

 

A quick note - since the time I wrote my original reply here, Line 6 has updated the Vintage Digital Delay model. They added a "headroom" parameter in the 2.10 release, so increasing the headroom will alleviate the clipping issues mentioned above without having to worry so much about the level going into the block. The one caveat is that the headroom parameter only shows up in the Vintage Delay block if you enter a new one in a tone. If it was a preset created prior to 2.10, you'll have to delete the original block and put it in again for it to show up.

[STPLE]

Thanks - good to know.  I didn't realize that the 'headroom' parameter was added with 2.10. 

[EdwinV]

A quick note - since the time I wrote my original reply here, Line 6 has updated the Vintage Digital Delay model. They added a "headroom" parameter in the 2.10 release, so increasing the headroom will alleviate the clipping issues mentioned above without having to worry so much about the level going into the block. The one caveat is that the headroom parameter only shows up in the Vintage Delay block if you enter a new one in a tone. If it was a preset created prior to 2.10, you'll have to delete the original block and put it in again for it to show up.

That's interesting; I can't seem to remember reading this in the release notes. Did I miss something? How did you find out?

[MusicLaw]

Thanks - good to know.  I didn't realize that the 'headroom' parameter was added with 2.10.

 

  

That's interesting; I can't seem to remember reading this in the release notes. Did I miss something? How did you find out?

Shouldn't the Rebuild Presets process (after installing any new firmware version) properly take care of adding any new Block Parameters (for example, VDD's Headroom) to any existing Blocks used in Presets imported into the current version?

[phil_m]

Shouldn't the Rebuild Presets process (after installing any new firmware version) properly take care of adding any new Block Parameters (for example, VDD's Headroom) to any existing Blocks used in Presets imported into the current version?

No, not in this case. The old Vintage Digital delay and the new one with the headroom parameter are actually two different effects. You just can't access the old one from the menu any more. I'm not sure why they did it this way in this case. Perhaps they were afraid the change would alter the sound of existing presets people had.

[zooey]

Not too beat a dead horse, or hijack this thread, but this is exactly the kind of "non-linearity" I'm afraid of in building an offline preset editor. Line 6 had inside knowledge about how things have changed over time, and that knowledge is built into the ecosystem. Specially, it's in the upgrade process, which is in Helix itself. I think.

[AZGuitar]

I love this delay, typically running the headroom at 0 to 2.0....what are you guys doing? Also running the bit depth at 16, any thought here?

 

Thx for your input.

[STPLE]

I usually set the Mix and Feedback and timing as the main parameters.  I'm not even sure what Bit Depth does??  I leave headroom, etc. 

 

I love the Vintage Delay.  I use it a lot.  I'm back to using now that I make sure I don't overload the signal.  Some of my tones were probably too hot internally.  I've just turned down the channel volume on the amp block and that solved the clipping issue.  I could use headroom but went this route instead.