Digital Distortion Delay

[MayPRS]

I just bough a Helix LT to replace my HX Effects. In the HX Effects one of the patches with a "Simple Delay" block cause some unpleasant digital distortion even on clean settings.

 

Actually I've been using "Simple Delay" for my delay needs - and I wonder if the Delay is the culprit or something else. I use an external OD pedal and there's no DS/OD blocks on the path. It only happens (or I only notice!) on patches with the "Simple Delay" on.

 

I read something about Vintage Delay causing this... I wonder if Simple Delay suffers from the same issue. This to prevent doing the same thing on the LT.

[datacommando]

On 2/24/2023 at 10:29 AM, MayPRS said:

I just bough a Helix LT to replace my HX Effects. In the HX Effects one of the patches with a "Simple Delay" block cause some unpleasant digital distortion even on clean settings.

 

Actually I've been using "Simple Delay" for my delay needs - and I wonder if the Delay is the culprit or something else. I use an external OD pedal and there's no DS/OD blocks on the path. It only happens (or I only notice!) on patches with the "Simple Delay" on.

 

I read something about Vintage Delay causing this... I wonder if Simple Delay suffers from the same issue.

Hi,

 

Without an example preset that exhibits this “distortion” on the Simple Delay, it difficult to suggest a cause or solution.

 

You are correct about the Vintage Delay, which is susceptible to this, due to the nature of the technology being modelled. Low sample rates and bit depth (8, or 12bit) could easily drive these early DDLs into breakup with the staircase shape of the resulting waveform being very choppy.
 

I still have an almost 40 year old Ibanez DM1000 with an LED display marked “Headroom” to allow the input gain to be monitored, and along with the compressor/expander circuit and pre-/de-emphasis on the delay can make it reasonably quiet for an 8bit, 8kHz unit. In the Line 6 Vintage Delay there is a Headroom option which serves a similar purpose, although this is not available in the Simple Delay, so I’m unsure what might be causing that without having a preset to check.

 

Hope this helps makes sense.

[rd2rk]

IOW - attache the offending preset for analysis. :-)