Effects & processing
Tape echo
Tape echo is a delay modelled on a tape machine: each repeat comes back darker, slightly unstable in pitch and a little saturated. It degrades as it repeats rather than copying cleanly.
In practice
Each repeat loses top end, so a tape echo can run long without ever competing with the record coming in.
Push the feedback further than you would on a digital delay — the filtering does the tidying for you. The wobble is worth leaving in rather than dialling out, because a perfectly stable tape echo is just a delay with the treble turned down. On an exit, hold the feedback up as you cut the outgoing channel and let the repeats collapse; on a long blend, keep the wet level low and let it live under the mix.
High
Feedback you can get away with
Darker each pass
What makes it recede
Dub
Where the sound comes from
Where these come from: Effect behaviour and conventional settings, not catalog figures. For what we can measure, see the delay this models.
Why it matters
The degradation is the point. A clean digital delay competes with the record for as long as it keeps repeating, because every repeat is as bright as the original; a tape echo loses top end on each pass, so it recedes on its own and can run much longer without ever getting in the way.
It is also the sound of a whole lineage of dub, dub techno and UK bass, which means using it does not read as an effect so much as a genre reference. That is useful when you want a transition to feel like part of the music rather than like a piece of equipment.
Frequently asked
What is the difference between tape echo and delay?+
A delay repeats the signal faithfully. A tape echo filters, saturates and slightly detunes each repeat, so it grows darker and less defined as it goes and never competes with what is playing.
Why do dub records use tape echo?+
Because it was the machine in the room. The sound of a repeat degrading became part of the genre’s language, and it survived the move to digital as a modelled effect for that reason.
Can you use tape echo on the whole mix?+
At a low wet level, yes — the filtering keeps it from clouding the low end the way a bright delay would. Turning it up over two playing records still buries both.
Related terms
Delay
Delay repeats a sound after a set time. On a DJ mixer that time is locked to the detected tempo, so the setting is a beat division rather than a number of milliseconds and the repeats land on the grid.
Saturation
Saturation adds harmonics by pushing a signal into gentle distortion. It makes a sound feel louder and denser without the meter moving much, which is why almost every commercial master has some.
Echo out
An echo out ends a record by feeding its last bars into a delay and pulling the channel down, so the track dissolves into repeats instead of stopping.
Ping-pong delay
A ping-pong delay alternates its repeats between the left and right channels, so each echo bounces across the stereo field instead of stacking in the middle where the record already is.
Explore: Delay · Mixing guides · Saturation · All DJ terms