A menu of vintage-voiced, modulated, harmonic, and reverse delays makes an intriguing smorgasbord of echo textures.
An imaginative array of wild to rich and familiar echo textures. Darker EQ profile lends authenticity to tape-like effects. Smart, if somewhat cramped, control layout.
Harmonic delay mode can be cloying at most settings.
$249
Diamond Dark Cloud
diamondpedals.com
The art of using and building delays is, at this point, a discipline populated by a thousand little cults. Vintage-minded analogists, digital micromanagers, and seekers of chaos all live under this strange umbrella. What’s refreshing about Diamond’s Dark Cloud is the way it spans so many points on the echo spectrum without 30 push-buttons and an enclosure the size of a cigar box.
It does many of the things detail-minded sound crafters demand of their delays, like tap tempo and creating precise subdivisions fast. And while it’s a digital delay, it seems very carefully designed and EQ’d to feel very analog, vintage, patinated, and moody. Indeed, in many situations it proves worthy of its name.
Crafted for Controlled Chaos
The sturdy, Canada-built Dark Cloud is a nice study in design efficiency. While there are enough tightly packed controls and switches to make some players nervous, the Dark Cloud does a lot with four knobs, a mini-toggle, and two footswitches. The toggle doubles as a mode selector when you click down and a subdivision switch when you click up. Footswitches serve the function of tapping out tempo, instantaneously or momentarily doubling delay rate, or setting up the harmonic delay mode for octaves or fifths. And though the four knobs for delay time, mix, feedback, and modulation rate are ordinarily enough, each functions quite differently depending on the mode, making the Dark Cloud deceptively simple.
Softly Spoken Expansiveness
Tape mode is, needless to say, well suited for the Dark Cloud’s darkish tone profile. Repeats drift and dissolve into mist as the echo signal degrades, and in traditional sorts of tape delay settings (short-to-medium-length delays, a 50/50 mix, and anywhere from two to five repeats), the Dark Cloud maintains a responsiveness and a not-too-overbearing presence that are simultaneously spacey and subdued. But the tape setting is also fantastic at more extreme settings. Fast repeats mated to speedy modulations and maxed-out feedback levels yield results that sound like Joe Meek wrestling a Space Echo, and you can create many accelerating/decelerating oscillation effects that suggest the old Roland tape delay standard-bearer if you engage actively and in real time with the controls.
“Fast repeats mated to speedy modulations and maxed-out feedback levels yield results that sound like Joe Meek wrestling a Space Echo.”
Harmonic and octave-up effects paired with reverbs and delay have a way of generating polarizing effects. I am generally on the side of those who find that a little goes a long way, and that too much is a saccharine tone nightmare that evokes being eaten alive by Smurfs. If you want to be devoured by wee cannibals, that’s your business, and the Dark Cloud will go there, particularly if you run wild with the feedback control. But the pedal also makes space for mellower applications. I had great luck with slapback delay times, fast decay, moderate mix levels and modulation rates in the ballpark of a Leslie’s whirl. In this setting, the harmonic delay took on the feel of an old Vox or Farfisa organ tracking my chord melody. If you stray from the Duane Eddy zone on the fretboard, single-note melodies tend to bring out the harmonic delay’s more cloying side. However, if you dig the shimmering qualities associated with these effects, you’ll find the Dark Cloud is a rich source for them, especially if you tinker with the harmonizing fifth setting on the pedal.
The Dark Cloud’s reverse delay mode is the one where the dark and cloudy facets of its personality become really intriguing. Like the tape mode, it’s a great match for drive effects from mellow boosts to gnarly fuzz—whether you situate it upstream or downstream from the pedal. But using the effect in clean settings reveals a lot about how the pedal’s EQ emphasis and duskier repeats make reverse echoes more seamless, organic, and something closer to the effect of reverse tape, especially when you keep the modulation and feedback to a minimum. In this way, the Dark Cloud’s reverse delay betters that of many of its peers and makes echoes sound less like they were grafted on as an afterthought. The reverse-echo textures can also range to more mangled extremes. If you’re a fan of Daniel Lanois’ warped-echo-and-melting-tweed-Deluxe sounds, adding fuzzy gain and attenuating your guitar tone generates a spiraling, hazy distorted signal that sounds a little like a reel of 2" coated in dust and molasses. (There’s an audio sample of that kind of thing attached to the online version of this review.)
The Verdict
If I’d had my way, I would have nixed the Dark Cloud’s harmonic delay mode, stuck with the very nice tape and reverse modes, and charged a little less. Still, a lot of players will love the many strange high-pitched and pixilated sounds available via the harmonic mode. And together, the three modes add up to a uniquely varied echo unit that can see a player through many moods—from deeply psychedelic to hyperactively effervescent.
A multiband EQ applied to reverb.
Learning the ins and outs of reverb can help you access a more creative approach to your mixes.
Hello, and welcome to another Dojo. This month I want to give you some creative ideas for using the oldest natural effect we have—reverb.
Reverb is a fundamental tool in every audio engineer’s arsenal, often employed to create depth, space, and ambiance. We use it to simulate the natural reflections of sound in physical spaces, like rooms, halls, or chambers, but the creative possibilities of reverb can extend far beyond that when used as part of a larger effects grouping, and can enable you to sculpt some downright captivating soundscapes.
One of the most common creative uses of reverb is to manipulate the perceived spatial dimensions of a reverberant sound. By adjusting parameters such as decay time, pre-delay, and diffusion, we can alter the size and character of the virtual space in which a sound appears to exist—like a gritty spring reverb imbuing a guitar riff with vintage charm or a shimmering granular reverb enveloping a synth pad in sparkling, crystalline reflections.
But what if we experiment with it in more creative ways by warping naturally occurring physical properties, or playing with pitch, or even side-chaining various parameters? Tighten up your belts, the Dojo is now open.
Reverb itself is the last of three basic events:
1. Direct sound: sound that reaches the listener’s ears directly without reflecting off of any surface.
2. Early reflections: Early reflections are the first set of reflections that reach the listener’s ears shortly after the direct sound, typically within the first 50 milliseconds. They contribute to the perception of spaciousness and localization (coming from the left or the right), and help establish the size and character of the virtual space. The timing, directionality, and intensity of early reflections depend on room geometry, surface materials, and the position of the sound source and listener.
3. Reverb: Homogenized late reflections comprise the prolonged decay of reverberant sound following the initial onset of reflections. The length of which is measured in RT60 (Reverberation Time 60). Think of RT60 as the amount of time it takes for the reverb to decrease by 60 dB or match the inherent noise floor of the space (whichever comes first). For example, most great concert halls have an RT60 of around 2.4 seconds before the hall is “silent” again. The reverb tail is characterized by a gradual decrease in intensity from the complex interplay of overlapping reflections. The shape, density, and duration of the reverb tail are influenced by factors such as room size, surface materials, and acoustic treatment.The beauty of digital reverbs is that we have the ability to adjust these parameters in ways that simply cannot exist in the physical world. Some plugins like Waves’ TrueVerb ($29 street) will allow you to adjust these parameters to unnatural proportions.“The creative possibilities of reverb can enable you to sculpt some downright captivating soundscapes.”
Now, let’s try to use reverb paired with other effects rather than an end result by itself. Put a short reverb (RT60 of less than 1.5 seconds) on any audio track, then follow it with a reverse delay with a small amount of feedback (around 30 percent) and around 1 to 2 seconds delay time. Hear how the reverb feeds into the reverse delay? Adjust to taste and experiment.
We can also start to modulate the reverb. On an aux bus, place a pitch-shifter like Soundtoys Little AlterBoy ($49 street), set the transpose to +12 semitones (up an octave), and mix to 100 percent wet. Adjust the formant to make it sound even more strange. Follow this with a reverb of your choice, also set to 100 percent wet. Now, route a selected audio track (perhaps a vocal or a lead guitar solo) to the aux bus and adjust your aux send level. Now you have a pitch-shifted reverb to add some octave sparkle.
Next, add in a tempo-synced tremolo or panner after the reverb and enjoy the results! I like doing things this way because you can easily switch the order of any effect and save the effect chain. For added bliss, try applying a high-pass filter to remove low-frequency mud, allowing the reverb to sit more transparently in the mix without clouding the low end.
To hear this in action, I invite you to listen to my new single “Making the Faith” (Rainfeather Records), especially the bridge section of the song along with my guitar solo. Until next time, namaste.
Stompbox-dialing tips perfect for everything from country twang to epic rock solos and experimental weirdness.
