What Is Tape Delay? How Tape Echo Works and How to Use It

Tape delay is an echo effect made by recording a sound onto a loop of magnetic tape and playing it back a moment later from a separate head. Each repeat comes back slightly darker, softer and more wobbly than the last, which is the warm, organic echo you hear on dub, rockabilly, psychedelic and ambient records.

You'll see it called tape echo, delay tape or tape delay. They're the same thing. Below is how the machines work, why they sound the way they do, and how to get that sound from a plugin.

How does a tape echo machine work?

A tape echo machine has a short loop of tape running past a set of heads in a fixed order.

1. The record head writes the incoming audio onto the tape.
2. One or more playback heads further along read it back. The time it takes the tape to travel from the record head to a playback head is the delay time.
3. A feedback path sends some of the playback signal back to the record head, so the echo is recorded again and repeats.
4. The erase head wipes the tape just before it reaches the record head again, so the loop can be reused.

There are two ways to change the delay time: speed the tape up or slow it down, or switch to a playback head at a different distance. Machines with several playback heads can play them in combination, which gives rhythmic multi-tap patterns. The Roland RE-201 Space Echo is a well-known example; it pairs multiple playback heads with a spring reverb. The Echoplex is another classic tape echo, used widely by guitarists.

What does tape delay sound like?

• Darker with each repeat. Tape loses high frequencies every time the signal is recorded and played back, so the echoes recede naturally behind the dry sound.
• Saturated. Driving the record head harder adds harmonics and soft compression. Push the feedback and the repeats get thick and gritty.
• Wobbly. Tiny speed variations in the motor and tape, called wow (slow) and flutter (fast), bend the pitch of the repeats.
• Alive at high feedback. Above a certain feedback level the echoes stop fading and build into self-oscillation, a howl you can ride by moving the delay time. Dub engineers made this a performance.
• Pitch bends on time changes. Change the tape speed while echoes are playing and they slide up or down in pitch.

Much of that comes from the same physics as tape saturation on a recorder. Our article on what tape saturation is covers the harmonics and compression side in more detail.

Tape delay vs analog and digital delay

What is a tape delay plugin?

A tape delay plugin recreates that behavior in software. A good one adds high-frequency loss and saturation on every repeat, wow and flutter on the delay time, pitch bending when you change the time, and safe self-oscillation at high feedback, with conveniences the hardware never had: tempo sync, ping-pong stereo and ducking.

Drift is our tape delay. Its controls map directly to the tape behavior above: Sync and Time set the delay, Feedback goes up to 110%, Wow adds pitch drift, Age darkens and wears the repeats, Drive saturates them, and Ping-pong, Duck, Low Cut and Mix handle placement in the mix.

How to use tape delay

Dub echo

Dub delay is tape echo pushed to the edge: long feedback, dark repeats and plenty of saturation, often on a snare hit, a vocal phrase or a chord stab sent in by hand. Ride the send to throw single hits into the echo, and push the feedback briefly to let it run away. Drift's Dub Echo preset sets a dotted-quarter delay with 75% feedback, 35% wow, 60% age, 45% drive and a 250 Hz low cut.

Cassette-style echo

For a lo-fi, unstable echo, turn up the wow and age. Cassette Echo uses a quarter-note delay with 50% feedback, 70% wow, 80% age and 40% drive. The repeats warble and blur like a worn cassette deck, which works on keys, guitar and vocal chops in lo-fi and indie tracks.

Slapback

Slapback is a single short echo, roughly 80 to 150 ms, with little or no feedback. It's the rockabilly vocal and guitar sound of the 1950s, originally made with a tape recorder's record and playback heads. Drift's Slapback preset uses a free 110 ms delay with 10% feedback. Keep it fairly low in the mix so it thickens the source rather than sounding like a separate echo.

Vocal throws

Tape delay's darkening repeats suit vocal throws, where only the last word of a line goes into the echo. Use a quarter or dotted-eighth delay, moderate feedback, a low cut around 300 Hz and ducking so the echoes stay out of the way of the next line. If you're also using reverb, see delay or reverb first for the routing.

Tape delay settings at a glance