Okay, maybe not save the world but I would highly recommend a test drive of the new HDELAY from Waves new HYBRID LINE.

Here’s how they describe their new line, and I quote,

First, Waves took everything we learned when we modeled classic hardware for our award-winning SSL 4000 Collection, V-Series, and The API Collection. Then, we imagined a series of plug-ins that would blend the best of yesterday’s sound with today’s technology. Finally, we brought these elements together, and created the plug-ins that would realize our vision. The result is the new Waves Hybrid Line.

Now that’s all well and good but how does it actually sound? All in all I think it sounds pretty awesome. For some added mixing fun here’s an easy and not exactly "normal" way to set up the HDELAY in a true “stereo delay” configuration that will open up even more possibilities for you.

Suffice it to say that some of the features, like the linkable filters, LoFi mode, and the 4 “analog” emulations, open a world of potentially killer settings, and the ping-pong effect is totally cool as well, but for now let’s just set up 2 of these bad boys into a easily adjustable stereo configuration. In this song I want a nice stereo tail on a couple of cello tracks. To do this I first create two mono aux inputs and place an instance of HDELAY on an insert of each. The output of the first aux is panned hard Left with an input of bus 7 and the second is panned hard Right with an input of bus 8. Next place a “bus 7-8” on the send of the track/s you wish to add stereo delay. (I especially like using the filters to alter the color of the echos) Display both instances of HDELAY on the screen by utilizing “target mode” so you can adjust each side independently without having to recall each plug-in “side”. As you can see on the screen shot the two HDELAY’s correspond to Left and Right respectively and can be totally adjusted accordingly.

Now you may ask “Can this be accomplished with one multi-mono instance of HDELAY?” Sure it can, but there are some editing advantages to having both sides on the screen simultaneously albeit at the expense of a little horsepower.

So now set your desirable delay settings on one side of the HDELAY and then copy the setting to the other side using the ever-popular short cut “option-click-drag” (mac) of the plug-in at the insert of the “Left” HDELAY to the Right HDELAY, or just copy the plug-in setting from one and paste it to the other.

At this point both sides are identical in settings but the outputs are hard panned left and right. Will we now hear the delay in all it’s stereo glory? Actually NO! If both sides are set identically then it creates a “phantom center” and sounds exactly like a mono delay, which is fine if that’s what we are going for and in which case we would use just one instance of HDELAY and move on. But in this case it’s certainly not where we are headed. So to turn the “phantom center” into true stereo all we need to do is slightly increase the delay time on the right side HDELAY. Now there is stereo image to the delay. (you can also create the same stereo delay image by slightly off-setting the delay times of a standard digi-rack delay, just without all the cool extras found in the HDELAY)

Now the only other thing to keep in mind is an actual psyco-acoustic phenom that is created by off-set delay times. The side with the shortest delay (on the Left) or rather the delay we actually hear first will appear slightly louder to our ears then the delay we hear second (on the Right) even if the outputs are the same and we see the exact same meter outputs on each delay side. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is easily compensated for by slightly raising the output of the right side HDELAY. (assuming we want it to “sound” equal on both sides, regardless of what our meters tell us)

The bottom line, as with all mixing scenarios, is . . . USE YOUR EARS!

Happy Mixing.