Widelay

Controls

DELAY

0 to 100. The whole echo trail in one knob: how many echoes you hear, how quickly they decay, and how the stereo spread develops along the trail.

Each new echo fades in across its range, so the knob has no audible steps. Decay goes from -12 dB per echo at 0 to none at 100.

TIME

1 to 1000 ms between echoes. Turning it while the echoes play bends them smoothly rather than jumping.

SYNC

The TIME | SYNC switch above the knob. With SYNC on, the knob picks a note value at the project tempo: 1/32, 1/16T, 1/16, 1/8T, 1/16., 1/8, 1/4T, 1/8., 1/4, 1/2T, 1/4., 1/2, 1/2. and 1/1 ("." is dotted, "T" is triplet).

TIME and SYNC each keep their own setting when you switch between them.

MIX

0 to 100. Dry/wet balance. At 0 the output is the untouched input; at 100 you hear only the echoes, which is the setting for an FX channel fed by sends.

BYPASS

The amber lamp in the upper-left corner. Lit means active; dim means bypassed. Click it to switch.

It uses the host's own bypass rather than a separate internal switch, so Widelay and your DAW always agree on the plugin's bypass state. Bypass crossfades over about 12 milliseconds instead of switching hard, keeping transitions click-free in both directions.

How it behaves

The repeats do not get progressively darker, filtered or saturated. Their tone stays consistent, while the attacks are softened slightly and the stereo spread opens outward.

Each echo is made wide by playing it hard left and hard right, slightly offset in time. The side that arrives first alternates from echo to echo, so the trail as a whole never leans to one side. A slow, gentle drift between the two sides keeps the width moving and adds a touch of chorus-like pitch movement.

Widening does not change loudness. An echo is exactly as loud wide as it would be in the center, so only DELAY determines how the trail decays.

The attacks of the echoes are softened slightly, so the first echo does not click against the dry signal. Only the first few tens of milliseconds after an attack are affected; the tone and sustain are left alone.

Widelay is a five-tap delay without feedback. It plays at most five echoes and then stops, so it cannot run away or self-oscillate. The plugin reports a tail of up to 15 seconds.

The echoes are built from a mono sum of the input. The dry signal keeps its own stereo image, while the echoes create their width from scratch.

Widelay is not mono-compatible. The time offsets that create the width cause comb filtering when left and right are summed to mono. Use it where the stereo image is meant to be heard.

Use Widelay on a stereo track or an FX channel. Width needs two output channels to exist; on a mono track the host folds the result back to mono and the effect has nowhere to go.

With SYNC on, Widelay follows the tempo your host provides. If a host reports no tempo, Widelay uses the last tempo it knew, or 120 BPM. At slow tempos the longest note values are capped at 3000 ms.

Widelay adds no latency.

Features

• One DELAY knob for echo count, decay and spread.
• Echoes that spread progressively from the center outward.
• Up to five echoes, each fading in smoothly as DELAY turns.
• Free TIME from 1 to 1000 ms, or tempo SYNC from 1/32 to 1/1 with dotted and triplet values.
• Width without loudness change.
• Built-in attack softening on the echoes.
• No feedback: the trail always ends cleanly.
• Click-free bypass, shared with the host's own bypass.
• Zero-latency processing.
• Stereo-to-stereo and mono-to-stereo operation.
• Internal double-precision DSP.
• VST3 for Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Audio Unit for macOS.
• Native Apple Silicon and Intel support on macOS.

Installing

macOS

Run the installer, Widelay-<version>.pkg.

VST3 and Audio Unit are both installed unless you press Customize and uncheck one.

VST3 (Windows)

Copy Widelay.vst3 to:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\

VST3 (Linux)

Copy Widelay.vst3 to:

~/.vst3/

Your host may need a plug-in rescan, or a restart, before it appears. On macOS, Audio Unit hosts may also need their Audio Unit cache refreshed. Widelay is listed under the Delay category.