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Born through hardware innovation
The Zen Delay Virtual Arobas Guitar Pro 8 is an evolution of the popular hardware collaboration with Ninja Tune but with arguably more functionality and application. The first of its kind, the Liquid Sky Zen Delay was the first produced hardware unit which was made in collaboration with an electronic music label, catering to the needs of the modern producer with an exciting range of potential sounds to discover. The Zen Delay Virtual brings the same range of tones but with the added convenience of loading it into your DAW to affect any instrument or sound in your session.
An effect and instrument together
The hardware version is a hands-on effect, letting musicians and producers take the wheels themselves and "play" the effect as an instrument. Zen Delay Virtual by Liquid Sky offers the same extreme feedback BPM-synced stereo delay and combines with a multi-mode 24dB/oct filter and analog-modelled overdrive. Created in collaboration with electronic musicians, Zen Delay Virtual is suitable for virtually any instrument or sound in a project and can work in many styles and situations.
It features five different delay modes including tape, digital and vintage with two tape and digital modes along with the multi-mode filter, analog-modelled drive, resonance controls and modulation. Three routing options let you determine where in your signal path your filtering is applied and can even be routed inside the feedback loop itself to filter each repeat of the loop. There's even a soft-clipping input stage to add more saturation to your input signal. You can add modulation to the delay time and filter cut-off frequency, free-clocked or tempo-synced to your host. Set an LFO shape, manipulate it and create your own, choose the amount and you can modulate virtually any parameter.
Put it all together and you have a versatile effect/instrument that's more than just a delay. You can add warmth and presence to drums even with the delay switched off. Play with gain and drive, and focus on just the filter and modulation. Make dubby delays or crank up the feedback and try some extreme settings. Simple controls but with a massive range of musical possibilities.
Unrestricted sound design at your fingertips
Continuing the ethos from the hardware world where creativity is at the forefront, there's much more to Zen Delay Virtual than first meets the eye. Although it is a delay plug-in, the amount of controls you can mess with turns this into much more than just a delay. The Delay Time control is designed so you can play with the nuances of short delay times, creating instant slapback effects and more. This can also be used to sync divisions with incoming MIDI signals or your hosts' tempo. The Delay Time control is capable of going all the way up to 5000ms for some truly unusual and unexpected rhythm in your song.
The Feedback control much like the hardware counterpart can be driven into self-feedback when fully in the clockwise position, making it excellent for infinitely sustaining repeats to tail out the end of an epic synth line over a haunting pad. The exciting drive control is set after the wet/dry control knob, meaning you can still add the analog-modelled drive even if the delay is set fully dry. What's more, a limiter on the drive output stage ensures that volume does not peak even when extreme overdrive is applied.
The five delay modes onboard are Tape, Tape Ping-Pong, Digital, Digital Ping-Pong and Vintage. The Tape and Tape Ping-Pong modes introduce subtle pitch-shifting if you manually adjust the delay time when playing, just as a real tape machine would. The Digital and Digital Ping-Pong are much more precise, where no pitch-shifting will occur and these create exact digital repeats. Lastly, the Vintage mode is a modification of the Tape mode, introducing bit-crushing to the audio signal, making it ideal for Lo-Fi-style sounds.
Liquid Sky Zen Delay Virtual can add a warm, unique sound to your drums, loops, vocals, synths, samples or just about any other instrument or full mix you're working on!
A bank full of sounds
No plug-in is complete without one, and Zen Delay Virtual's preset manager encompasses the ethos of live performance. It's designed to work with the live performer, letting you seamlessly switch between sounds on the go without interruption to drastically change the feel, tempo or rhythm of instruments or sounds within your set. To this, the preset manager lets you recall the controls and modulation settings of Zen Delay instantly, as simple as clicking one of the presets and scrolling up or down with your arrow keys.
It's been built to follow in the footsteps of the hardware, where it will immediately load and overwrite your existing settings, letting you swap between sounds without being prompted by popups and confirmation menus which can interrupt your workflow and most importantly, throw you off time in the moment. It's recommended that you save your settings before moving on to ensure they can be recalled in any future sessions.
Shipping with a range of presets from credited producers and live DJs to get you up and running, you can dive right into what's possible from the get-go without touching a single knob!
Features
- Complex and analog-inspired delay plug-in
- Multiple groove timings including dotted and triplet patterns
- Control over the signal routing, enabling you to insert the filter stage in between the feedback loop
- Five different delay models include Tape, Digital, Ping-Pong, Digital Ping-Pong and Vintage
- Huge maximum delay time up to 5000ms lets you create unusual, trippy delayed sounds
- Multiple filter options including low-pass, high-pass and band-pass, all in stereo
- Bypass delay entirely to use only the stereo filter
- Sync to host tempo or incoming MIDI signals in standalone mode
- Onboard analog-modelled tube overdrive is ideal for adding grit and harmonics to any sources
- Enhanced LFO modulation not possible on the Zen Delay hardware
- Comes supplied with a library of presets created by top producers and DJs
- Available as VST2, VST3 and AU to work with both Mac and Windows systems
Specifications
- Operating system:
- Mac: macOS 10.15 or newer (Intel and Apple Silicon natively supported)
- Windows: Windows 10 or newer
- Format:
- Mac: VST2, VST3, and AU
- Windows: VST2 and VST3
- Product code: 1428-1000