IK MULTIMEDIA AMPLITUBE X-GEAR X-TIME
Digital delay delivers
The X-time has a comprehensive collection of delay types onboard – enough to cater for many musical applications both conventional and esoteric. Of the former, the digital delay is as straight and pristine as it comes but if you are looking for something a bit more old-school there are two tape echoes, both offering a neat emulation of that medium’s tonal shift and saturation. One has a single knob to emulate wow and flutter while the other has separate controls for modulation rate and depth which can dial in rich chorusing. There’s also a Bbd-style analog delay that has adjustable saturation and filtering for the repeats so you can set just the right degree of degradation as the trail progresses - quite extreme if desired. Taking that theme further, the Dirty algorithm with its distortion and phasing can give the bizarre effect that the repeats are being played through a fully saturated hi-gain amp while your main sound remains clean. The Pitch algorithm lets you set intervals for delays of different pitches but, as it lets you set specific delay times for three repeats, you can also dial in a multitap delay if you set the pitch parameter to zero. There’s also the Harm alogorithm that lets you set harmonised repeats. Massive ongoing ambiences are catered for by the Arctic algorithm where the sound passes through a flanger and a shimmer with a userprogrammable pitched voice.
A reverse delay lets you get into some psychedelic effects, especially if you nudge the Mix knob up to 100% wet so you just get the backwards guitar and, for more strangeness, X-mode pushes the feedback of a delay to the edge in all algorithms.
Elsewhere there’s a dedicated slapback algorithm, dual, ducking, swelling and ping‑pong delays, and a Pattern delay with 16 rhythmic patterns.