Echo or Delay: Is there a difference?

[seibertdr]

Hello All,

I would like to build some type of echo/delay pedal. After some research and lots of reading, I am starting to see that there could be difference between the two. Am I looking at it the wrong way or is it true. I am a big fan of echo. One of my favorite guitarist to use it is Buck Dharma of Blue Oyster Cult. I really liked the sound-on-sound stuff he used to do. Also, the really spacey echos. Nowadays he uses a Line 6 POD which I find very disappointing. I have a Line 6 POD which is going up on eBay. Since I found this forum, I have had more fun building and mixing and matching.

Thanks Guys,

Don

[Mark Hammer]

In theory, they are no different.  On the other hand, 10 milliseconds is a delay, but not an "echo", strictly speaking, where you have the sense that you are hearing something all over again.  So, when a schematic or pedal says "delay" the odds are pretty good the delay time is long-enough to produce discernible repeats (echoes), but there may be exceptions.  If it says "echo" then that is a declaration about at least the minimum length of delay-time.

In most instances, though, people use the terms echo and delay interchangeably.  It's not like the difference between vibrato and tremolo.

[mth5044]

I usually think of it as delay being more cleaner then echo. More like a digital-analog thing. I know that isnt what they are, but thats how I think about it. Maybe thats because I love the DE7 

[sean k]

Being the totally pedantic nerd boy I like to think I am that can be annoying to others but I don't care  this question illustrates precisely the ways terms and uses mutate as technology changes. Echos are reverberation and reverberation is delays in sound waves reaching your ears from it's original source. Echo came first when we gave a word to that thing that happens in canyons and caves. When we discovered it happened in long hallways we called that an Echo chamber. Then a bunch of tape heads allowed us to replicate that hallway sound so it became Tape echo etc etc etc.

So it's all delay. Delayed sound.
And it's all reverberation (return or reflection of sound, light and heat) and thats kinda interesting because re-verb is kinda like renaming...
And Echo... it's been around as a word for the longest time so it has the longest set of meanings