Timeline as a Multi-Effect

[jimbugg]

...and I don't just mean delays!

I'm sure I'm not the first or only guy who's figured this out, but I thought I'd share about this since I haven't seen another thread about it on here.

Recently I got the urge to downsize from my PT-3, so I pulled a few choice effects boxes off of my main board and put them on a small Brady Cases flat board I had laying around, just to change things up a bit. I ended up with two different drives, a tuner, my Analogman Mini Chorus, a Timeline and a good 'ol RV-5 (photo below).

However, there were a few effects that I wanted the ability to bring up every once in a while, so I decided to try turning my Timeline into something of a multi-effects box. By turning the delay time and repeats all the way down and turning the mix knob all the way up, I found that I could cop bitcrusher (Lo-Fi machine), envelope filter (Filter machine), and tremolo (Trem machine) effects just by messing around with settings in order to get a single effected repeat that tracked in almost real time - some machines can't set the delay time below 60ms, which is just barely lagging.

Anyway, I thought it was neat. I put the Timeline on this small board for the delays, but it turns out I've been able to coax even more out of it! Obviously these patches are not perfect - there are tracking issues like I mentioned above and I can't use delay when I'm using one of these presets - but it just goes to show how versatile the Timeline really is, even beyond the complex delay sounds it can achieve. Next, I'll be seeing what I can do with the Swell and Pattern machines - should be fun!

Board is a JHS Kilt > TU-3 > Teletronix Mulholland Drive > AM Mini Chorus > Timeline > RV-5.

 

[TheoDog]

I tried this a bit, but that 60ms lag was not effective for me. I just used the song tempo and though of it as a wet/dry version of the effect I wanted to use. In this mindset, I'd say the H9 makes much better sense- plus... tuner, maybe.

 

[TimeSnow]

One of the reasons I eventually got annoyed and ditched the timeline was because it is artificially hobbled to stop you from copping these sorts of sounds effectively.

One of the reasons I love my E2D so much is because it's not.

Sure I have a Mobius and so don't really NEED to use the E2D as a chorus etc., but I can. I can run a chorus into a chorus or flanger if I want.

Anyway /rant, but the choice to stop people from using the TL to its potential is really annoying to me to this day. Obviously.

 

[Turi]

Cool that you're getting some other sounds from the Timeline.
Is 60ms as short a delay time the Timeline can do though? That'd sound pretty off to me.
I keep banging on about the Timebender but it looks like it's got the Timeline trumped for MFX stuff too - 3ms here.
0.003 is says on the screen.
0.060 is the Timeline (if that's as low as it can get).

Anyway. Awesome that you're getting more sounds from it than you thought you could!
Always a good thing when you can do that.

 

[TimeSnow]

Cool that you're getting some other sounds from the Timeline.
Is 60ms as short a delay time the Timeline can do though? That'd sound pretty off to me.
I keep banging on about the Timebender but it looks like it's got the Timeline trumped for MFX stuff too - 3ms here.
0.003 is says on the screen.
0.060 is the Timeline (if that's as low as it can get).

Anyway. Awesome that you're getting more sounds from it than you thought you could!
Always a good thing when you can do that.

Some of the engines can do basically realtime but some are hard limited to 60ms to stop people using it as a legit chorus, flanger, trem, etc.

They - for some reason - let you bump the lofi mode down to something much less like 10ms and even say you can use that for chorus, but it doesn't sound great. And the fact that the trem is so unusable is just flipping annoying.

If you go look at old threads people tried to make it work basically until the Mobius was announced.

 

[axm.88]

I use my Flashback X4 like this. With a toneprint editor, you can have just modulation, so I have chorusing, through-zero flanging, a pseudo-rotary effect and a reverb.

 

[Meriphew]

One of the reasons I eventually got annoyed and ditched the timeline was because it is artificially hobbled to stop you from copping these sorts of sounds effectively.

I totally agree. I love my Timeline, but it could be much better if Strymon would do this, and a few other tweaks as well. The DL4 was king once, but it stagnated, and people moved on. Hopefully Strymon don't let the Timeline stagnate.

 

[Turi]

Some of the engines can do basically realtime but some are hard limited to 60ms to stop people using it as a legit chorus, flanger, trem, etc.

They - for some reason - let you bump the lofi mode down to something much less like 10ms and even say you can use that for chorus, but it doesn't sound great. And the fact that the trem is so unusable is just flipping annoying.

Wow! That is nuts!
**** the consumer, its all about making sure they buy our other products, right?
That's all I get from that.
That's insane.

So let me get this straight, the Timeline is capable of doing these things, but Strymon has put measures in place to make sure you can't do it.
Wtf is that? That's terrible.

Also 10ms is way too long.
Timebender gets to 3ms.

 

[tremolo3]

So let me get this straight, the Timeline is capable of doing these things, but Strymon has put measures in place to make sure you can't do it.

I wouldn't say that you could nail those exact sounds but it might be enough to stop some people of buying another strymon pedal.


And Timeline as a multi FX, absolutely no. Get an H9 standard and call it a day.

 

[TimeSnow]

I wouldn't say that you could nail those exact sounds but it might be enough to stop some people of buying another strymon pedal.


And Timeline as a multi FX, absolutely no. Get an H9 standard and call it a day.

This ^^

A dedicated chorus or flanger will give you a better sound in most cases than a delay tweaked to sound like a chorus - or at least more flexibility, but still limiting a pedal to sell more pedals is pretty annoying and off putting.

And it's kinda Strymon's thing (see: big box vs small box).

Saying that I love my Mobius and think it's a brilliant deal and wouldn't be without it.

 

[Sparkfriction]

tried that but i just can get close to my pedals and still want to lose the option of realtime knob twiddling. But i like the smaller board.

 

[AmmoniteII]

I have done this a bit , it works.....ok.... the fact strymon have limited the modes is frustraiting i allready have a modfactor and an auto wah but to mess around is fun and now the mobius has been out for a good amnt of time they should release an update alowing all modes to go to 1 to 2 ms.

 

[Jackie Treehorn]

The timeline also had a bug with the low fi mode. If you did a preset, say a flange, set at 10 ms, whenever you called it up from a different delay machine, it would be double the saved delay time, so it would come up as 20 ms. You had to then call up another low fi preset and go back to the one you originally wanted to get the delay time right. Not that big a deal if you had two set as an a/b pair. I emailed Strymon support and they said it was a known bug. Maybe they've fixed that one by now. I sold my Timeline months ago.

 

[shoepedals]

Lo-Fi goes down to 2ms and you can do a nice flanger or vibrato with it if you turn the fidelity up all the way (and of course it also does weird bitcrusher things). It is a bit annoying that they limit the delay times like that. In the case of the tremolo and filter, though, isnt the speed dependent on the delay time? You might have to do some crazy ratios to get it sounding good if you go to like 2 ms.

I dunno. I'm any event I wouldn't really want to use timeline as a modulation pedal because I don't use that much modulation to begin with unless it's on a delayed signal. Besides that I have a Mobius and its just much much better at doing modulation and has like a million in depth settings.

 

[TheoDog]

I don't use that much modulation to begin with unless it's on a delayed signal. Besides that I have a Mobius and its just much much better at doing modulation and has like a million in depth settings.

Don't use modulation much- owns a Möbius.

 

[slap_back05]

One of the reasons I eventually got annoyed and ditched the timeline was because it is artificially hobbled to stop you from copping these sorts of sounds effectively.

This disappointed me as well, especially the tremolo patch. Unrealistic expectations I suppose...

 

[TimeSnow]

Don't use modulation much- owns a Möbius.

It's actually not as crazy as you think.

 

[SirGilmour]

I find the Lo-Fi the best mode for effects other than "delay" due to its 2ms minimum time. I do wish the other modes did this too though.

 

[TimeSnow]

This disappointed me as well, especially the tremolo patch. Unrealistic expectations I suppose...

I don't know...other manufacturers don't do this... maybe some do, but not all...

 

[Mr. Limbic]

I love this about my Timefactor, sad to hear Strymon does this and some of these reasons are why I haven't switched over to the Timeline. Other sounds I use with my TF are ring mod, chorus, phase, "flaser", comp, vinyl (tape warble), and reverb.