[sdiy] seeking Deltalab DL1 Digital Delay info

[Adam Inglis]

About 15 years ago I bought a DL1 from a retiring studio engineer, for  
cheap, with no guarantees. It never worked - powered up but no effect.  
Sent it to a tech but they had no joy, and they couldn't source a SM  
or schems.
I can find no OM , SM , or schematics online or even available in print.
Having a little bit more knowledge and a decent scope these days, I'm  
going to have a closer look at it.

Anyone know anything about these?
Apparently they use an interesting delay technique, as outlined by  
Craig Anderton below...

TIA
Adam



 From Musicplayer forums:

"The Echotron used delta modulation, which was basically one bit --  
not unlike DSD and SACD (Deltalab was ahead of its time!). Basically,  
one bit sampling is interested only in whether the signal is  
increasing or decreasing in level. SACD uses a very high sampling  
rate, I don't remember the sample rate of the Deltalab effects. But  
you changed delay by changing the clock. So, the longer the delay, the  
worse it sounded until it eventually got pretty noisy at the low end  
of the dial. I believe they had some sort of tracking filter to help  
reduce the noise at low clock rates.

The way I got involved with Deltalab was interesting. I reviewed the  
Effectron and said it was cool except it got very noisy at longer  
delays. One of the marketing guys there called me up and reamed me,  
complaining mightily about the review, it wasn't noisy, I must have  
gotten a defective unit, I was a moron, blah blah blah. Really annoying.

Then a couple months later, he called back and said that users in the  
field and stores had also mentioned the noise. He said "You obviously  
know what you're talking about, want to write some applications  
guides?" So I did, then I ended up doing some manuals as well as some  
demo tapes of different effects. The marketing guy and I became  
friends because he knew I was going to tell him the truth, and I knew  
he was really passionate about his gig.

Richard DeFreitas, the president of the company, was an extremely  
bright guy...I have no idea what he's doing now, but I'm sure it's  
interesting. He was also quite musical, which I think helped in the  
product design.

A few things led to Deltalab's demise, but as I recall there were some  
safety issues with the Effectron Jr. that caused some grief. Also the  
CompuEffectron was not as big a hit as they'd hoped (but I still have  
mine, heh heh). But the final nail in the coffin was when memory  
prices came down drastically. The 1-bit sampling thing used very  
little memory, which was why they could produce delay lines so  
inexpensively. Once memory became cheap, their technology lost its  
formerly very competitive edge.

And that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about  
Deltalab ..."
_________________________
Craig Anderton