← Back to Tutorials

Your First Audio Effect

Beginner Composer

Add Reverb and Delay to a signal chain and tune wet/dry balance.

What you'll build

Take the oscillator from the previous tutorial and process it through a reverb and delay chain. You'll learn how audio effects insert into a signal path and how to tune wet/dry balance.

Prerequisites

Complete Your First Audio Generator first, or start with: Oscillator → Gain → audio_out.

Operators used

Operator Domain Role
Reverb Audio Algorithmic reverb (room simulation)
Delay Audio Tape-style delay with feedback

Step 1: Insert Reverb

Add Reverb. To insert it between Gain and the output: 1. Disconnect gain1/output → audio_out/input 2. Connect gain1/output → reverb1/input 3. Connect reverb1/output → audio_out/input

You should immediately hear the tone in a reverberant space.

Tune Reverb: - room_size (0–1, default 0.5) — larger values = longer, more diffuse decay - damping (0–1, default 0.5) — higher values absorb high frequencies, making the reverb darker - mix (0–1, default 0.3) — blend between dry signal and reverb tail

Step 2: Insert Delay

Add Delay. Chain it before the Reverb (delay → reverb is the classic "pre-delay" setup): 1. Disconnect gain1/output → reverb1/input 2. Connect gain1/output → delay1/input 3. Connect delay1/output → reverb1/input

Tune Delay: - time (0–2000 ms, default 250 ms) — how long before the echo repeats - feedback (0–0.99, default 0.3) — how much of the delay feeds back (higher = more repeats) - mix (0–1, default 0.5) — wet/dry balance

Set time to 500 ms and feedback to 0.5 for clearly audible eighth-note echoes at 120 BPM.

Step 3: Try swapping the order

Effects order changes the sound significantly:

Delay → Reverb (current): Each delay echo reverberates individually. Clean separation.

Reverb → Delay: The reverb tail itself echoes. More diffuse, washy sound.

Disconnect and reconnect to hear the difference.

What's happening

Oscillator → Gain → Delay → Reverb → audio_out

Each audio effect takes a buffer of samples as input and outputs a transformed buffer. The chain runs on the audio thread at sample rate — effects have no awareness of frame timing.

mix on each effect controls wet/dry blend. At mix = 0 you hear only dry signal; at mix = 1 you hear only the effect output. Most practical settings are 0.2–0.5 so the dry signal stays audible.

Tip: Gain staging

Effects can boost signal level unexpectedly. If you hear distortion or clipping, lower the Gain gain parameter or add a second Gain after the effects to trim the output level. Keep the signal below 1.0 at each stage.

Next steps