BPM to Delay Time Calculator

Because every repeat lands ON the grid: a 375-ms dotted-eighth at 120 BPM places each echo into a rhythmic slot, reinforcing the groove (and famously generating it — The Edge's entire style builds riffs from what the dotted-eighth repeat plays back). Unsynced delays smear: repeats fall between subdivisions and read as mud or rushing. The exception proves the rule — slapback (80–140 ms, deliberately unsynced) works precisely because it's too short to read rhythmically; it reads as space instead.

Pre-delay separates the dry transient from the reverb onset; making it a note value keeps that gap musical: a 32nd note (62.5 ms at 120) for tight vocal clarity, a 16th (125 ms) for a more dramatic gap on slow ballads. The craft detail: set pre-delay so the reverb BLOOMS on the next subdivision, and trim decay so the tail dies by the next phrase ('end the verb before the downbeat'). Both numbers come straight off this table — which is why engineers keep BPM-to-ms charts taped to consoles.

Anything cyclic rather than echoing: tremolo, auto-pan, filter wobble, chorus/phaser LFOs. The conversion is reciprocal — a quarter note at 120 BPM (500 ms) is 2 Hz, an eighth 4 Hz — and dubstep's signature wobbles are exactly these synced LFO rates (1/8 and 1/16 at ~140 BPM: 4.67 and 9.33 Hz). When a plugin offers 'sync' you get this for free; when it only offers Hz (hardware, modular), this tool's fourth output is the patch sheet.

Hunt the hidden offsets: the track's REAL tempo may drift from the project tempo (live drummers, warped samples — the chart is only as honest as the BPM you feed it); plugin latency adds a constant on top of the set time; and some vintage-style delays report knob position, not true delay time (analog BBD chips drift with the 'repeats' setting). Tap-tempo, where available, bypasses all three. For half-time/double-time feels, remember the chart shifts an octave: a 70-BPM hip-hop head often wants the 140-BPM column's values.