The Dattorro industry scheme is a digital system used to implement a wide range of delay-based audio effects for digital signals. It was proposed by Jon Dattorro.[1] The common nature of these effects allows to produce an output signal as the linear combination of (dynamically modulated) delayed replicas of the input signal. The proposed scheme allows to implement such effects in a compact form, only using a set of three parameters to control the type of effect.
The Dattorro industry scheme is based on digital delay lines and to ensure a proper resolution in the time domain, it leverages fractional delay lines, thus avoiding discontinuities.
The effects that this scheme is able to produce are: echo, chorus, vibrato, flanger, doubling, white chorus. These effects are characterized by a nominal delay, a modulating function for the delay and the depth of modulation.[2]
Consider continuous time signal
y(t)
\tau
y(t)=x(t-\tau)
Fs
n=tFs
y[n]=x[n-M]
Y(z)=lZ\{y\}(n)=z-MX(z)=HM(z)X(z)
hm[n]=\delta[n-M]
\delta[ ⋅ ]
D\inN
D=\lfloorD\rfloor+(D-\lfloorD\rfloor)=M+d, d\inR, 0<d<1
The output of the delay block
HM(z)=z-M
Setting the coefficients according to the desired effect results in a change of the filter topology. For example, setting the feedback to 0 results in a FIR filter, whereas, if the coefficients are set to be equal, we approximate an all-pass filter.[1]
All the effects can be obtained by changing the parameters of the Dattorro system and by setting the delay ranges according to the following table. Delay values are expressed in milliseconds.[1]
| Effect | Onset | Nominal | Range End | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vibrato | 0 | Minimal | 5 | |
| Flange | 0 | 1 | 10 | |
| Chorus | 1 | 5 | 30 | |
| Doubling | 10 | 20 | 100 | |
| Echo | 50 | 80 | infty |
Vibrato is a small quasi-periodic change in pitch of a tone. It's more of a technique than an effect per se but can be added to any audio signal.[6] The delay is modulated with a low frequency sinusoidal function and no mix of the direct path of the signal is considered.
The chorus is an effect which tries to emulate multiple independent voices playing in unison. This effect is made as a linear combination of the input signal (dry signal) and a dynamically delayed version of the input (wet signal).[7]
The flanging effect originated with tape machines. This effect was created by mixing two tape machines set to play the same track but one of them is slowed down. This produces a lowering in pitch and a delay of the slow track. The process is then repeated with the other track reabsorbing the accumulated delay.[8] This effect is very similar to chorus and the main difference is due to the delay range. Chorus usually has longer delay, larger depth and lower modulating frequency.[6]
White chorus is a modification to the standard chorus effect aimed at reducing the aberrations introduced by the forward path. The change consists in adding a negative feedback path with a different and fixed tap point in order to obtain an approximation of an all-pass configuration.[1]
When the system is used without feedback we achieve doubling. This effect is analogous to that of the Leslie speaker, a particular kind of speaker consisting of a rotating chamber in front of the bass loudspeaker and rotating cones above the treble loudspeakers.[9]
| Effect | Blend b | Feedforward ff | Feedback fb | Modulation type D(t) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vibrato | 0.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | sinusoid | |
| Flanger | 0.7071 | 0.7071 | - | sinusoid | |
| White chorus | 0.7071 | 1.0 | 0.7071 | low pass noise | |
| Chorus | 1.0 | 0.7071 | 0.0 | low pass noise | |
| Doubling | 0.7071 | 0.7071 | 0.0 | low pass noise | |
| Echo | 1.0 | \ll | <1.0 | none |
The filter can be implemented in software or hardware. In the following is the pseudocode for a software Dattorro system.
function dattorro is input: x, Fs, depth, freq, b, ff, fb, mod output: y depth_samples = depth·Fs if mod is sinusoid delay_seq = depth_samples*(1 + sin(2·
\pi
Hinfty