Two modes, two different jobs
SYNC pulls tempo from your DAW and sets the delay by note division: a quarter, an eighth, and so on, each available as normal, dotted or triplet.
TIME sets the repeats in milliseconds, independent of tempo. You can type an exact value by double-clicking the knob, and TAP works in either mode.
Sync is the right default. The exceptions are worth knowing, and they are further down.
What each division does to the groove
- Quarter note. Repeats land on the beat, reinforcing the pulse. Safe, and easy to make a track feel slower or heavier than it is.
- Eighth note. Sits between the beats evenly. Tidy, and usually the least interesting choice because nothing is pushed anywhere.
- Dotted eighth. The famous one. It is three sixteenths long, so repeats keep landing just off the beat and cycle back into alignment every three beats. That drift is what creates movement in a part that was played straight.
- Triplet. Divides the beat into three against a song usually built on two, which is why it feels like motion rather than repetition.
The dotted eighth is a cliché because it works. If it sounds tired on your track, try a quarter triplet before abandoning the idea: same sense of drift, less familiar.
When sync is the wrong answer
Tempo sync assumes the performance sits on the grid. Plenty do not.
- A vocal that pushes and pulls. If the singer is ahead of the beat in the verse and behind in the chorus, a rigidly gridded delay will feel wrong in both. A millisecond value that suits the phrasing often sits better than a division that suits the DAW.
- Slapback. A short slap, roughly 60 to 120 ms, is about the sound of the space, not the tempo. Setting it by note division just means it changes character every time the tempo does.
- Live or rubato material with no fixed tempo at all.
- Very fast songs, where an eighth is short enough that sync produces a flutter rather than an echo.
The useful mental split: sync when the delay should be part of the rhythm, milliseconds when it should be part of the space.
The three channels do not have to agree
Clarity Delay has three independent delay channels, and this is where timing gets interesting.
A common setup is one channel on a dotted eighth for movement and another on a quarter for weight, panned apart. Another is a short slap in TIME mode alongside a synced longer repeat, so you get the intimacy of a doubled vocal and the space of a delay at once.
Channel settings can be copied and pasted by right-clicking the channel number, which makes it quick to build one channel and then vary it rather than starting each from scratch.
Choosing a length that fits
Two practical constraints, whichever mode you use:
Match the phrase, not the bar. If the singer leaves a gap every two beats, a delay that is still repeating three beats later will land on the next line. Long delays need gaps to live in.
Faster songs need shorter delays. Not because of any rule, but because the gaps are shorter. If a long delay is muddying a fast track, try shortening the Depth module's LENGTH before you shorten the delay itself, as covered in choosing a Depth engine.
Ping-pong and stereo timing
Ping-Pong alternates repeats between left and right, which clears the center where the vocal lives. It works best with clear rhythmic divisions: a dotted eighth ping-pong is a classic for a reason.
It is less suited to very short delays, where the left and right repeats arrive close enough together to smear rather than bounce. For those, the Wide modes give you width without the alternation, and they stay mono-compatible.