Korg SDD-2000 MIDI Digital Delay
Last Update 11-10-2013
The SDD-2000 is a programmable digital delay/sample playback
with 64 memory slots and
MIDI but without the knobs. I
use it for slap, echo, and haas FX. The only beef
I have is that the bypass button is not a true bypass but replaces the
FX with direct signal, so you have to be careful how you patch it in.
For haas FX this is OK, but if you use the 2000 on an FX buss of your
console you will have direct signal in bypass mode which is not a good
idea. There's no MIX control, just input and direct out
control. If you're looking for a "poor man's SDD-3000", this
ain't it - the circuitry is very different.
Specifications
The delays in the SDD-2000 can go from 0.1 to 1092 milliseconds at
18Khz bandwidth, or a X4 mode
expands it out to 4.368 seconds but at reduced 4.5Khz bandwidth, which
is adequate for emulating analog tape echo units. It's a 12bit
system but there is no information in the manuals as to the sampling
rate. Delay time can be synced to MIDI Clock. Nice touch is
the
digital readout of delay time, which you can dial at resolutions of 1ms
(or 0.1ms at 10ms delay or less when in 1X mode). Unlike the rest
of
the SDD line, there are no filters available for the feedback path.
MIDI in & Thru are provided, but no MIDI Out (?!?). It has a
rotary encoder and
buttons for parameter access, a'la Moog Source. Much better than
increment/decrement buttons and menus. You get the basic delay
parameters of delay time, effect level, feedback, LFO frequency and
intensity. Nothing fancy here. The feedback (regeneration)
can be inverted, the *key* to killer flange
effects, and you can get up to 110% feedback for runaway loops.
You don't often see programmable effect level - since I relegated this
unit to slap and echo, programmable effect level is really nice to
attenuate effect level as delay time gets longer, so I don't have to
move the FX return when changing delay programs.
The tap tempo feature is great; you just tap the button twice to the
tempo and it figures out the delay time. You can use MIDI to
trigger
the tap tempo. I have successfully used this to tap a delay time
with the beat of live music. My unit had a couple of
malfunctioning buttons - replacements were not available so I used
generic momentary buttons from Radio Shack. I purposedly
rearranged button to put the new ones where they would be most useful,
one of which was TAP which turned out to be a good idea.
When you use it in sample mode with MIDI enabled, it will scale the
sample across a three octave range for triggering the sample over MIDI,
but it's monophonic with low note priority. You can either loop
the
sample or trigger it once. You can use MIDI pitch bend and
modulation
messages on the sample, and you can vary the delay and feedback
parameters while a sample is playing. Changing the delay time
parameter will truncate the recorded sample.
On the rear panel we have jacks for MIDI in/thru, audio input, direct
output, positive and negative mix output, bypass, record cancel,
program up, record, and trigger. There is also a TUNE control to
shift the sample pitch +/-50cents.
Changing the delay time interrupts the audio signal which is common for
a digital delay, so this is not a box you'd use
for live realtime tweaking.
The manual is good. It explains the functions and includes MIDI
sysex
protocol for remote editing (probably the only way to backup delay
programs) but
doesn't give you any basics on how to get a flange sound, a chorus
sound, etc. The block diagram on the top of the unit is
reproduced in
the manual.
One of the faults I found with the SDD-3300 is when the LFOs are
running in the lower half of the frequency range, you can hear a very
coarse stepped sine wave which means that the modulation sweep is
discrete rather than continuous. The SDD-2000 doesn't have this problem
as it has smooth LFO modulation at any intensity. However on my
unit there's still some bleedthrough at zero intensity, but it could be
minimized with LFO frequency set to zero.
In my experiments the SDD-2000 gets the best flange effect and the best
echo
effect of the three SDD units I have. I don't even use it for
modulated delay effects like chorus, the others are better for
that. I did play with the sample playback feature and it wasn't
much trouble. Even
though it's 12-bit A/D, it sounds *good*. The lack of MIDI Out is
a
mystery, since you can load patches and alter parameters over MIDI but
you can't save patches over MIDI!
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