Stereo delay · VST3 + AU · Windows & Mac
Kerf Delay The industry standard for delay.
You love a big delay on the vocal — but it clashes with the words, and turning it down kills the vibe. Kerf keeps both: six bands of dynamic EQ duck the repeats out of the vocal's way, and a rhythm curve you draw locks them to the beat. Filters, drive and character only ever touch the wet, so the dry passes through untouched. VST3 and AU, Windows and Mac.
$79
$29
10-day demo, fully functional · No iLok · No account
- 01 Run far more delay before the mix starts to wash out
- 02 Each band steps aside in its own range, so the low end and the air stay put
- 03 Draw a volume shape across four bars and the repeats follow it, locked to tempo
- 04 Retrigger the shape from a transient or a MIDI note
Before anything else
Try it out. for yourself.
Play these examples to hear the difference. Switch source mid-phrase. Playback doesn't stop and the playhead doesn't move, so you're hearing the same moment both ways.
- Violet is the dry signal
- Pink is the delay
THREE SOURCES · DELAY / DRY
Press play, then switch between the delay and the dry signal.
01 — What this does instead
Six bands. Each listens to the dry. Each moves on its own.
Kerf hands you independent control over exactly where the delay and the vocal fight for space. Six bands of dynamic EQ sit on the repeats, each one keyed from your dry signal, each moving on its own.
Put a band where the vocal's body sits and it dips the delay in that range the instant the vocal is there — the low end and the air never move. Give the band a threshold and a range and it only reacts when the dry actually crosses it, with its own attack and release. Six separate dips, each watching the part of the voice it's protecting.
So you keep the delay big and the vocal clear at the same time. Instead of a compressor clamping the whole return, you carve only the frequencies that clash, only while they clash — the pocket an engineer would cut by hand, done for you, per band, in real time.
Setting a dynamic band — 2 min
02 — The rhythm
Draw the shape. The delay follows it.
Kerf gives you a volume lane drawn straight onto the delay. Sketch a shape over one to four bars and the repeats follow it, locked to your DAW tempo — the level of the echoes is now yours to draw, beat by beat.
Pull it down on every kick and the delay ducks out of the groove. Chop it into steps and it stutters in time. Ride it up between phrases for a throw that swells and falls. Retrigger the shape from a drum hit or a MIDI note and it restarts on the beat you actually played, not wherever the bar happens to fall.
It's the Gross Beat move — the movement behind trap throws, gated washes and pumping dub delays — built into the delay itself. Nothing to sidechain, nothing to automate: draw it once and the groove plays itself.
Drawing rhythm curves and retriggering — 3 min
03 — The sound
Four models, dialled in by ear.
Tape and BBD lose a little more with every pass, the way they should, so long feedback settings drift somewhere interesting instead of just repeating.
All four were dialled in against the delays I already reach for. Nothing here is modelled from a datasheet.
- DIGITALClean. The repeat is the source, quieter.
- TAPEWow, flutter, and a little less top on every pass.
- BBDNarrower and grainier as it goes. Falls apart usefully.
- LO-FIBit and rate reduction on the repeats only.
- DRIVE Anti-aliased saturation on the delay output. Texture without a longer tail
- SIZE Diffusion that smears the repeats toward reverb
- MODES Solo, Dual and true Ping-Pong
- FILTERS Low Cut and High Cut sit outside the feedback loop, so the tail doesn't darken as it decays
- SHAPE Formant, Width, and delay-line modulation on Rate and Depth
- HISTORY Undo and redo across everything, the rhythm curve included
04 — Specs
The full list.
- Formats
- VST3 · AU
- Windows
- 10 / 11, 64-bit — VST3
- Mac
- VST3 + AU
- Channels
- Stereo
- Delay modes
- Solo · Dual · Ping-Pong (true)
- Delay time
- Note divisions or ms
- EQ bands
- 6 — bell, low/high shelf, low/high cut
- Cut slopes
- 6 – 96 dB/oct
- Dynamics per band
- Threshold, range, attack, release
- Sidechain key
- Dry signal
- Character models
- Digital · Tape · BBD · Lo-Fi
- Repeat filters
- Low Cut / High Cut, out of loop
- Other controls
- Drive · Size · Formant · Width · Rate · Depth
- Rhythm curve length
- 1, 2 or 4 bars
- Curve sync
- Host tempo
- Retrigger sources
- Audio transient · MIDI note
- Undo / redo
- Everywhere, curve included
- Presets
- Factory + user
- User preset path
- Documents/Kerf Delay/Presets
- Licensing
- No iLok · no dongle · no account
- Demo
- 10 days, fully functional
- Price
- $29 on sale (reg. $79), one time
05 — Buy
$79$29
On sale from $79. One time, every future update included.
10-day demo, fully functional. No account needed.
- What if it doesn't work in my DAW?
- Run the demo first. It's the full plugin for ten days, and it's the same installer.
- Do I need an account?
- No. No iLok, no dongle, no login. Download, install, it runs.
- Is it one licence for both machines?
- Yes. One purchase covers the Windows and the Mac build, and any machine you work on.