Twenty-one values, one tempo
Seven note lengths across straight, dotted, and triplet columns, every one of them recalculated the instant the BPM changes.
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Mixing tool · Free
Delay Time Calculator
Every note value in milliseconds and hertz for the tempo you are actually working at (straight, dotted, and triplet), plus reverb pre-delay and decay figures that clear the next hit.
Worked out entirely in this tab
Tempo, note-value grid, and reverb workspace
Quarter note = 60000 ÷ BPM
Grid built for 120 BPM in 4/4
Space tap tempoR clear taps
Read the tempo off your DAW transport. Every figure below follows it instantly.
20–400 BPM
Do not know the tempo?
Tap along with the track or hit the space bar. The last eight intervals are averaged; pause for two seconds and the next tap starts a fresh count.
Taps 0Waiting for the first tap
This is a shortcut for filling the field, not a full tap tempo tool. A dedicated Tap Tempo page with a running readout and a metronome handoff is on the roadmap.
Quarter note
500.0 ms
One beat · 4/4
500.0 ms
One bar
2000.0 ms
Note value grid
Every note value, straight, dotted and triplet
Click any figure to copy it. Paste it into a delay's time field, a reverb pre-delay, or an LFO that will not sync to the host.
| Note value | Straight×1 | Dotted×1.5 | Triplet×⅔ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/1Whole note | |||
| 1/2Half note | |||
| 1/4Quarter note | |||
| 1/8Most used · eighth note | |||
| 1/16Sixteenth note | |||
| 1/32Thirty-second note | |||
| 1/64Sixty-fourth note |
The three you will reach for
Reverb starting points
Pre-delay on the grid, a tail that clears the next hit
Pre-delay is a note value so the first reflections arrive with the rhythm. Each decay figure is a musical landmark at 4/4 with the pre-delay already subtracted (250.0 ms at this tempo), so the tail has died away before the next hit lands. A meter counted in eighths shortens that pre-delay, because there a beat is an eighth note itself.
These are musical starting points, not rules. Reverb decay is normally specified as RT60 (the time a tail takes to fall 60 dB), and two reverbs sharing an RT60 can sit very differently in a mix depending on their early reflections and their level. Set it by ear against the arrangement, then check it against these numbers rather than the other way round.
Why the grid matters
In time it grooves, out of time it smears
A repeat set to a note value lands where a player would have put a note. Every echo falls on a spot the listener is already counting, so the delay reads as part of the arrangement rather than as an effect sitting on top of it.
Give the same delay an arbitrary 312 ms and each repeat drifts a little further from the grid. The first one lands slightly late, the second later still, and by the fourth the tail is overlapping the next transient. Nothing sounds obviously wrong; the mix just loses definition, and the usual reaction is to turn the delay down until it stops causing trouble.
Two deliberate exceptions are worth knowing. A doubling delay under roughly 30 ms fuses with the source and is heard as thickness rather than as a repeat, so it can sit off the grid safely. And a stereo delay is often set a few milliseconds apart on the two sides on purpose: that offset is what creates the width.
Feedback and tempo
Feedback sets how many repeats you hear; the tempo sets how fast they arrive. At 120 BPM an eighth-note delay fires every 250.0 ms inside a 4/4 bar of 2000.0 ms, so every extra repeat pushes the tail closer to the next hit. Trim feedback until the dry part still reads clearly through it.
No audio, no microphone, no upload. The whole grid is arithmetic performed in this tab, and nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.
120 beats per minute. Quarter note 500.0 milliseconds, eighth note 250.0 milliseconds, dotted eighth 375.0 milliseconds. One bar of 4/4 is 2000.0 milliseconds.
Stay in the session
Tools that pair with a tempo-locked mix
Online Metronome
Run the same tempo as a click and hear whether the delay you just dialled in genuinely sits with the part.
Pitch Pipe & Reference Tone
Sustained reference tones for tuning up before anything gets committed to the timeline.
Unit Converter
Reverb decay is often labelled in seconds while this grid works in milliseconds; move between the two here.
Tempo first, then everything else
One number decides where every repeat lands.
A delay that matches a note value reinforces the rhythm already in the arrangement. One that does not puts each repeat in a slightly different place, and the mix loses definition without anything sounding obviously broken. Start from the tempo and the rest is arithmetic.
- 01
Enter or tap the tempo
Read the BPM off your transport, drag the slider, or tap the space bar along with the track until the field settles on the pulse you can hear.
- 02
Find the note value you want
The grid covers whole notes down to sixty-fourths in straight, dotted, and triplet columns. Flip the readout to hertz when you are dialling an LFO rather than a delay line.
- 03
Copy the figure into the plug-in
Click any cell in the grid, or any reverb tile, to put that figure on the clipboard, then paste it into the delay time, pre-delay, or rate field. Drop the decimal places when the unit only accepts whole milliseconds.
Made for mixing
More than a single number and a conversion.
Milliseconds and hertz together
The same grid switches to LFO rates, so a tremolo, auto-pan, or filter sweep can be locked to the track even when the plug-in has no host sync.
Reverb pre-delay and decay
Pre-delay drawn from a note value, and decay measured to the next beat, half bar, or downbeat with the pre-delay already subtracted from the tail, shortened automatically in a meter counted in eighths, where a beat is an eighth note itself.
Meter-aware bar maths
Pick any time signature and the bar and beat figures follow it, while the BPM keeps counting quarter notes exactly as your transport does.
Tap tempo with trimmed outliers
Tap the button or the space bar: the last eight intervals are averaged, and from the fifth interval on the fastest and slowest are dropped, so one late tap cannot drag the reading.
Copy-ready precision
Every cell in the grid, every reverb tile, and all three classic settings copy in one click, and you choose whether the figure lands on the clipboard as a whole millisecond or with up to three decimal places.
Tempo, delay, and reverb questions
What producers actually ask about timing an effect.
How do you calculate delay time from BPM?+
A quarter note lasts 60,000 divided by the tempo, because a minute holds 60,000 milliseconds and BPM counts quarter notes. At 120 BPM that is 500 ms. Everything else scales from there: an eighth is half of it, a sixteenth a quarter of it, a dotted value is one and a half times the plain one, and a triplet is two thirds of it.
What is the dotted eighth delay?+
It is a delay set to one and a half eighth notes, so the repeats land between the straight sixteenths and interlock with the part instead of doubling it. The Edge built most of U2's guitar sound on exactly that setting. At 120 BPM it works out at 375 ms; the grid shows the figure for your own tempo in the Dotted column of the 1/8 row.
When do I want milliseconds and when do I want hertz?+
Milliseconds for anything that repeats a signal: delay, echo, slapback, reverb pre-delay. Hertz for anything that cycles: tremolo, auto-pan, filter LFO, and most chorus and phaser rate knobs. They describe the same interval from opposite ends: 1000 divided by the milliseconds gives you the rate in hertz.
Does the time signature change the delay times?+
It does not. A quarter note is a quarter note in any meter, so the note-value grid depends on the tempo alone. The time signature only drives the bar and beat lengths, which is what the reverb decay suggestions are measured against: in 6/8 a bar is six eighth notes, so the tail figures shorten accordingly.
Are the reverb suggestions rules?+
No, they are places to start. Pre-delay on a note value and a tail that clears before the next hit both work more often than they fail, but a sparse ballad will happily take a much longer decay than these numbers propose and a dense mix a much shorter one. Reverb decay is also usually specified as RT60, which measures a 60 dB drop rather than the moment you stop noticing the tail, so set it by ear and use the grid as a sanity check.
My delay already has a tempo sync button. Why use this?+
If host sync is reliable in your session, use it. This grid is for everything else: hardware units and pedals, older plug-ins with no sync, delay lines calibrated in samples or seconds, templates built before a tempo map exists, live rigs running without a clock, and any moment you simply want to see how far apart two note values actually are.
Is this a tap tempo tool?+
The tap control is here to fill the tempo field when you do not already know the number, not as a full tap tempo instrument: there is no running readout and no handoff to a click. A dedicated Tap Tempo page is on the roadmap. If you want to practise against a pulse today, the Online Metronome has tap tempo and a tempo trainer built in.
Can I use a decimal tempo?+
Yes. Type something like 128.5 and every figure follows it, which matters when you are matching a sampled loop or an old recording that was never cut to a click. The tap control rounds to the nearest whole BPM, because tapping by hand is not accurate enough to justify decimals. Tempos below 20 or above 400 BPM are rejected, since the resulting times stop being musically useful at either extreme.
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