Xils Lab Le Masque Delay: Exclusive audioMIDI.com Review!

Review by Juan Aranda

At A Glance:
What is it?

Le Masque: Delay is a delay plug-in unlike other delay plug-ins. it's a beat driven delay that follows it's own personal time grid that can synced to master or left to run independent and wild. It's crazy, absolutely maddening, and wholly satisfying.

What does it sound like?

Space. Where other delay units may also revel in the concept of space, Le Masque: Delay takes the idea and sort of floats off with it. Le Masque is not jarring, nor is it at the extremety of subtle, the presets are clean, can mimic the classic stuff with no problem, and make it so that delay is not an afterthought, but an instrument in itself.

What's so great about it?

I love delay. I have analog delays in my setup that might as well be a part of me. I think it's cool if the first thing you sing in a song is completely audible five minutes later. Le Masque: Delay really makes you think about spacing between repeats, it is a composition tool for that explicit purpose. You can certainly use it as a standard delay, but then, what would be the point?

What's not so great about it?

Le Masque: Delay really makes you think about spacing between repeats. I reiterate: LE MASQUE: DELAY REALLY MAKES YOU THINK ABOUT SPACING. Le Masque makes it easy to scrutinize your own work, so if you like staring at the same audio waveform while you listen to different modulation/lfo combinations in tandem with the beat grid for hours at a time, this is for you, much to the chagrin of your family, friends, loved ones, co-workers, pets, social organizations...

Review Summary:

Le Masque: Delay, like, shifts the paradigm, or something?

Full Review:

Delay plug-ins, long considered a staple in the modern producer’s toolkit, are an essential aspect of recording in a DAW. Though it is not uncommon for DAWs to include their own proprietary delay plug-in and most of these are competent, if not lacking in function or creativity, much can be done to improve on the classic delay plug-in formula.

At this point, this is where third party plug-in companies come in. They unveil a new product that features some inconceivable function or gimmick that we did not know we were missing from our lives and sells it by virtue of being new and mounted with a pretty GUI.

I, too, once thought like this.

Then it hit me, as if some musical Emeril stared down at me from some techno-wave celestial kitchen and snapped his fingers

“Bam!”

Xils Lab hits stuff out of the park, consistently. Their soft-synths are usually based on rather obscure pieces of hardware that most of us have neither heard of or will ever see. By taking that approach to their effects processors, they’ve come up with something that defies the convention, Le Masque: Delay.

Le Masque: Delay’s main draw is its function as a “timeline” delay. What this references is the main window. Inside, there is a completely controllable grid that can sync to the master tempo in your DAW, or if you’re feeling polyrhythmic, you can adjust your own tempo in Le Masque, allowing complex delays that go beyond the usual 1/16th, 8th, and other basic standards.

Le Masque also comes to the party with some abnormal favors, specifically, the LFO section and modulation wheel. With these two in tandem with the beat grid, there’s no possible way that you can make a simple delay patch.

And that’s a good thing.

When it comes to the art of delay, (don’t argue, delay is a tool and as such, can be used in artistic ways) we’ve pretty much heard it all before. There is the slap-back echo, the vocal call-and-response, and the other myriad of ways that it has served to move sound production along in the last several decades. Many choose to stick to the same formulas but Le Masque: Delay makes it so that there is no reason to. You can explore the space of delay on your own terms.

Did I forget to mention Le Masque: Delay is dongle free?

It is, and it makes it that much sweeter. Buy Le Masque HERE.

Audio demo below: