What’s the Best Delay Plugin for Metal Producers?

The hunt for the best delay plugin can feel like a black hole. You see producers on YouTube pulling up some esoteric, beautifully designed VST that creates instant atmosphere, and the gear acquisition syndrome (GAS) kicks in hard. Suddenly, your DAW’s stock delay feels inadequate, and you’re convinced that one plugin is the missing piece for your mixes.

But does it really matter which one you use?

Yes and no. It’s a classic Nail The Mix philosophy: the tool matters for specific, character-driven tasks. If you need the gnarly, saturated scream of a specific amp sim, you can’t just grab any old one. But for more general-purpose tools, skill trumps the specific brand every time.

Delay sits somewhere in the middle. While a good producer can get a killer sound from any delay, certain plugins offer unique colors and textures that can inspire creative choices. The real magic, however, isn’t in the plugin itself, but in knowing how and why to use delay to create depth, excitement, and space in a dense metal mix without turning everything into a muddy mess.

Let’s break down some of the best delay plugins on the market—from workhorses to creative weirdos—and more importantly, the techniques that actually make a difference.

The Workhorse Delays That Get The Job Done

Before you go dropping cash on the latest shiny object, master the fundamentals. These are the tools that will handle 90% of your delay needs, from simple vocal slaps to epic guitar solo throws.

Your DAW's Stock Delay Plugin

Seriously. Whether it’s Logic Pro's Stereo Delay, Pro Tools' Mod-Delay III, or Reaper's ReaDelay, the delay that came with your DAW is probably more than powerful enough for most tasks. Before you even think about buying a new plugin, you need to be able to pull up your stock delay and instantly dial in a basic effect.

The biggest mistake people make is collecting 20 different delays when they haven’t even mastered the five core parameters of one:

• Time: Can you sync it to your project tempo? Do you know the difference between a 1/8 note and a dotted 1/8 note feel?
• Feedback (or Repeats): This controls how many echoes you hear. A single repeat is a "slap," while cranking the feedback can send it into self-oscillation.
• Mix (or Wet/Dry): How much of the delay effect is blended with the original signal? For sends/busses, this should almost always be at 100% wet.
• High-Pass Filter (HPF): The single most important control for cleaning up your delays. Cut the lows to keep your echoes from clashing with the bass and kick drum.
• Low-Pass Filter (LPF): Tames the harsh high-end of the repeats, making the delay sound darker and pushing it further back in the mix.

Actionable Tip: On your next mix, put your stock delay on a send/aux track. Send a vocal to it and set it to a 1/4 note delay. Now, use the built-in HPF and LPF to make it sound like it’s coming through a telephone. Notice how it adds vibe without getting in the way. That’s the foundation.

Soundtoys EchoBoy

If you’re going to buy one do-it-all delay plugin, Soundtoys EchoBoy is the undisputed champion. It’s the SM57 of delay plugins—it just works on everything. You'll see it in the sessions of countless Nail The Mix instructors for a reason.

Its power lies in its huge list of emulated delay styles. You can get pristine digital delays, gritty tape echoes modeled on the Echoplex and Space Echo, and dirty bucket-brigade sounds from stompboxes like the Memory Man.

Actionable Tip for Metal Guitar Solos: Put EchoBoy on a send for your lead guitar track. Select the "Studio Tape" style. Set a dotted 1/8 note delay time. Now, play with the "Saturation" knob. Driving it a bit adds harmonic richness and grit that helps the delay blend with the distorted tone. You can even open up the "Style Edit" Tweak menu and add a little "Wobble" for a vintage, unstable tape vibe that gives the solo tons of character.

Creative & Character Delays (The Spice Rack)

Once you’ve got your workhorses down, you can start exploring plugins that do one or two things in a spectacularly unique way. These are the tools for when you need a specific flavor.

ValhallaDelay

Like all of Sean Costello's creations, ValhallaDelay offers an absurd amount of power for an incredible price. It does the classic stuff (Tape, Digital) flawlessly, but its unique modes are where it truly shines.

Modes like "Ghost" and "Pitch" are for creating otherworldly textures. "Ghost" is a delay combined with Valhalla’s signature diffusion algorithms, smearing the repeats into a reverb-like wash. It’s perfect for creating atmospheric pads out of single synth notes or clean guitar arpeggios.

Actionable Tip for Intros & Breakdowns: Automate a single clean guitar note or a synth pluck to be sent to ValhallaDelay on the Ghost mode. Crank the "Diffusion" knob and play with the feedback. You can create a swelling, evolving pad that builds tension perfectly before the full band kicks in, and it won’t have the heavy low-mid buildup of a traditional reverb.

FabFilter Timeless 3

If you’re a tweaker who loves sound design, FabFilter Timeless 3 is your playground. As with many FabFilter plugins, its strength is its insanely flexible drag-and-drop modulation system. You can make anything modulate anything else, creating rhythmic effects that go far beyond simple echoes.

Want your delay's filter cutoff to pulse in a 1/16th note triplet rhythm while the pan position slowly drifts from left to right over 8 bars? Timeless 3 makes that easy. The visual feedback is second to none, so you can see exactly what you’re hearing.

Actionable Tip for Rhythmic Effects: Take a short vocal ad-lib or a drum fill and send it to Timeless 3. Set a simple 1/8 note delay. Now, drag an XLFO modulator onto the filter cutoff knob. Set the XLFO to a "Saw Down" shape and sync it to a 1/4 note. You’ll get a pulsing, rhythmic filter sweep on every delay repeat that adds movement and excitement to an otherwise static part.

UAD Galaxy Tape Echo / Arturia Delay TAPE-201

These plugins are dedicated emulations of the holy grail of tape delay: the Roland RE-201 Space Echo. Both the UAD Galaxy and Arturia TAPE-201 nail the vibe of the original hardware, including its beautiful imperfections.

The magic of the Space Echo is the combination of a gritty tape delay and a crunchy spring reverb. It’s the sound of classic dub and psychedelic rock, but it has a perfect home in metal for creating dark, moody atmospheres. The "Intensity" knob, which controls feedback, is famous for its ability to go into wild, chaotic self-oscillation.

Actionable Tip for Transitions: Find a spot in your song where you want to build tension, like the end of a bridge. Send your lead vocal or a guitar melody to the Space Echo plugin. As the phrase ends, automate the "Intensity" knob up towards 100%. The delays will start to feed back on themselves, creating a chaotic, rising swell of noise. Cut the send right as the next heavy section hits for maximum impact.

Pro Techniques That Matter More Than Any Plugin

You could own every plugin on this list, but without a solid understanding of a few key techniques, your delays will still sound amateurish. Master these concepts, and you’ll get pro results even with a stock plugin.

Tucking Delays with EQ and Compression

Your delay should support your mix, not compete with it. The most common mistake is having delay repeats that are too bright and full-range, cluttering up the same frequencies as your lead vocal or guitar.

The solution is to process your delays on a send/aux track. After the delay plugin, insert an EQ. Be brutal. High-pass it up to 400-500Hz and low-pass it down to 3-4kHz. This is more than just a simple filtering trick; it’s a fundamental part of EQing for max impact. This "telephone" EQ curve carves out space for the dry signal to live, pushing the delay into the background where it can provide depth without mud.

For next-level control, add a compressor after the EQ and sidechain it to the dry signal. This is called "ducking." The compressor will turn the delay volume down whenever the dry signal is present, and turn it back up in the gaps. Your vocal remains perfectly clear and upfront, but the delay swells up to fill the empty space. This is a crucial secret behind modern pop and metal vocal production, using compression for more than just loudness.

Mind Your Latency and Phase

Every plugin you add introduces a tiny bit of processing time, or latency. Modern DAWs have Automatic Delay Compensation (ADC) to manage this, but it’s not foolproof, especially with complex parallel routing. If you’re using a delay for widening, like the Haas trick (a single, short 10-20ms delay panned to one side), a high-latency plugin on one of your parallel channels can cause phasing issues that ruin the effect or even make parts of your mix disappear in mono. Be aware of which plugins are CPU-heavy and use them wisely.

Conclusion: It's The Chef, Not The Knife

So, what's the best delay plugin? The one that inspires you to make cool sounds and that you know inside and out. EchoBoy is a fantastic all-rounder and ValhallaDelay offers incredible creative power for the price, but none of it matters if you don’t master the fundamentals.

Focus on the techniques. Learn how to time your delays, how to EQ and compress them into submission, and how to use them to create a sense of space that serves the song.

Seeing these techniques applied in a real-world scenario is the fastest way to level up. Imagine getting the raw multitracks from a band like Periphery or Gojira and watching the producer who mixed the record show you exactly how they set up their vocal delays, guitar atmospheres, and rhythmic effects. That’s exactly what you get inside Nail The Mix. You can check out our entire catalog of past mixing sessions to see how the pros do it.

Stop chasing the next plugin and start perfecting your craft. Your mixes will thank you for it.