Zen Delay Review
Long-Term Test
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Erica Synths teamed with Ninja Tune Recordings to debut a compact, desktop effects processor specifically for electronic music that reflects the stylings of the famed UK label. The unit was designed by Ninja Tune’s co-founder Matt Black – aka Coldcut – and his partner in crime, Ingmar Koch – aka Dr Walker – from the Liquid Sky Collective. We employed three different reviewers to put the Zen Delay through its paces, their impressions in quotes below.
For those who are unfamiliar with Matt Black or Ingmar Koch, let’s provide a little backstory. Koch, a producer, label owner, former record store owner and now tree planter, grew up in Germany, but now resides in Portugal. He’s been involved in many seminal techno projects, including Air Liquide, Global Electronic Network, Lovecore and Rei$$dorf Force, to name a few. Koch began producing electronic music when he was 14 years-old and in 1991 founded a recording studio in Frankfurt with his friend Cem Oral. Air Liquide was formed shortly afterwards, and released several mind-melting ambient tracks that inspired many artists to try their hand at the genre. Moving on from being the soundtrack of Chill Out Rooms around the globe, Koch went on to unleash the underground Club Camouflage in Cologne with Heike Windberger. In 2012, Koch founded the artist collective Liquid Sky Berlin, which he labels as an “experimental TV lab / innovative instruments / futuristikk radiostation / art laboratory / mastiffbreed label / absolutely useless gallery.”
Matt Black, who started life as Matthew Cohn, began his musical journey as a DJ of some note before teaming with Jonathan More to form Coldcut and launch the Ninja Tune Label. What many people don’t know is that Black was also instrumental in the VJing movement. He is one of the inventors of the VJamm, which Coldcut used in their live shows, as well as Granul8, a granular video synthesizer. Coldcut is credited as one of the innovators of sampling – before major labels got hip to clearances. Their mashups of jazz, pop, funk, rap and “found sounds” were ahead of their time and they suddenly found themselves as the face of UK’s electronic music scene. They remixed all the major pop stars of the day, demanding top dollar, but it’s their Ninja Tune label that has defied the odds and stood the test of time, still churning out great music to this day.
Hampered by an overbearing contract that prohibited Black from releasing anything under the Coldcut name, he then started collaborating with other like-minded artists and releasing cuts on Ninja Tune as DJ Food, as well as other monikers. This fueled his independence and provided funds for releasing tracks by The Herbaliser, The Cinematic Orchestra, VJ Vadim, Kruder & Dorfmeister and Amon Tobin. This lead to Label tours around the world, Ninja Tune club nights, a syndicated radio show, and even more acclaim. And they’re certainly not done yet!
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The genesis of the collaboration with Latvia’s Erica Synths was sparked when Matt Black and Ingmar Koch stopped by the Erica exhibit at Berlin’s Superbooth, a music industry show that specializes in small and experimental manufacturers. Shortly afterwards, the duo brainstormed with Erica about their vision for a hardware effects unit, and development of the Zen Delay began. Koch and Black were clearly inspired by Erica Synth’s lovely little Acidbox, since there are some obvious similarities between both units. However, the duo wanted to push the collaboration into the dark worlds of dub, low-fi, and experimental sounds, which Erica Synths has no problem entertaining, considering their own forays into deep, droney modules – check out our Erica Synth’s Fusion Box review!
The Zen Delay is a stereo delay with a multimode 24 dB Polivoks filter and tube overdrive. There’s no LFO, but the unit can be BPM synced via MIDI, or can run free with delay times up to 5000ms. There’s also a Beat Mode which allows you to go from an eighth note up to 8 times the beat (with a 50 second limitation). The digital delay comes in five flavors, tape, tape pingpong, digital pingpong, digital and crossover/vintage. Not a ton of options, but each selection “does sound markedly different” and “sets the foundation for experimentation” as the signal is then feed into the analog realm via the 24 dB filter, which has high, low and band pass modes. Now you would think that the signal would then find its way to the tube distortion, but that’s not actually the case. In fact, the signal chain starts with the tube and then heads into the delay and ultimately the filter. The other thing that’s a little counter-intuitive, is that the Drive knob is more like a Wet/Dry feature, rather than a true Drive attribute. The good news is that the signal can be pushed into saturation and distortion realms quite easily with the results being “quite musical” with “lovely harmonics.”
Begs To Be Tweaked
Like the Acidbox, the Zen Delay begs, begs, to be tweaked with those “glorious” and “beefy knobs” that one reviewer declared were the “best in the business.” Riding the Resonance and Cutoff, along with the Feedback and Delay Time controls, causes “instant sonic mayhem.” Although, the unit is marketed for delivering distorted, dubby delays, you can actually bypass the Delay and Filter sections and run your audio just through the valve for some “tubby saturation.”
The Delay Time is afforded a large knob for subtle and not so subtle adjustments (listen to our accompanying audio) and is quite sensitive. So much so, that “you can play it like an instrument!” Add the Filter section with the Resolution dialed up for texture and grain and you start to move right into Lee “Scratch” Perry territory.
Modern Retro
The build quality is exactly what you’d expect from Erica Synths, robust and “built to withstand a nuclear disaster.” The tactile knobs are solid and smooth and the connections are tight. The brushed silver bar to protect the tube is a nice design touch, which adds a polish that no other Erica unit possesses. The 870g Zen Delay is equally at home the studio or as part of a live performance rig, and comes with a pedal input. We also have to note the specs of the 24-bit, 48k Digital Delay engine: the DAC has 114 dB of dynamic range and -100db THD+N, while the ADC has 108 dB of dynamic range and -100 dB THD+N.
Zen Delay Features:
Controls:
- Delay time
- Feedback
- Delay mod (5 presets)
- Tap button
- Dry/wet
- Bypass switch
- Filter cutoff
- Resonance
- Drive
- Input level
- Filter mode
Delay Times:
- 1-5000ms with 1/8 note to x8 of clock/tap rate in beat mode
Inputs:
- Stereo In: 2x standard jack
- MIDI In: standard MIDI socket
- CV In: standard jack
Outputs:
- Stereo Out: 2 x standard jack
Specs:
- DAC: 114 dB dynamic range / -100dB THD+N
- ADC: 108 dB dynamic range / -98 dB THD+N
- Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 5 cm | Weight: 870g
Conclusion
All this delay, filter, tube goodness does come at a price, €499, which is no paltry sum. But this is the only real deficit that our reviewers could find with the Zen Delay, aside from the fact that the built-in Limiter, which claims to prevent the drive from increasing the volume, never actually kicked in. The Zen Delay has a lot to offer and teaming it with any of your synths, in our case the Eowave Quadrantid Swarm, will ensure that you lose hours of your life to experimentation. From subtle grit, to window-rattling dub delays, the Zen Delay doesn’t disappoint and could possibly be the best desktop effects unit that Erica has released so far. Highly Recommended.
Rating: 90%
Cheers:
+ Build Quality
+ Sound Quality
+ Resonant Peak Bliss
+ Best Knobs In The Business
+ Fun!
+ Musical Distortion
Jeers:
– Price
– Built-in Limiter
Erica Synths / Ninja Tune Zen Delay costs €499 and is available now.
The Future: This review was quite arduous to achieve, considering we got our sample just as the Coronavirus gripped New York City and shut down our office building for months. We’d like to thank every one of our reviewers for their contribution during this difficult time, as well as our staff photographer. Great work!
As far as the Zen Delay mkII, we’d love to see full MIDI implementation for all attributes so you can record all of your in-the-moment tweaks. A routing matrix would also be a welcomed addition, to allow the user to control the path of the filter, delay and tube distortion.
