Bel's BD-320 sampling delay goes to great lengths to sample great lengths.

Sampling is not a new concept to the readership of H&SR so I'll skip the usual preamble and get straight to the product in question, the Bel sampling delay. This is certainly a unit deserving our immediate attention and what's more, it's British! Yet Bel are not a new name in the market and their distinctive blue DDL (a blue Bel?) is to be found in use in many of Britain's top studios, attesting to the quality and popularity of their products. I feel sure that no one is going to be disappointed in what the new range has to offer.

The new BD series, from which the processor in question comes, is made attractively versatile by the availability of memory expansion cards. In fact our unit had three fitted, giving it a staggering 32767mS of good quality delay at 15kHz, and over a minute in x2 mode at 7.5kHz. The standard unit is not quite so ambitious, being only capable of 8191 mS at 15kHz, but at least Bel have the good sense to let you expand the memory cards with ease to 16383mS, 24575mS, or 32767mS. In return for your money you get a high quality digital delay with sampling, keyboard control (1v per octave) over two octaves, and a loop edit facility.

Looks

Tastefully finished in dark grey with light grey legend and push-button switches bearing a resemblance to solitaire pieces, the front panel of this 2U deep, 19" rack mounting delay certainly looks attractive. Personally, I tend to like front panels of this size, which although not looking quite as elegant as their slimline 1U counterparts, make operation much easier because you can see at a glance the clearly labelled controls. I find clear front panel controls a lot easier to operate than a plethora of incremental controls. Bel also probably decided to stick with the design philosophy of their earlier successful range because this DDL is not programmable and therefore does not need incremental controls.

"The quality of repeat is excellent even at the longest delay time, with no noticeable degradation in signal..."

Front Panel

The Input section comprises a three-coloured LED bar display and an input volume control pot. The display reads yellow at -20 and -15dB, green at -6dB, and red at 0dB. Bel recommend that for normal use the unit should peak occasionally at 0dB and in practice when loading a sample it's usually a good idea to try and get as high a level as possible into the unit before distortion for a good signal to noise ratio. However, it transpired that even at low levels the Bel is certainly the quietest I've yet heard in this price range.

Situated beneath the Input section is the Bypass switch and its red status LED. This, as we shall see is also a useful control in sample mode. Next to this the output Mix can be set between Dry and Delay with the useful addition of a dry signal Defeat switch to the left of it. Out of phase effects can be brought into operation using another switch, this time to the right. The Feedback also has the option of a phase switch for additional effects and a filter to attenuate the high frequency of feedback re-circulation. This can give a more natural sound to the sometimes too clean DDL repeats for those of us who are still fans of tape echo, and is particularly effective on vocals. Overall Output control is located above the Feedback. Finally a three position switch is used when sampling, enabling you to select External or Internal triggering. This means that you can control sample start and playback with ease in a variety of ways.

A large red LED display in mS is situated slightly to the right of centre. Again, because of the 2U size Bel have plenty of space for this easily readable display, which is operated by four incremental switches with fast and slow counters for up and down. A nice touch is the intermediate speed which can be obtained by pressing both fast and slow counters together for either up or down operation. Incidentally, the fast counter is very quick and that's just as well when you have a delay of up to 32 seconds! Another useful feature on the LED display concerns the Sampling as well as DDL function and comes in the form of a decimal point which flashes in time with the delay set up. In Sample mode it gives a visual time indication of Record Start/Stop and Playback by remaining lit when ready to sample and flashing for the duration of sample and playback. Oddly enough, when the delay time is switched to x2 there's no corresponding change in readout, so you have to double the figure yourself and this can get quite confusing when you have an awkward 5-figure number.

"...the opportunities for creative sound colouration afforded by the modulation and two out of phase switches make this a very useful recording tool."

Moving down and to the right we find a row of light grey push button switches the first of which is the x2 control itself, which as we have seen, doubles the delay time but reduces the bandwidth to half, and is indicated by a green LED. Next to this is the oscillator on/off switch which activates the modulation of the Bel, controlled by speed and depth pots located above a red modulation status LED. Returning to the bottom row, three of the switches located here are immediately concerned with Sampling, or 'Synchronisation Mode' as Bel prefer to call it. These are Sync (which will cause the unit to be ready to accept a sample and hold it for one play), Start/Stop (a manual control for sampling), and Hold (which will retain the sample indefinitely). Its pitch may then be shifted by the Pitch Control pot and there is a choice of Normal or Reset (multi-trigger) for playback.

The rear panel is as usual, nice and simple with a choice of Direct, Delay, and Mix outputs next to the Input. All accept either ¼" jacks or XLR connectors with a balanced Input but unbalanced Output, although it's an easy task to make the Input unbalanced if required by connecting shield and ring on the Input jack.

Applications

As a delay, the Bel performs as well as, if not better than its predecessor. The quality of repeat is excellent even at the longest delay time, with no noticeable degradation in signal, and the opportunities for creative sound colouration afforded by the modulation and two out of phase switches make this a very useful recording tool. I can't really fault it in this respect but I sometimes felt it was a shame that it was not programmable, even if it is designed only for studio use.

In its role as a sampler I was impressed by its wonderfully clear reproduction. Even on troublesome sounds such as bass guitar and bass drum which do not hide quantisation noise, only a little noise was present, and in this department the Bel compared favourably against most other units I've tried.

"...I sometimes felt it was a shame that it was not programmable, even if it is designed only for studio use."

The actual business of sampling is easy enough if you've used such a device before, but I felt that the manual was not really aimed at the first time buyer and could have been a lot clearer in this respect. The Bypass switch lets you set up the Sample input level without any repeat once your sample length has been chosen and set on the display. You then press Sync, whereupon the light in the display stops flashing to indicate that the unit is ready to record, and you start the sample time either manually, or with an audio trigger which is far more accurate for most samples. However, no information is given on what level the audio trigger works at, and although I had no problems in this department, it's probably a safer bet to sample manually and edit the front end on sounds with a slow attack. Once they're in the contents of the memory are retained as long as the Start/Stop button is not depressed again. Releasing Bypass and selecting Hold will allow you to playback the sample via Start/Stop, audio trigger, or CV and Gate.

Here the Bel really comes into its own because the delay time between trigger and sample is negligible if an audio trigger has been used to start the sample time. The acid test was first to sample a rim shot using this method (the sound being so short and sharp that any delay is clearly audible), and then trigger and compare it with the original. The result was impressive. This is the only unit I've ever tried that will allow you to trigger (for example) a good snare sample from a duff snare on tape without a perceptible delay, thus saving you the bother of turning over the tape and delaying the trigger.

The Bel also offers an edit facility which lets you trim the start of the sample but not the end, which I find a curious omission. In fact the only way of trimming the end of the sample is by making sure that your chosen sample time is exactly right (very awkward for some sounds), using an external noise gate, or recording a section of silence after the sample. This is possible because record/playback on different parts of the loop is possible with the Bel. However, as usual on processors of this nature it's not easy to get a glitch-free sample when looping.

"...I think that it would be an advantage for it to have MIDI control of the sample..."

With this record/playback facility on different parts of the loop you can fill up the whole memory with sounds following one after another if you want. For instance, you'd start off by recording something at 2 seconds, set the sample time to 1.5 seconds and record another sound, then 1 second and so on, finally pressing Hold. In this way you chop up a 2 second sample and produce a set of sounds running one into the other to produce a composite.

Overdubbing is also possible by recording a sound into the memory, turning up the feedback, and recording again with the first sound as it is played back. This is really useful for building up good vocal samples. Or if you are short of tracks on the multitrack you could record a set of perfect harmony vocals and drop them in at their respective points in a song onto one track using audio trigger, or from a keyboard.

The above is another example of what you can do with a good quality sampler these days, but it doesn't stop there. Whole sections of a song could be lifted and dropped in, you could use it for 12" mixes, although it still seems more common to 'spin in' things like vocals from the 2-track, perhaps because of the limitations of 15kHz bandwidth.

With regard to CV and Gate the limit of play is just over two octaves starting at 0V, and you are able to place the sample where you like within this range on the keyboard to match sample pitch to keyboard pitch for sound layering with the synth. The tuner on the unit itself can also be used but remember that the higher you play, the shorter the sample length.

"...you can create a sound using it as a conventional DDL, and then sample that sound..."

Verdict

There are only two things that I don't like about the Bel. Firstly I think that it would be an advantage for it to have MIDI control of the sample, even though it is only monophonic and this would bring it into line with the opposition. Secondly, a direct way of editing after the sample would have been a good idea as in practice it often needs cleaning up.

On the positive side, this is the best sampling delay I've tried, largely due to its sound quality, which is excellent, and the ease with which you can trigger the sound once it has been entered into the memory. With such a long memory, the fact that looping of sounds without percussive attack produces a click does not matter so much because you can still get a long vocal sample without having to loop. Yet another plus for the BD320 is the fact that you can create a sound using it as a conventional DDL, and then sample that sound; also, you can trigger the repeats 'rhythm-sync style' which is not possible on a unit like the Korg SDD 2000.

This is another very professional offering from Bel which should be as successful as its predecessor. The long delay processor is particularly impressive, and if you decide you'd rather go for a better bandwidth the Bel BD240 offers a maximum of 23 seconds at 18kHz. Any chance of a freebie?

The Bel BD-320 costs £1380 including VAT.

Further information is available from: Studio Equipment Distribution, (Contact Details).