Creative Sauce Unleashes Lunacy Audio’s Taps & Portals: Delay Gets a Kick Up the Arse

Just when you thought the world didn’t need another delay plugin, Lunacy Audio teams up with Ben Jordan and drops Taps and Portals—a pair of effects that actually try to do something new. Creative Sauce, always the champion of practical home-studio gear, dives right in, pointing out that these aren’t your granddad’s tape echoes. The design decisions here are clever, and you can feel the influence of someone who’s actually used a delay in anger.

Both plugins live inside Lunacy’s Beam platform or run solo, but the real magic is in how they rethink the basics. Instead of slapping on another coat of retro paint, Taps and Portals offer a playground for delay freaks who want more than just repeats and feedback. If you’re expecting another bland digital echo, prepare for a pleasant slap in the face.

Taps starts off looking familiar—time, feedback, the usual suspects—but then it veers off into leftfield. You get control over the number of taps, their spacing, and whether the repeats bunch up at the start or end of a phrase. Skew and cluster controls let you warp the rhythm into something that sounds more like a malfunctioning drum machine than a polite delay. Want your echoes to crescendo or fade out like a ghost at a rave? Easy.

The stereo field isn’t just an afterthought either. You can ping-pong taps, spread them across the panorama, or get freaky with visual feedback that actually helps you dial in the chaos. And when you’re bored of time tricks, there’s a pitch tab for detuning and comb filtering, plus tape-style mangling for those who like their delays dirty. This isn’t just delay—it’s a rhythmic weapon for anyone who wants to break out of the grid.

Instead of building a monster patch from scratch, Creative Sauce jumps into the presets—specifically, Ben Jordan’s “Wet Hot American Shimmer.” One note on the piano, and you’re drowning in lush, ethereal tails that sound like they escaped from a sci-fi soundtrack. It’s proof that these plugins aren’t just for knob-twiddlers; even preset surfers can get massive, cinematic results.

The real fun comes from experimenting—tweaking, stacking, and generally abusing the plugins until something weird and wonderful happens. If you want every detail and the full sonic impact, you’ll need to watch the video and hear these beasts in action. Trust me, words don’t do justice to the shimmer and chaos you can pull out of these delays.