Delay and Reverb Time Calculator

Enter a tempo to get the delay time for every note value — straight, dotted and triplet — in milliseconds and in Hz, with reverb pre-delay and decay times that fit the tempo below. The tempo starts from your last reading on the BPM counter.

Why time a delay to the tempo?

Echoes that land on the grid sit inside the groove instead of smearing it. A quarter-note delay repeats on the beat, an eighth note twice as often, and a dotted eighth gives the galloping repeat that falls between the beats. Most delay plugins have a sync switch, but hardware, older plugins and many reverb pre-delays only take milliseconds — that’s what this table is for.

Dotted and triplet notes

A dotted note is half as long again as the plain note, so a dotted eighth is ¾ of a beat. A triplet fits three notes in the space of two, so a triplet eighth is a third of a beat. At 120 BPM a beat is 500 ms, a dotted eighth 375 ms and a triplet eighth 166.7 ms.

Hz for LFOs and modulation

The Hz under each time is the same note value as a rate: how many times a second it repeats. Use it to sync a tremolo, auto-pan, chorus or filter LFO that only takes Hz. For rates down to four bars, see the BPM to ms and Hz converter.

Producer tools

• BPM ↔ ms ↔ Hz converter — beat length and LFO sync rates
• Tempo change & pitch calculator — % speed, new BPM and semitones
• Running cadence → song BPM — music that matches your steps