The two new creative delay tools offer multi-tap design and intricate feedback systems for transforming time into texture.
Los Angeles-based plugin developer Lunacy has just dropped Taps & Portals, a pair of creative delay plugins developed in collaboration with musician and producer Benn Jordan. Designed to push delay design beyond conventional echo, these tools are boldly experimental.
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Taps
Taps is a multi-tap delay plugin that takes the humble echo and expands it into something far more ambitious. Clean, classic repeats are just the starting point. If you choose to crank things up, you’ll find yourself working with surreal, kaleidoscopic delay patterns that transform rhythmic repetition into complex textures.
The plugin gives you control over up to eight individual taps, each with its own pitch adjustment. Complex spacing and pitch controls let you sculpt the entire delay structure, while tape emulation features add authentic analogue character through wow, drop, flutter, and dust parameters.
One standout feature is the smart feedback compensation system. Anyone who’s experimented with extreme feedback settings knows how quickly things can spiral. This intelligent system keeps your levels manageable even when you’ve got feedback pushed to 100%, letting you explore and experiment without the fear of destroying your speakers (or your ears).
Portals
Portals takes a different approach, focusing on intricate feedback system design within Lunacy’s BEAM multi-effects engine. This plugin is all about building complex, evolving delay networks that twist rhythm and space into unexpected configurations. Gate, delay, and feedback controls work together to create rhythmic motion that evolves organically over time. Both time and feedback can run free or lock to your DAW’s tempo, giving you flexibility whether you’re after controlled rhythmic patterns or more experimental, free-flowing textures.
Both plugins come with an impressive preset library. Taps ships with 50 presets created by leading sound designers, including Jordan himself. These provide excellent starting points for anyone looking to dive straight into creative delay work without spending hours tweaking parameters. The Parallax preset pack adds another 50 presets that combine Taps and Portals with BEAM’s full effects ecosystem, showcasing some of the most adventurous sounds the platform can produce.
BEAM is Lunacy’s modular multi-effects engine that lets you build complex effect chains using an interactive visual audio graph system. It’s a creative effects playground where you can combine different processing modules in both serial and parallel configurations. The platform supports up to six parallel signal paths, allowing you to construct elaborate processing architectures that would be cumbersome or impossible to achieve by simply chaining individual plugins in your DAW.
Integration is seamless for BEAM owners. Both Taps and Portals are available as effects within BEAM, with the ability to use up to three nodes of each in serial or parallel configurations. This opens up possibilities for creating elaborate delay architectures. Running multiple instances in series can create cascading delay structures, while parallel routing lets you blend different delay characters simultaneously. BEAM already includes effects like granular processing, convolution reverb, and various filters, so adding Taps and Portals to that collection significantly expands the creative possibilities for complex sound design.
Jordan was significantly involved in the design process. His reputation for innovative sound design and forward-thinking production has influenced the plugins’ character. Rather than simply recreating vintage delay units or offering incremental improvements on existing designs, Taps & Portals feel purposefully built for sound designers and producers who want to use time-based effects as compositional tools rather than mere embellishments.
Both plugins support VST3, AU, and AAX formats, making them compatible with all major DAWs. They’re available standalone or as part of the BEAM ecosystem, depending on your existing setup and production needs.
On the technical side, you’ll need MacOS 10.15 or a later update, or Windows 10 or above. The plugins require for 8GB RAM at minimum, though 16GB will give you better performance, plus 250MB of drive space. An internet connection is necessary for downloading and activating the software.
Lunacy’s Taps & Portals represent a focused effort to expand what creative delay processing can achieve in modern production. Whether you’re scoring for film, producing electronic music, or just looking to add some spatial ambience to your mixes, these plugins offer a whole heap of creative potential.
For complete details and audio demos, visit Lunacy Audio.
