Wow, I've been impressed by some of GPT's output, but in this case it really got that answer terribly wrong!
I'll explain it to a second grader. I really like most 2nd graders.
==============================================
Have you ever heard an echo? Like when you call out with your voice and then you hear it coming back to you again? You can hear an echo when you stand in a big room and clap or shout. Or maybe you've heard an echo in a valley or a canyon or a tunnel.
Well, an echo is actually a reflection. It happens when a sound travels away from you, bounces off of something else, and then comes back to your ears. The farther the sound has to travel, the longer it will take for you to hear the echo. There are SHORT echoes. Hello!Hello! And LONG echoes. Hello!................ Hello! Sometimes a single echo can REPEAT. Then, you will hear more than one echo. HELLO!.... HELLO!.... HELLO!.... HELLO!
The FM9 can create echoes. It RECORDS a sound, waits a little while, and then PLAYS the sound again. This creates an echo. The FM9 can do a lot of really cool different kinds of echoes. It can make echo sounds that would never happen naturally anywhere in the entire universe.
Let's talk about some of the kinds of echoes that the FM9 can make.
The first kind uses what we call the DELAY BLOCK. To delay something means waiting a bit longer for it to happen. If you ask for a cookie and I say, "Wait five seconds!" that's a five second delay. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. COOKIE!!! But what if you ask for a cookie and I say "Wait one whole year!" That would be a REALLLLLLY LONG DELAY. The Delay Block in the FM9 can make an echo sound shorter than one second, all the way up to 8 whole seconds later. The Delay Block also has some special settings like making two different echoes at two different times. It can make the echoes REPEAT, and it even mix up the repeats between two different echoes. It can also make the echoes sound like they are coming from a special old-fashioned echo machine from a long time ago. Oh, one more thing....it can make an echo that sound BACKWARDS! Hello... ...olleH. The DELAY BLOCK is a lot of fun and it sounds GREAT.
The second kind of echo the FM9 can do uses something called the MULTI DELAY BLOCK. "Multi" means many, and yes, the Multi Delay can do not one, not two, but FOUR DIFFERENT ECHOES at the same time! Imagine clapping your hands and hearing the sound echo back to you it bounces off of four different walls. Some echoes might sound very quickly and others might take longer to be heard. The different echoes would seem come from different directions and soon sound would be bouncing from one wall to another. Wow, with so many echoes bouncing around, it can get hard to tell them apart. Everything can turn into a big wishy-washy sound that can be very fun to listen to. Of course, the Multidelay ALSO does some of the extra things we talked about in the plain old Delay block. It can add wobble, mix up the repeats, make old-fashioned echo machine sounds, and a lot more. The Multi Delay Block is more complicated but it sounds wonderful. You can just turn it on and not touch anything. I should mention that the Multi Delay is also very good at a sound called CHORUS, which is used to make one voice sound like many voices, but let's move on for now.
Phew! We've heard a lot of echoes. Let's review. The DELAY BLOCK can do one or two different echoes and is great at simple sounds. The MULTIDELAY BLOCK do four at the same time. Now....are you ready to get even bigger? More? Yes? MORE!!!! The FM9 also has a PLEX DELAY BLOCK which can do up to EIGHT different echoes at the same time.
The PLEX delay can produce a lot of echoes. Not only do you hear eight echoes, but every echo also echoes through every other echo. Wait? What? Yes, you heard that right. Every echo... also echoes... through every other echo. Soon, you will hear MILLIONS of echoes. So many that it becomes impossible to tell them apart, and it sounds BEAUTIFUL. Like the other types, the PLEX DELAY has some of the great extras like wobble, backwards echoes, and a lot more, but it also does something very unique and special. It can use something called PITCH SHIFT.
Let's talk about pitch. Imagine you have two different sized musical instruments, like a tiny little flute and a big, fat tuba. When you blow into the tiny flute, it makes a high-pitched sound, like a bird singing. Twee-twee-twee! This is because the flute is small. But when you play the big fat tuba, it makes a low-pitched sound, like a giant cow "Moo-moo-moo" That's because the tuba is big. Well, a PITCH SHIFT effect could make the tiny flute sound LOW like the tuba, or make a giant tuba sound HIGH like a flute. It's actually done with some really smart science, but to me, it sounds like magic.
So, back to our PLEX DELAY. Besides making millions of echoes, it can also change the sound of the echoes to have higher-pitch or lower-pitch. This can create high sounds like a shimmery crystal cloud floating all around you, or low sounds like gigantic mountain music deep under a dark ocean.
So the DELAY BLOCK and the MULTIDELAY BLOCK and the PLEX DELAY BLOCK are three different ways in the FM9 to produce many different kinds of echo sounds. The best way to understand how they sound is to play with them yourself. I noticed, by the way, that you didn't ask me about the MEGATAP DELAY, or the TEN TAP DELAY, or the echo sounds that can be made using the PITCH BLOCK. Would you like to learn more about these effects?
