Delay Time Calculator
Enter your song's tempo and get every note value in milliseconds — straight, dotted, and triplet — ready to dial into any delay, reverb, compressor release, or LFO. Perfect for syncing hardware and plugins that don't have tap tempo or host sync.
Quarter note at 120 BPM = 500 ms (60,000 ÷ 120)
Delay times at 120 BPM (ms)
| Note | Straight | Dotted (×1.5) | Triplet (×2/3) | LFO (Hz) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1/1 | 2,000 | 3,000 | 1,333.33 | 0.5 |
| 1/2 | 1,000 | 1,500 | 666.67 | 1 |
| 1/4 | 500 | 750 | 333.33 | 2 |
| 1/8 | 250 | 375 | 166.67 | 4 |
| 1/16 | 125 | 187.5 | 83.33 | 8 |
| 1/32 | 62.5 | 93.75 | 41.67 | 16 |
| 1/64 | 31.25 | 46.88 | 20.83 | 32 |
Values are in milliseconds; hover a row to highlight it, click a number to select it for copying.
🎛 Reverb suggestions at 120 BPM
- Pre-delay: ≈ 31.25 ms (1/64 note) for a roomy feel, or 15.63 ms (1/128 note) to keep it tight — enough to separate the dry transient from the tail.
- Decay time: to taste, but ≈ 2,000 ms (1 bar) is a solid musical starting point — shorten if the mix gets muddy.
The 60,000 ÷ BPM formula
A minute has 60,000 milliseconds, so one beat — a quarter note — lasts 60,000 ÷ BPM milliseconds. Every other value scales from there: double it for a half note, halve it for an eighth, halve again for a sixteenth. Dotted notes are 1.5 × the straight value; triplets are 2/3 of it.
Worked example at 120 BPM: the quarter note is 60,000 ÷ 120 = 500 ms, the eighth note is 250 ms, and the dotted eighth is 250 × 1.5 = 375 ms — the classic U2-style rhythmic delay that turns simple picked lines into cascading patterns. The eighth-note triplet at the same tempo is 250 × 2/3 ≈ 166.67 ms, which gives delays a shuffling, swung feel instead of the straight echo.
The Hz column uses rate = 1000 ÷ ms, converting the same note lengths into cycles per second for free-running LFOs — so a tremolo, auto-pan, or filter wobble can lock to the groove even when the plugin has no sync switch.
Dotted vs triplet delays — when to use which
Straight delays (quarter, eighth, sixteenth) reinforce the existing groove — safe, supportive, and sometimes invisible. Dotted delays land between the beats and create syncopation: the dotted eighth is the go-to for guitars and synth arps because the repeats weave a new rhythm against the pulse. Triplet delays impose a swung, rolling feel — great for turning a straight vocal or piano line into something loose, and the natural choice in shuffle or 6/8 material where straight repeats would fight the groove.
A useful mixing trick is combining one straight and one dotted delay on the same source (say, a quarter at 500 ms and a dotted eighth at 375 ms at 120 BPM) panned apart — the repeats interlock into a wide ping-pong pattern that never doubles up.
Syncing hardware without tap tempo
Older rack units, pedals, and many synth LFOs only offer a raw ms or Hz control. Read the value from the table and enter it directly; if the unit's maximum time is shorter than the value you want, drop to the next subdivision — half the time still sits on the grid. Don't know the tempo of the track you're playing along with? Tap it out with the BPM counter first, then bring the number back here.