Can someone explain ducking?

Say you want a nice, fat delay with high feedback (i.e. goes on and on for a long time) for a solo or something. WHILE you are playing notes the delay can really gunk up the sound and make it a mess - but if you use ducking, then while you are playing, the delay signal is turned down, so it is most prominent during breaks in your playing. Make sense?

The idea is that you're having the effect only on the attack or the tail of your guitar signal.

One use I've found is, on a rig with lots of delay/reverb, having a ducked octave-up effect. You play a chord, and as it rings out the octave-up quietly starts to blend in with your delay repeats. Similar to the "shimmer" or "crystal" setting on some fancy delay pedals.

I also use the Ducking parameter in reverse for a big slap back effect I do with a wammy pedal. Turn the Ducking to the left instead of the right and the effect will come out when you play harder instead of at the end of a passage. Works great, I hit harder on the note I want the delay on, raise the pitch 2 octaves with the wammy and let her ring out. Took some playing around to get it right but it's pretty slick.

In live sound the term (ducking) means to reduce volume of one thing so another can be heard. An example would be the music is playing and the Master of ceremonies has an announcement ... The music is ducked so the MC can be heard. Note: the overal output volume ( master volume ) is uneffected and the MC is now the loudest channel all others are reduced as if the entire group is pulled down. His signal can trigger the ducking rather than physically having to reduce all channels or reduce a group. Hope this explains the basic concept of ducking and traditionally how it is used.

Not near my KPA it's on the road to a show for tonight but if I remember I set the ducking about -.8 to the left. I also put the wammy after the stack section so I could increase the Volume of the effect to get a volume boost, not just a gain increase. The Delay only kicks in when the wammy increases the volume enough. An easier way to do this would be to have the expression pedal increase delay mix as well as run the wammy pedal, my foot controller only runs one cc at a time the way I use it.

I've always used the ducking delay on all my rigs. Works great on lead presets. Just got my Krmper last week so I haven't even made it to delays yet but glad to know it has the feature. This unit just keeps getting better and better