Choice of Delay Lengths

Following Schroeder's original insight, the delay line lengths in an FDN ($M_i$ in Fig. 2.6) are typically chosen to be mutually prime. That is, their prime factorizations contain no common factors. This rule maximizes the number of samples that the lossless reverberator prototype must be run before the impulse response repeats.

The delay lengths $M_i$ should be chosen to ensure a sufficiently high mode density in all frequency bands. An insufficient mode density can be heard as ``ringing tones'' or an uneven amplitude modulation in the late reverberation impulse response.