BPM to Milliseconds Chart

How to read this chart

Each row is a tempo, in beats per minute (BPM), running from 40 BPM up to 208 BPM in steps of 4 — 43 rows in total. Each column is a note value, from a whole note (1/1) down through quarters, eighths and sixteenths to the very short values used for pre-delay. The number where a row and a column meet is that note value's length in milliseconds at that tempo. Everything on the chart comes from one division: a quarter note lasts 60,000 ÷ BPM milliseconds, and every other value is a fraction or multiple of it.

Reading a value takes seconds. Say your track runs at 120 BPM and you want a quarter-note delay: find the 120 row, run across to the 1/4 column, and read 500 ms. An eighth note at the same tempo is 250 ms, a sixteenth is 125 ms, and a whole note stretches to 2000 ms. If you only need one tempo at a time — with dotted, triplet and hertz figures alongside — the delay calculator shows the same grid for a single BPM you type or tap in.

Dotted and triplet quarter notes

Next to the plain quarter-note column sit its two variations, because quarter-note echoes are the ones producers vary most. A dotted quarter lasts half as long again — the plain value multiplied by 1.5 — so at 120 BPM it reads 750 ms instead of 500 ms. That extra half beat pushes the echo off the straight grid and gives a groove its bounce. A triplet quarter squeezes three notes into the time of two, so it lasts two-thirds as long: 333.33 ms at 120 BPM. Triplet echoes sit against the beat rather than on it, which is why they feel like they are swinging or rushing forward. The same multipliers apply to any note value — dotted is always × 1.5, triplet is always × 2/3 — and the combined reverb and delay calculator on the home page works them out for every note value at your exact tempo.

Using the chart with a plugin that lacks tempo sync

Plenty of older delays, hardware units and free plugins have no tempo-sync button — just a time knob or a number field. That is exactly who this chart is for. Read the millisecond value for the note value you want and type it straight into the plugin's delay time or pre-delay field. If the field asks for seconds instead, divide by 1,000: 500 ms is 0.5 seconds, and 468.75 ms is 0.46875 seconds. If the unit only has a knob, turn it until the display lands on or near the chart value; being a few milliseconds out on a long echo is inaudible, though short pre-delays are worth typing exactly when the plugin allows it. And if you do not know your song's tempo in the first place, tap it out on the BPM calculator, then come back to that row of the chart.

Print it for the studio wall

The print button above the chart produces a clean, ink-friendly copy with the page decoration stripped out. Printed once and pinned near your monitors, the chart answers the everyday questions — quarter, eighth, dotted quarter at the tempo you are mixing — without opening a browser tab or breaking your flow mid-session. Most producers end up consulting a handful of rows again and again, so a wall copy earns its space quickly.

Popular tempos

A few rows do most of the work. 120 BPM is the classic reference tempo — it is also the default in many DAWs — and its numbers are the ones worth memorizing: a quarter note is 500 ms, an eighth is 250 ms, a dotted quarter is 750 ms and a sixteenth is 125 ms. Because 500 ms divides so cleanly, 120 BPM is the tempo to sanity-check any plugin against.

128 BPM, a staple of dance music, gives a quarter note of 468.75 ms and an eighth of 234.38 ms — less tidy, and exactly the kind of row a printed chart saves you from working out. 100 BPM lands on a round 600 ms quarter and a 300 ms eighth. 140 BPM shortens the quarter to 428.57 ms and the eighth to 214.29 ms, while slower material at 90 BPM stretches the quarter to 666.67 ms, where dotted-quarter echoes at 1000 ms become a full second long. Whatever tempo you are working at, the home page tool turns the same figures into complete reverb settings — pre-delay, decay and total time — for that BPM.

Limitations

Two honest limits. First, rounding: chart values are rounded to two decimal places with trailing zeros trimmed, so a value shown as 984.38 ms is exact to within a hundredth of a millisecond — far finer than any plugin knob or human ear can resolve. Second, range and steps: the chart covers 40 to 208 BPM in steps of 4 so it stays one readable, printable page. Tempos below 40 BPM are rare outside drone and film work, and above 208 BPM the note values shrink toward pre-delay territory anyway. If your tempo falls between rows — 122 BPM, say — the rows either side bracket it, but for the exact figure use the reverb and delay calculator on the home page, which accepts any tempo inside the same 40 to 208 range.

One more thing the chart cannot do: it cannot tell you which value will sound right. Tempo-synced times keep echoes and tails locked to the groove, but the best setting still depends on the density of the track and the sound you are after. Treat the chart as accurate starting points, then adjust by ear.

Frequently asked questions