eatyourguitar wrote:delay_time = normal[A, Q]
where A is the average delay time and Q sets the maximum time variance in absolute value
i hate to be a nitpicking ass hat (or maybe i don't, who knows) but just say Q is the variance or standard deviation, not "absolute maximum variance", this terminology has no meaning. The normal distribution is well defined by only 2 parameters, mean and variance (standard deviation is the square root of the variance, sometimes people substitute one for the other, they contain the same information).
if you find a function in a math package like Normal(a,q) etc it means draw a random variable from a normal distribution with mean a and variance q (or more likely standard deviation q, but depending on the implementation....). these are well defined quantities. for example in octave you could code x = normrnd(a,q) and it will pull a random draw from a normal distribution with mean a and standard deviation q.
since the normal distribution spans from -inf to +inf (regardless of teh value for standard deviation), there is no "maximum time variance" if you are pulling a variable from it, it could be any value, but it is just very unlikely with the normal distribution that it will be more than a few standard deviations away.
you can get octave for free and try it out and see. just keep drawing random normal variables then plot the data, as variance increases, spread from the mean is more likely, but variance does not put a maximum on how far that will be. you can try it yourself and see. don't take my word for it.