Last Updated on October 25, 2017 by IDS Team
Is it just me or does it seem like industry titans, Eventide, are underestimated when it comes to plugins? I belong to a quite a few audio forums and haven’t seen a lot of threads mentioning Eventide plugins. This article intends to shed some light on a few of their most top shelf plugins, including those that I own and use regularly in my tracks.
UltraTap
Let’s start out with their most recent release, UltraTap. Derived from their ever-popular guitar stompbox, the H9 Harmonizer, UltraTap is a multi-tap delay line effect capable of a generous range of effects. You can get up to 3 seconds of delay with 1 to 64 taps during that time. Delay taps can either be sync’d to your DAW tempo or done manually. With the TEMPO button set to off, tapping can be used to adjust delay parameter values which will be displayed in milliseconds or Hz. Pre-delay gives you up to 2 seconds before the delay taps start. SPREAD and TAPER knobs allow you to create rhythmic, evolving or swelling type of delays. While SLURM and CHOP knobs give the effect of either smearing the taps or creating glitch types of delay taps. The TAPER knob controls the fade of the taps.
All of the presets from the H9 have been converted over to the plugin along with newly created factory and artist presets, 150 presets in total. UltraTap is available for PC and MAC in VST, AU and AAX Native formats.
H3000 Factory
Who can forget the legendary H3000 Ultra-Harmonizer? Well, the H3000 Factory, now available in VST, AU and AAX Native format, is essentially a direct 1-1 version of the original TDM version which has been out for quite a while. The only differences seem to be that the LED meters (top left) are now colored, whereas on the TDM version they’re white, and the keypad had a graphical representation on the TDM version and is now they’re only for aesthetics and have no functionality whatsoever.
That said, this plugin makes just about any audio source sound better. It’s marketed as a harmonizer, but is very adept at doing delays, pitch-shifting, filtering, LFOs, reverbs, envelope following and amplitude modulation. Everything from simple reverbs and delays to off the chart percussive and glitched types of sounds can be achieved. It all depends on how deep you want to delve into the architecture.
The H3000 Factory features an astounding 450 presets including 100 new artist presets and 100 original presets from the H3000. All delays and LFOs can be locked to your DAW tempo. They can also be looped and offer a low pass filter. The filters are selectable band pass, high pass and low pass, with variable Q and can be swept and modulated. At $349, it’s not the most affordable plugin, but is certainly worth the investment. Simply put, this one feature laden plugin could render several of your current plugins obsolete.
2016 Stereo Room
The 2016 Stereo Room plug-in is based off of Eventide’s SP2016 rackmount unit released in 1981 and was designed to simulate a great sounding room. The reverb is warm and natural sounding as a whole, but does offer comprehensive controls for easy tailoring of your reverb sound.
As an owner, my favorite parameter is the Position knob which you can use to push the signal to the front or rear of the virtual room. This makes it easier to get things to sit in the mix better. The Diffusion knob is used to add more character to the room, turning it to a high setting can generate interesting textures and really smear the signal. To the far right, the EQ block uses 2 parametric EQ bands, High and Low, to further sculpt the room sound. The high band never sounds piercing, even at high frequencies with the gain turned up moderately. The CPU hit is low, so you have the freedom to use several instances without issue even on computers with meager specs.
The plug-in also features some great hand crafted presets by the likes of Joe Chiccarelli, Dave Pensado and George Massenburg. It’s available for Windows and MAC in 32 and 64 bit versions. Download the demo and try it out.
GET 2016 STEREO ROOM FOR THE BEST PRICE
UltraChannel
UltraChannel is a channel-strip plugin that has an input/output section, phase reverse, gate, compressor, O-pressor (an emulation of their hardware O-pressor unit), a 5-band parametric EQ, a micro pitch shift and a stereo delay effect. It also features Eventide’s trademark FlexiPath technology that enables you to reorder the signal paths of the top level components via drag and drop. All of the individual circuits can be turned on/off, which is great for saving CPU cycles.
The compressor features saturation, a de-esser and adjustable knee parameters. Both the compressor and O-pressor offer sidechain and make-up gain controls. Micro Pitch Shift runs in parallel with the stereo delays and the delays can be fed back into any of the other modules. I found this to be a very flexible channel-strip with added features not usually found on channel-strip plugins and use it quite often for various tasks in my mix. I’d like to see the CPU usage improved on it as using more than one instance is immediately noticeable. But all in all, I definitely recommend it.
GET ULTRACHANNEL FOR THE BEST PRICE
Blackhole
Last but not least. One of the most beautiful granular-type reverbs taken from Eventide’s famous Space Reverb pedal. Used on thousands of tracks as a goto reverb for creating a beutifully sounding ambience.
As Eventide describes the plugin: “Most reverbs are earth-bound and constrained by the physics of the real world. Our Blackhole reverb breaks the rules by allowing you to create virtual spaces that could never exist in reality (at least the one we inhabit). At large sizes, its soft attack and lingering, harmonic tails allows it to really shine on guitars, strings and pads. At small sizes those very same qualities can add an angelic sheen to vocals or turn a simple drum track into an otherworldy rhythm section.”
- Incredibly easy to use with over 50 presets; many created by Eventide artists.
- Ability to create extremely musical effects useful for highlighting key instruments.
- Supernatural settings for abstract spatial effects and drones.
- Subtle settings for ambient washes and track highlighting.
- Unique “Gravity” control reverses the arrow of time by inverting the reverb’s decay.
- Kill Switch mutes the input so you only hear the reverb. This makes for some incredible effects when automated.
- Mix Lock allows for scrolling through presets or settings while keeping the wet/dry mix constant.
- Fully flexible mono and stereo options. Bring new realms of stereo imaging to mono instruments.
- Innovative Ribbon and Hot Switch allow for changing any combination of parameters simultaneously
