Eventide BlackHole in public beta

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justin3am wrote:I just bought an Eventide Space stompbox and after checking out the beta, I will probably buy Blackhole.
Do you have any experience with the Strymon Bluesky stompbox? I've been wrestling between that and the Eventide Space for a while now. The Space is more versatile, but I really love the sound of the Bluesky shimmer and modulated reverbs, much more than what I've heard from the Space demos. I didn't even have the Valhalla plugins on my radar until now, so I'm going to go check those out as well. In a perfect world, I'd just buy everything!
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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MFXxx wrote:
zerocrossing wrote:
Blackinfinity wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoO5H_r_8UU

A video comparing the plugin vs the hardware. Is it only me who thinks the hardware sounds a lot better ???
What do you mean hardware? They're both hardware to me considering I'd have to buy let another iLok to use the plug in. :lol: F that. I took my money and bought a used Lexicon MPX1 for the cost of the plug plus dongle. SCREW YOU EVENTIDE. :hihi:

That said, I've turned the corner on the dongle front. I'm boycotting iLok 2 enabled software. I already shelled out money for something that does nothing for me at all, now they want more... why? Buy hardware, it sounds better. The example showed it pretty well. I hooked up my Lexicon last night and was blown away at how good it sounded. Sure, I still love Reflect, but this thing does so much and cost about as much as a plug in.
Interesting. I noticed a small difference but not a detrimental difference. Saying that the blackhole is something I like but do not need.

As for the anti iLok sentiments I wish all would put them to bed - if you dont like it good if you like them good. But put the flaming to bed please its tiresome, boring and unintelligent.

As for hardware vs software. I believe both have their place. So I guess you no longer desire to buy any more software or plugins for producing. Good for you real instruments, synths, mulitracks, reel to reels, mixing desks and outboards. $£$£$£$

I'd love to be able to afford all hardware. When I look at the number of emus' and plugins in the arsenal, I only wish I could afford hardware equivalents, let alone a property or place to hold it all :)

Now all you have to do is wait for Diva hardware (coming soon), Zebra, Synthmaster, Dune, Massive, Komplete, Waves and all the other devs to release all their software as hardware and you'll be happy :)

Nice thing with software if your pc fails it's an easy and relatively cheap fix. hardware failure - good luck :)

Personally I am looking forward to Eventids H series plugin....even if it's a handful of component algorithms I dont have 3-4K to spend on the hardware.

We look forward to hearing your review when you replace all your software with hardware :)

Peace
Oh, and btw, I'm not sure why you decided to make my post about hardware vs software. I clearly state I'm using both and enjoy using both. Use the tool that makes sense at the moment. I was just pointing out that very good used hardware could be found for the price of this plug in plus the cost of a new (even though you may already have one! :x ) dongle.

I could have just as easily pointed out that for the cost of the plug in with no dongle you could get 3 very capable and equally good sounding plug-ins from Valhalla and have much more flexibility. Better yet, for the same price, less the cost of the dongle, you could get Uhbik and get, what is it? 10? 10 different high quality effects with more on the way? :o

I know that $50 isn't much in the grand scheme of things. I know this because I already decided I'd pay that admission price. Now I'm getting asked to pay it yet again. If this is the first iLok you've purchased, just know that in a few years they will tell you you'll need to buy a new one, regardless as to how well your current one is working... and by working I mean not doing anything at all for you. I'm just saying that if you're thinking about one of the new Eventide plug ins, check out your dongleless competition. I think there are equally good things out there in both the hardware and software world. If we all decided not to buy iLoks, they'd stop selling them.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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justin3am wrote: As far as I'm concerned, Blackhole is a great special effect verb. I know Sean says that you can get close to this sound with Valhalla Shimmer but I kinda think it has more in common Ubermod.
Under the hood, Shimmer has more in common with Blackhole. Both are based on fairly simple structures, with a LOT of cascaded modulated diffusors (modulated allpass delays).

My guess is that this type of structure has been independently discovered many times over. Toraverb sounds like this sort of algorithm to my ears as well. It probably stems from having a system powerful enough to actually realize this sort of algorithm, as well as having ears that recognize the sound as a cool sound, even if it wasn't what you were intending.

My first experience with this sort of sound dates back to 2006. I had a new MacBook Pro, and was playing around with Supercollider 3 (which never ended up being as good as the OS9 SC2, but that is another rant). I figured out how to use do() loops to create cascades of allpass delays, figuring that if 4 allpasses in cascade made things sound smooth, 16 would sound WAY BETTER! It actually made things sound WAY WEIRDER. I filed this one in the back of my head, and revived it in 2009 to make a plugin for a few friends, EvilVerb. ValhallaShimmer stemmed out of this, except I had to figure out a LOT of SIMD optimization tricks in order to get the CPU usage down.

The other day, I was rereading Michael Gerzon's classic reverb theory papers from 1971 and 1972, and found this quote from his 1972 paper:

"In the monophonic case, Schroeder and Logan (ref. 2) have suggested that a number of monophonic units should be cascaded, each unit incorporating a delay of different length. This procedure maintains a flat frequency response, reduces the proportion of direct sound at the output, and helps to randomize the reverberation and increase the echo density. Unfortunately, it also tends to make the reverberation build up rather slowly and unnaturally in a 'Gaussian' fashion, and the need to prevent this fault means that not more than five simple units can be cascaded."

Gerzon was the Nostradamus of modern reverb algorithms. The only difference between what he wrote and the Shimmer/Blackhole algorithm is that the latter reverbs are going for the Gaussian fade in / fade out by design.

Sean Costello

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Despite the GUI I had to check out Valhalla SHimmer cause all of the buzz about it... I must say, I was very surprised, for modulated reverb it sounds quite impressive... I yet need more time to play around with it... with how transperent it is... etc.. Right now I did just enjoy how big and magestic every alechmy patch did sound with it..

One thing I do not understand is why the high cut is limited to 1500, I usually have 1800 with Lexicon Random Hall to get a more "open sound", these higher frequnseis and harmonics I miss somewhat because of the high cut filter..

I really like how the sounds are building up into big waves... but I really miss that Lexicon sound...

In a few months I will buy the H8000FW maybe it will change my perspective totally.. .

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Hey Everyone,

Dan from Eventide here. Glad to hear you guys are into Blackhole and I just wanted to make a couple comments.

I definitely understand why some people don't like ilok, and especially might feel burned by ilok2. We had a lot of discussion about this before deciding to release native plug-ins, and ultimately decided that requiring ilok2 was something we needed to do. However, because we don't want to put the burden of that decision on the customer, we've been running a program where if you don't have an ilok2 when you purchase an Eventide plug-in we'll throw one in for $11. I realize that's not the same as free, but we don't want it to be the thing that keeps you from checking out our plug-ins so we're willing to eat most of the cost.

With regards to the sound of the Blackhole Plug-in vs. the H8000 sound, we just updated the beta release on Thursday with (among other things) a preset that exactly matches the H8000 Blackhole preset (fittingly called, H8000 Blackhole). Zoomex did a great job with the video, but the parameter ranges in the plug-in are mapped a little bit differently than the H8000 so it's tough to get the same setting unless you can see the guts.

FInally, someone mentioned a problem with OSX 10.5. Sorry about that, it's fixed in the current installer that went on the website on Friday. In general we try to maintain compatibility with 3 point releases of Mac OSX, but we missed a bug with this one so thanks for helping us catch it.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the plug-in.

Thanks,
Dan

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I am liking this from the feel of the GUI and as an instrument, it's a grower and good to hear the improvements on the algos bravo. As much as I like their hardware my small pockets couldn't justify the cost of a H8000FW (as much as I'd like to next weeks lotterry numbers anyone). So I'm really buzzed about Eventides move into the native domain with their proven track record over the decades.

The current Beta 7 is glitching/overflow on a simple loop at the moment so still sketchy (Win7 64 Win7 64 bridged, jBrdige, RME FF800). Any price on this yet. Not sure how this compares to Shimmer, I like/own Vahallaroom. Lexicon and Tsar are still my fav's and Aether for those deep atmospherics.

There's some interesting effects going in some of the presets and to be honest a little bit of programming similar effects can be reached in other plugins...Im messing around with Valhallaroom, grabbing shimmer demo and other verbs for a comparisson. I've got to say there is a cleanness in Eventides sound that I personally like.

zerocrossing wrote:
MFXxx wrote: As for the anti iLok sentiments I wish all would put them to bed - if you dont like it good if you like them good. But put the flaming to bed please its tiresome, boring and unintelligent.


Well that's your ignorant opinion. My boring and unintelligent opinion says if I educate one person away from getting an iLok, my time was well spent. So I'd say at least my boring and unintelligent mind is trying to make things better for consumers, as opposed to you who's just a bore. :roll:

I think you take things too personally pal and label yourself way too easily, you have issues, maybe you prefer software that's unprotected & available freely from the web. The comments were purely aimed at pushing the ilok debate aside from the product, its incidental and nothing to do with the end result of the plugins sound. ;) Your post appears aggressive and shows an untasteful dislike towards the protection system and any developer who wishes to go down the route to protect their work from theft! You prefer 2nd hand hardware over buying a dongle for this piece of software we get it! Anyway lets agree to disagree and move on, I am sorry you took so much to heart :) peace

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deastman wrote:
justin3am wrote:I just bought an Eventide Space stompbox and after checking out the beta, I will probably buy Blackhole.
Do you have any experience with the Strymon Bluesky stompbox? I've been wrestling between that and the Eventide Space for a while now. The Space is more versatile, but I really love the sound of the Bluesky shimmer and modulated reverbs, much more than what I've heard from the Space demos. I didn't even have the Valhalla plugins on my radar until now, so I'm going to go check those out as well. In a perfect world, I'd just buy everything!
One of my co-workers has all the Strymon stomp boxes (I think he's friends with the person who programs the DSP) and I'd definitely say the BlueSky is in the same league as the Eventide stomp boxes. They just sound different.
The MIDI I/O and expression input are what really sold Space for me. I really like the concept of the HotSwitch as well. If you don't need that stuff, then I don't think you'll be disapointed with the BlueSky.

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DGillespie wrote:Hey Everyone,

Dan from Eventide here. Glad to hear you guys are into Blackhole and I just wanted to make a couple comments.

I definitely understand why some people don't like ilok, and especially might feel burned by ilok2. We had a lot of discussion about this before deciding to release native plug-ins, and ultimately decided that requiring ilok2 was something we needed to do. However, because we don't want to put the burden of that decision on the customer, we've been running a program where if you don't have an ilok2 when you purchase an Eventide plug-in we'll throw one in for $11. I realize that's not the same as free, but we don't want it to be the thing that keeps you from checking out our plug-ins so we're willing to eat most of the cost.

With regards to the sound of the Blackhole Plug-in vs. the H8000 sound, we just updated the beta release on Thursday with (among other things) a preset that exactly matches the H8000 Blackhole preset (fittingly called, H8000 Blackhole). Zoomex did a great job with the video, but the parameter ranges in the plug-in are mapped a little bit differently than the H8000 so it's tough to get the same setting unless you can see the guts.

FInally, someone mentioned a problem with OSX 10.5. Sorry about that, it's fixed in the current installer that went on the website on Friday. In general we try to maintain compatibility with 3 point releases of Mac OSX, but we missed a bug with this one so thanks for helping us catch it.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the plug-in.

Thanks,
Dan
Now you're talking! That at least feels to me like the burden of copy protection is being shared as opposed to having it placed firmly on the back of the consumer. I understand the need to protect what you develop (I'm in game development, so it's a common issue here too) but I also hate to feel like I'm being nickle and dimed especially when I already ponied up the scratch a while ago. So, I guess I'm in, though I wouldn't be able to demo it... I guess I'll just wait for audio demos.

Forget everything I said in previous posts. :oops: That's a very nice gesture.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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MFXxx wrote:I am liking this from the feel of the GUI and as an instrument, it's a grower and good to hear the improvements on the algos bravo. As much as I like their hardware my small pockets couldn't justify the cost of a H8000FW (as much as I'd like to next weeks lotterry numbers anyone). So I'm really buzzed about Eventides move into the native domain with their proven track record over the decades.

The current Beta 7 is glitching/overflow on a simple loop at the moment so still sketchy (Win7 64 Win7 64 bridged, jBrdige, RME FF800). Any price on this yet. Not sure how this compares to Shimmer, I like/own Vahallaroom. Lexicon and Tsar are still my fav's and Aether for those deep atmospherics.

There's some interesting effects going in some of the presets and to be honest a little bit of programming similar effects can be reached in other plugins...Im messing around with Valhallaroom, grabbing shimmer demo and other verbs for a comparisson. I've got to say there is a cleanness in Eventides sound that I personally like.

zerocrossing wrote:
MFXxx wrote: As for the anti iLok sentiments I wish all would put them to bed - if you dont like it good if you like them good. But put the flaming to bed please its tiresome, boring and unintelligent.


Well that's your ignorant opinion. My boring and unintelligent opinion says if I educate one person away from getting an iLok, my time was well spent. So I'd say at least my boring and unintelligent mind is trying to make things better for consumers, as opposed to you who's just a bore. :roll:

I think you take things too personally pal and label yourself way too easily, you have issues, maybe you prefer software that's unprotected & available freely from the web. The comments were purely aimed at pushing the ilok debate aside from the product, its incidental and nothing to do with the end result of the plugins sound. ;) Your post appears aggressive and shows an untasteful dislike towards the protection system and any developer who wishes to go down the route to protect their work from theft! You prefer 2nd hand hardware over buying a dongle for this piece of software we get it! Anyway lets agree to disagree and move on, I am sorry you took so much to heart :) peace
Member muted due to low reading comprehension.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

Post

DGillespie wrote:Hey Everyone,

Dan from Eventide here. Glad to hear you guys are into Blackhole and I just wanted to make a couple comments.

I definitely understand why some people don't like ilok, and especially might feel burned by ilok2. We had a lot of discussion about this before deciding to release native plug-ins, and ultimately decided that requiring ilok2 was something we needed to do. However, because we don't want to put the burden of that decision on the customer, we've been running a program where if you don't have an ilok2 when you purchase an Eventide plug-in we'll throw one in for $11. I realize that's not the same as free, but we don't want it to be the thing that keeps you from checking out our plug-ins so we're willing to eat most of the cost.

With regards to the sound of the Blackhole Plug-in vs. the H8000 sound, we just updated the beta release on Thursday with (among other things) a preset that exactly matches the H8000 Blackhole preset (fittingly called, H8000 Blackhole). Zoomex did a great job with the video, but the parameter ranges in the plug-in are mapped a little bit differently than the H8000 so it's tough to get the same setting unless you can see the guts.

FInally, someone mentioned a problem with OSX 10.5. Sorry about that, it's fixed in the current installer that went on the website on Friday. In general we try to maintain compatibility with 3 point releases of Mac OSX, but we missed a bug with this one so thanks for helping us catch it.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the plug-in.

Thanks,
Dan
Hey Dan,

will there be a Win7 64 bit version soon?

thanks,

Phil
Finally!

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They said on their forum all native plugs will be 64bit by the end of Feb if all goes well.

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I've never bought + will never buy something with iLok-Crap! I simply don't like that. They might be well protected, but if you examine their diffusion, it will teach you that not so many people use them.

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If there's anything I learned from this thread....if I want an iLok-less Blackhole, I buy Valhalla Shimmer.

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Hi Everyone,

We have a 64 bit Blackhole working on Mac and Windows but have run into some issues with the iLok protection. We've been working through these issues with PACE, but I don't have a solid date on the release, sorry.

Hopefully, once we sort these issues out, the other plug-ins should not be far behind.

Thanks,
Dan

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Here weeeeeee go again with that ilok crap thing :roll:

You guys never quit don't you. KVR should really have a sticky ilok-SUCKS! thread for all of you. I understand why some hate it, but this is getting annoying really, seeing plugin threads hijacked by ilok complains...

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