Eventide Blackhole Immersive

[equisonus]

I produce mostly dark ambient and the regular Blackhole is in almost every recording, it is just so smooth and beautiful sounding

That’s really nice to hear. Probably the immersive version with the improvements to its stereo algorithms will be helpful in your music production.

[ChamomileShark]

I've got both.

I think it says in the blurb that the Micropitch has also been rebuilt. I compared the "H3000 Micropitch" presets on one sound and they sound different. The Immersive one sounded clearer with both the EQ on and off. Of course they may have tweaked the actual preset between the two different versions.

[Ou_Tis]

Wait so Blackhole Immersive isn't just a surround version of Blackhole? It's a better smoother lushier version of blackhole even in stereo? And the company doesn't even advertise about it? Or is it really just a surround version of blackhole...?

Someone on VI Control claims Eventide told them that the algorithm is the same.

But original Blackhole sums to mono before applying the reverb. And Immersive has more EQ options.

[Ou_Tis]

They did change the modulation algorithm in Immersive to make it smoother.

[Chauzou]

Ok. I did some testing on this thing in stereo, I pitted it against Blackhole and Valhalla Supermassive.

First I had to turn the crossfeed knob all the way down to zero, cause with crossfeed on, it's already a whole new reverb plugin, that alone may or may not be justification for upgrading from your regular BH.
But now with crossfeed off, the sound of BH Immersive still has more depth and width than Blackhole, though retains the same character. So clearly, crossfeed isn't the only thing going on here.

With this impression that BHI is wider, I fired up a correlation meter. Conclusion is clear. Regular Blackhole stays in the green to yellow area, going further red only with loud lower frequencies inputs. On the other hand, BH Immersive has the correlation meter dancing back and forth from green to red very quickly, at any frequency input. Clearly, even in stereo BH Immersive has a wider soundfield than Blackhole. This has a big impact on the perception of quality in the sound. Now I am not saying this is the only thing going on here, but it is definitly going on.

To verify this further, I loaded up Valhalla Supermassive, not for reverb tail comparison, but because Supermassive has a width knob on the bottom left. Well, from my ears and from looking at the correlation meter, BH sound is similar in width to Supermassive's sound with width knob set to 80, or -80. BH Immersive's sound is similar to Supermassive with width set to 100 (or -100).

[Chauzou]

And yes Blackhole in freeze mode goes to mono full right green in correlation meter, (which is a shame really) while BH Immersive dances across the whole green-red spectrum in freeze mode.
To be honest I don't like the sound of freeze mode in BH Immersive even if it's stereo. Too harsh, too artificial.

[idoru97214]

I got immersive yesterday, but it's crashing Bitwig 2.5 beta in Win 11. Sad. It sounded great for a second though!

[tactile_coast]

I got immersive yesterday, but it's crashing Bitwig 2.5 beta in Win 11. Sad. It sounded great for a second though!

Fellow Bitwig 5.2 Beta in Win 11 user here and Immersive is running just fine. Maybe try reinstalling it?

[billcarroll]

Bitwig 5.2 beta 2 and Blackhole Immersive working with no crashes on Mac.

[vitocorleone123]

Ok. I did some testing on this thing in stereo, I pitted it against Blackhole and Valhalla Supermassive.

First I had to turn the crossfeed knob all the way down to zero, cause with crossfeed on, it's already a whole new reverb plugin, that alone may or may not be justification for upgrading from your regular BH.
But now with crossfeed off, the sound of BH Immersive still has more depth and width than Blackhole, though retains the same character. So clearly, crossfeed isn't the only thing going on here.

With this impression that BHI is wider, I fired up a correlation meter. Conclusion is clear. Regular Blackhole stays in the green to yellow area, going further red only with loud lower frequencies inputs. On the other hand, BH Immersive has the correlation meter dancing back and forth from green to red very quickly, at any frequency input. Clearly, even in stereo BH Immersive has a wider soundfield than Blackhole. This has a big impact on the perception of quality in the sound. Now I am not saying this is the only thing going on here, but it is definitly going on.

To verify this further, I loaded up Valhalla Supermassive, not for reverb tail comparison, but because Supermassive has a width knob on the bottom left. Well, from my ears and from looking at the correlation meter, BH sound is similar in width to Supermassive's sound with width knob set to 80, or -80. BH Immersive's sound is similar to Supermassive with width set to 100 (or -100).

Supermassive may have mono summing happening at some point, because it doesn't originate echoes from left or right like Blackhole Immersive and some other "true stereo" reverbs I have. Of course, sometimes you don't want a wide reverb....

[Gam456]

I'm so weak. I couldn't resist with the new crossgrade offer.
Damn, it's a new dimension.

[bmanic]

I'm really tempted to crossgrade to the immersive version of Blackhole. Anybody know a good youtube video with tons of sound examples comparing the old vs the new? Though I guess I could always demo it myself.. hmm..

[Manuel_M]

Unfortunately I know of no good YouTube videos or comparisons with the stereo version.
Does anyone know if the current crossgrade prices are time-limited offers or will it stay at this price?

[AtomOfScent]

I'm really tempted to crossgrade to the immersive version of Blackhole. Anybody know a good youtube video with tons of sound examples comparing the old vs the new? Though I guess I could always demo it myself.. hmm..

You really should. It's noticeably improved, even if you never never touch the EQ and only use stereo.

Here's a couple quotes from the Eventide developer on the GS thread.

One audible distinction is in how Freeze works. In the H9 plugin, the image collapses to mono; in the Immersive version, you can control if the frozen stereo image stays independently spatialized or mixes and changes over time... and you can do this dynamically in real time. This is part of what I mean when I say that the Immersive line is totally and fundamentally rethought from the ground-up in terms of how sound operates in three spatial dimensions; this is at odds with how the H9 Blackhole fundamentally approaches reverb. Another sonic distinction is that in Immersive you can dynamically change the Gravity knob and see no appreciable change in energy whereas in the H9 plugin there is slight growth or attenuation in the reverb energy when you change Gravity rapidly. The modulation section has been overhauled in Immersive as well - there is smoother and more accurate modulation, which changes the character of the modal and echo densities of the reverb.

I thought about this over the weekend, and there is another important distinction between Blackhole Immersive in stereo and the H9 Blackhole plug-in. Because of the changes we made to the algorithmic structure, we were able to break out Pre Delay and Loop Delay into two separate controls on Blackhole Immersive. In the H9 plug-in, there is a singular Predelay knob which controls all delay (related to - but not the same as - Pre Delay and Loop Delay from Immersive) in the structure.

This is a subtler quirk of the Immersive algorithm, but having independent Pre Delay and Loop Delay controls opens up a large swathe of sounds. Moving the Loop Delay to higher values than Predelay allows control over time in echo density growth. This allows for a different reverb characteristic that blooms and fades in a manner that nudges sound closer to what happens in an actual room (although I wouldn't necessarily call it realistic). It can also help to break up or induce more resonant and combing structures by respectively increasing or decreasing Loop Delay. In this way, Pre Delay can be used as a more traditional production control to delay the onset of when the reverb tail starts to hit. It's a very flexible layer of control, especially at smaller Size values.

[idoru97214]

I got immersive yesterday, but it's crashing Bitwig 2.5 beta in Win 11. Sad. It sounded great for a second though!

Fellow Bitwig 5.2 Beta in Win 11 user here and Immersive is running just fine. Maybe try reinstalling it?

That's good to hear. I managed to get it working as a patch in BC patchwork. I'll try to reinstall as well. It really does sound great. Worth the $50 to me easy.