KVR Audio

Muzik 4 Machines · Post by **Muzik 4 Machines** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 8:50 am

at least 2 of those (if not 4) are jsut spam from roland/boss marketting...;(

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 12:14 pm

If anyone else still cares, I've spent the weekend comparing the new pedal with an original re-201 and they're much closer than I expected them to be. The pedal is freakishly quiet if you're used to the original and, initially at least, this led me to doubt its veracity. But once I started doing actual comparisons (and routing some of the original's noise to the pedal's input), it quickly became clear to me that this is not another half-arsed cash-in. For most settings I had to listen quite carefully to tell them apart. As with most digital models things do start coming apart when you push things (extreme oscillation produces a decidely non-analogue harshness), but since I like what this sounds like, it didn't bother me. It's definitely possible to passably reproduce the original saturation effect provided you ride the intensity and echo volume controls. even the spring reverb sim is much better than I'd expected it was going to be. I have no doubt that the golden ear brigade will proclaim that the pedal sounds nothing like the original, but to my ears and needs, having actually compared the two, it's definitely close enough.

p.s. I'm hoping to get my hands on a timefactor this week. I'll report back later as to which one I ended up getting...

stk · Post by **stk** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 12:50 pm

suthnear, thanks for the status report - I for one appreciate it, as my 201 is ageing and I can't really justify the expense of servicing or/and replacement.

It's along shot, but would you care to upload any samples of this pedal? I'm specifically interested in self-oscillation and the spring 'verb.

cheers /sk

Sickle · Post by **Sickle** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 1:19 pm

Yep, let's hear it!

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 2:20 pm

Yes, sound clips please. Thanks for the info suthnear. Be interesting to see whether you choose the Roland or Eventide delay.

There's a bunch of sound clips and opinions on Timefactor that can be found over here:

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showth ... p?t=280629

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 6:31 pm

the original's tape is pretty knackered so 1:1 comparisons are probably out of the question but I'll record a bunch of typical-ish samples now and post them either later or tomorrow.

re: timefactor - yeah, I listened to those samples but they're kind of typical guitar-y stuff. I'm really hoping to get one while I still have the boss...

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 7:08 pm

suthnear wrote:I listened to those samples but they're kind of typical guitar-y stuff

Yeah, I was a little disappointed there only guitar examples, too. It's tough finding non-guitar examples of that kind of gear, since guitarists seem to make up the bulk of the market.

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 8:26 pm

I did a few basic comparisons twixt old and new:

http://stashbox.org/35556/echotest.zip

Sorry there aren't more but it's the end of the weekend and the roland has been acting up - it's taken quite a few passes to get passable delays out of it. Also, I inadvertantly used a patch on my nord that has a velocity sensitive filter so the signals going into the devices aren't quite the same for most of them (I recorded the midi once I realised this but I wasn't going to go back and redo the ones I'd already done). Also, the time ranges for the repeat rate are not the same on the two units I have and I wasn't too anal about ensuring that boss exactly matched the roland.

Hopefully you will hear how the tape retains the signal even while it degrades it in a way that the digital does not. It's pretty close, though, and hopefully this comes through as well. I included a degenerate example of what happens when you push the intensity too hard on the boss. It is possible to avoid this by playing with the various controls, but I thought it would be useful to include this as a very obvious example of how the two differ.

I'll do some more boss only examples tomorrow that highlight where I think it sounds good both as an emu and in its own right. If any of you have any specific requests insofar as source signals (including your own samples) or particular settings or effects, please post and I'll do my best to accommodate...

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 8:28 pm

p.s. I'll start a similar thread as soon as I get the timefactor so that there is a place to put samples, get suggestions, etc

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:08 am

The delay on the boss isn't bad. An opportunity I think they missed though is that they seem to have made a Space Echo if it was working perfectly, but a lot of the charm comes in when it doesn't work perfectly.

Not a big fan of the Boss reverb in that clip, though.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:39 am

Based on those samples, I would say it sounds about as much like the real Space Echo as any digital delay with a bit of saturation and filtering would. The cool thing about a tape delay is when you push it into the extremes, and its obvious that the Boss entirely fails in this respect.

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 6:26 am

Haha. I knew I was going to regret making a positive post about a recent roland product. I spent some time making more examples last night and I have to say I'm much less impressed. The digital clipping comes in far too early which means that you really have to ride the intensity or volume knob so you basically lose the compression/saturation effect that characterises the space echo sound. I quite like the sound when it's actually clipping but I don't like the transition from non-clipping to clipping at all. Also, I hadn't really messed around with the multi-head settings too much (because of the difficulties with the original space echo) but there's this irritating chorus-y type effect going on when you use more than one head at a time. I'll put up the additional samples I made later.

Sorry if I misled anyone. I can only think that I was so expecting this to be crap that I gave it too much credit. So I don't think I'll be keeping this one. I hope the eventide is better because I really need a hardware delay unit...

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:26 pm

A few more samples:

http://stashbox.org/35699/echotest2.zip
http://stashbox.org/35701/echotest3.zip

The first link holds the shorter samples, the second a few longer ones. The ones with 'multi' in the titles clearly demonstrate the weird phasing/chorus effect when multiple heads are used. I'm pretty disappointed given that only yesterday I thought it would do the trick. Still, it's better than buyer's remorse...

Does anyone have any experience with having a space echo repaired? Is it relatively straight-forward or is it one of those devices that used obscure parts that can no longer be obtained?

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 2:24 pm

Final verdict: not a buy. Although I like the basic sound, the fact that it clips so easily is deeply annoying (especially since ZioKiller's 201 emu vst doesn't). And while I could even live with this, the horrible phasing sound in multi-head turned out to be a deal breaker for me. I really couldn't buy the unit and not use half of the available positions. btw, speaking of positions, tap is local - it only lasts as long as you stay on one position. As soon as you switch positions, you lose the tempo you've tapped in.

ericj23 · Post by **ericj23** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 2:33 pm

i so wanted this to be good - oh well - off to lust after the real thing on ebay

BOSS RE-201 pedal = bleh...