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Post by thehightenor on Jun 4, 2024 4:28:00 GMT -6
I loved the PCM 70. I will check this link, thanks. |
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Post by chessparov on Jun 4, 2024 9:21:13 GMT -6
I kinda like the Tsar 1. But speaking of gritty and shitty I still have my Ensoniq DP4 from what, 1993? Gathering dust. Hasn’t been hooked up in at least a decade. I’m sure the caps are all dried out. I don’t know what to do with it. I hate just throwing stuff in the dumpster but assuming it still functions is it good for anything more than a doorstop? Cheers, Geoff You should sell it to a French House enthusiast. Recently I sold a mint French WWII rifle. Got a good price. You see it was... Only dropped once. But never used. Chris |
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Post by seawell on Jun 4, 2024 9:41:05 GMT -6
I loved the PCM 70. I will check this link, thanks. Yeah give it a demo and see what you think. It's intended to be a 480 but I did a big shootout recently A/Bing plug-ins to my outboard FX and it was the closest I could get to match some of my favorite PCM 70 settings. I was doing a lot of work on the laptop, prepping mixes while at my kids' sports practices and was looking for the closest plug-in approximations to have as placeholders there until mix time when I was back in the studio with the hardware. I tried all the usual heavy hitters, UAD, Relab, etc.. but HD Cart was the winner for me. |
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Post by LazyOldSun on Jun 4, 2024 14:33:52 GMT -6
Yes, everyone's idea of "cool" is very different haha! There are a lot of good mono and stereo spring reverbs and I think, while there are some decent spring reverb plugins, that's a hard sound for software to reproduce. Things like the AKG BX10 and above or the MicMix/Audioscape XL-305/XL-305R are a whole other thing entirely....but an Orban 111B/Furman/Tapco/Demeter/ValVerb/Fostex/Tascam/Vesta Fire are all really good and useful. Similar to some of those later units, I get very good use out of an old BK Butler/Tube works RT-921. Stereo with 12 springs and eq. Like everything else, they seem to have jumped in price. |
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Post by Dan on Jun 7, 2024 8:59:26 GMT -6
Yep and the algorithms were tuned for the old converters and primitive fixed point dsps. The ported algorithms to modern cpus don’t sound as good as the pcm 60 and 70, they would have to be tweaked or coded to have the same spatial effects or so that the modern cpu runs the algorithms with the noise and distortion of the primitive dsp chips. The algorithm ports (UAD Lexicon, UAD and PSP EMT. PSP Lexicon delays), convolutions (wave alchemy and bettermaker) and black box recreations (ddmf emt, relab, etc) don’t seem to bother and want a lot of money when you can just get something new. Yeah the SP2016 or 2445 on fire sale is cool but none of the recreations will give you the dark 80s movie dialogue sound or the exact every ballad ever random hall and they want to charge you a couple hundred bucks to not give you what you want. My view is buy the real box or use something else. Tsar-1, Sonsig Rev-A, and Megaverb so much better than the recreations to me. Can you give an example of the dark 80s movie dialogue sound? I love that kind of thing. whatever got put on Patrick Stewart’s ADR in Star Trek. Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune and Dead Ringers. Pinhead in Hellraiser I and II. Hellraiser III has a longer sounding, more audible reverb. Maybe a cleaner unit (480 instead of a 224 or ams?) that lets the longer tails through with less distortion but it’s still dark. The insane analog and digital clipping, noise, and truncation from the primitive chips makes the tails seem shorter and reverb sends duller but it doesn’t pin back. Think pro tools tdm sound but millions of times worse. Think hardware sends in the daw to cleanish gear without say cleaner than Jensen transformers that only appear to have more depth than analog because ignorant to very advanced philosophy of math end users aren’t using dither to hit their modern converters that are linear to their noise floor and analog citcuits so the floating point daw truncating gets the fixed sample values slightly wrong while Dithering makes a pass through sound like just adding minute super low level harmonic distortion and a dc filter if the circuits are any good. Frequently they are not. Then there are the poor mixed phase converters that sound pretty similar to hitting a “clean” tape deck calibrated so that the main sound change is phase shift. Anyway you’re not going to be able to get this sound other than some old hardware box and the pcm 60 and 70 and alesis midiverb II are some of the easiest options and least likely to break. The less complex the better. The emulated ones ones that emulate the crap front and back ends (circuits and converter chips) like the updated sp2016 (it sounds really good because they updated it 3x already: the princeton 2016 box, the og plug, and the great current one but eventide has no chorusing so less angelic special effect), relab lx480 with all the lofi crap on sounds better than the uad, the ams rmx hardware port of the uad port sounds better than the uad because they threw in more lofi and it also used to be like double the price too of the uad, who are going full waves but without the utility plugs like renaissance and clarity or any modern vsti synths, sims, and critical lack of weird crap. You cannot even use the UAD Helios as a pedal. Waves modeled a bss dpr-402 and the Kramer tape machine. Plugin Alliance has the ex Elysia guy and Roger Schultz building crazy one off stuff just to model it. Anyways, you’re not going to be happy with them because they are an ersatz. Buy the real box or use something else that’s modern and lofi. Mangledverb, Megaverb, Tai Chi are all great. The cleaned up Lexicon type verbs from Softube (Tsar), Relab (Sonsig Rev-A), Lexicon themselves (PCM Native prob a goner after Samsung bought Harman), and Michael Carnes (Exponential audio is still there in Stratus and Symphony) sound way better than the ersatzes. Same with the Strymon, Neunaber reverbs (and Goodhertz megaverb) over the supposed Catalinbread direct clones. Dan |
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Post by FM77 on Jun 7, 2024 11:09:45 GMT -6
The sum of the parts is what made the 80s sound like the 80s, this includes tape and early digital.
Soundtracks like Hellraiser would have used real orchestras, very nice rooms and recorded / mixed at state of the art facilities with multiple verb choices and stacked verbs. 480 very likley, along with AMS RMX, SP2016, PCM70, H3000, maybe even Yamaha SPX90 depending on the year.
Personally, other than the PCM60 which has always been dark, I don't think classic verb boxes sound dark unless you compare them with today's music references. I just think they sound different. And cool. And speaking solely for myself, I think recorded music in 2024 is simply over-hyped. The reference standard has shifted way out of naturalness IMO. Where in the past we would have to work at keeping high end present, today we have to work at taming high-end.
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Post by bossanova on Jun 7, 2024 14:45:25 GMT -6
Can you give an example of the dark 80s movie dialogue sound? I love that kind of thing. whatever got put on Patrick Stewart’s ADR in Star Trek. Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune and Dead Ringers. Pinhead in Hellraiser I and II. Hellraiser III has a longer sounding, more audible reverb. Maybe a cleaner unit (480 instead of a 224 or ams?) that lets the longer tails through with less distortion but it’s still dark. The insane analog and digital clipping, noise, and truncation from the primitive chips makes the tails seem shorter and reverb sends duller but it doesn’t pin back. Think pro tools tdm sound but millions of times worse. Think hardware sends in the daw to cleanish gear without say cleaner than Jensen transformers that only appear to have more depth than analog because ignorant to very advanced philosophy of math end users aren’t using dither to hit their modern converters that are linear to their noise floor and analog citcuits so the floating point daw truncating gets the fixed sample values slightly wrong while Dithering makes a pass through sound like just adding minute super low level harmonic distortion and a dc filter if the circuits are any good. Frequently they are not. Then there are the poor mixed phase converters that sound pretty similar to hitting a “clean” tape deck calibrated so that the main sound change is phase shift. Anyway you’re not going to be able to get this sound other than some old hardware box and the pcm 60 and 70 and alesis midiverb II are some of the easiest options and least likely to break. The less complex the better. The emulated ones ones that emulate the crap front and back ends (circuits and converter chips) like the updated sp2016 (it sounds really good because they updated it 3x already: the princeton 2016 box, the og plug, and the great current one but eventide has no chorusing so less angelic special effect), relab lx480 with all the lofi crap on sounds better than the uad, the ams rmx hardware port of the uad port sounds better than the uad because they threw in more lofi and it also used to be like double the price too of the uad, who are going full waves but without the utility plugs like renaissance and clarity or any modern vsti synths, sims, and critical lack of weird crap. You cannot even use the UAD Helios as a pedal. Waves modeled a bss dpr-402 and the Kramer tape machine. Plugin Alliance has the ex Elysia guy and Roger Schultz building crazy one off stuff just to model it. Anyways, you’re not going to be happy with them because they are an ersatz. Buy the real box or use something else that’s modern and lofi. Mangledverb, Megaverb, Tai Chi are all great. The cleaned up Lexicon type verbs from Softube (Tsar), Relab (Sonsig Rev-A), Lexicon themselves (PCM Native prob a goner after Samsung bought Harman), and Michael Carnes (Exponential audio is still there in Stratus and Symphony) sound way better than the ersatzes. Same with the Strymon, Neunaber reverbs (and Goodhertz megaverb) over the supposed Catalinbread direct clones. Dan This is exactly the depth of response that I was looking for. Thank you Dan.😀 |
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Post by geoff738 on Jun 7, 2024 14:47:50 GMT -6
I kinda like the Tsar 1. But speaking of gritty and shitty I still have my Ensoniq DP4 from what, 1993? Gathering dust. Hasn’t been hooked up in at least a decade. I’m sure the caps are all dried out. I don’t know what to do with it. I hate just throwing stuff in the dumpster but assuming it still functions is it good for anything more than a doorstop? Cheers, Geoff You should sell it to a French House enthusiast. Is this a Daft Punk thing or something? Anyhow I really am wondering what to do with it Cheers, Geoff. |
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Post by FM77 on Jun 7, 2024 18:40:57 GMT -6
Not cheap but cool... Model 200. This is my rig tonight for bass and drums. The 200 and the 160x Pair. Killer old verb/comp combo.
My home studio is total in teardown/rebuild/rewire mode since I had to make room for the new controllers. Brutal. The up side is it gives me a chance to rethink the racks.
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Post by vvvooojjj on Jun 8, 2024 2:13:44 GMT -6
You should sell it to a French House enthusiast. Is this a Daft Punk thing or something? Anyhow I really am wondering what to do with it Cheers, Geoff. Yes, DDL-Phaser and the VCF-Distortion presets sound very Daft Punk/French House. Also the DP4 sounds great with synths in general: The prices of the units have almost tripled in the last five to seven years in Europe. |
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Post by chessparov on Jun 8, 2024 12:05:43 GMT -6
You should sell it to a French House enthusiast. Is this a Daft Punk thing or something? Anyhow I really am wondering what to do with it Cheers, Geoff. I would use it... At least one more time.  |
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Post by sentientsound on Jun 8, 2024 12:27:49 GMT -6
Is this a Daft Punk thing or something? Anyhow I really am wondering what to do with it Cheers, Geoff. I would use it... At least one more time. There it is. Thanks chessparov! Those are fun boxes though if you like making your own multi-fx patches. They were going for arounb $800-1200 last time I checked the used market. |
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Post by chessparov on Jun 8, 2024 12:58:55 GMT -6
I somehow misplaced my... 58/Nanoverb/Nanocompressor. Curse or Blessing? |
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jun 8, 2024 14:07:35 GMT -6
I somehow misplaced my... 58/Nanoverb/Nanocompressor. Curse or Blessing? Both! |
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Post by timcampbell on Jun 9, 2024 22:04:50 GMT -6
As I have said many times the best way to make a cheap reverb sound good is set up a PA in a very live sounding room with some mics on the other side and send all your reverb returns through an eq then into the PA and use the signal from the mics for the reverb. You get rid of any cheasyness and add a whole other level of random reflections.
This is basically what Bob Clearmountain does with his fake reverb chamber/ wine cellar.
In the old days if we found a great sounding reflective hall/church we'd take a smpte striped DAT and some powered speakers and re-record in the ambiet space and then fly it back onto the multitrack.
I still have an Ensoniq DP4+. It is phenominal for really devolving sounds
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Post by reddirt on Jun 10, 2024 1:35:30 GMT -6
Yes the DP4 is simply great sounding ; the Yamahas - Rev 7 / SPX and Kurzweill sounded "water tank" metallic for mine; I wanted to really like the Quadraverb as the Midiverb 11 patch 18 was hinting of great things but the Quadraverb in trying to be all things to all men sounds flimsy. The newer desktop Alesis model was better but noisy. Roland's 330 was good though. and of course the PCM 70 did that thing even though noisy.
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Post by geoff738 on Jun 10, 2024 13:16:19 GMT -6
Ok, I suppose I was mostly, maybe exclusively, using the DP4 as a reverb and delay box. Maybe not its strong suit.
Anyways, if nothing else this thread will have me dusting it out and seeing if it still works.
Cheers,
Geoff
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Post by copperx on Jun 10, 2024 16:34:24 GMT -6
Here's a post from Casey (Bricasti) from another forum that is relevant:
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If you are looking for a HW box, then you cannot go wrong with any of the LEXICON MPX series. Starting with the MPX100 and on up, it is just an issue of connectivity. The MPX200 is the only dog. All of the MPX line have the same compute power of the 960 per stereo machine. They do not have the same algs, but they are close. My favorite is the MPX110 which is readily available for less than $200. Stay away from the MX line though, they do not use the classic Lex algs. Choose the MPX550 over the MPX500 as they sell for about the same price. The 550 has slightly better algs.
peace smiley
-Casey
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Post by guitfiddler on Jun 10, 2024 19:21:10 GMT -6
Lexicon MPX110, PCM70, PCM91, Reflex, Alex
Yamaha Rev500
Roland SRV-330
My Sony R7 and D7 are having static issues unfortunately, and it’s tough to find a guy to service them
I really like the PCM 70, 91, and the 110. The Rev500 is no slouch either when I put it on an Aux in the DAW. I also really dig the SRV-330.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jun 10, 2024 19:38:00 GMT -6
Another dirt cheap classic the Alesis Wedge, it’s a tabletop not rack mount, sort of like a Mini LARC with a built in reverb. The problem with this design is it used 1/4 in instead of XLR and the power connector doesn’t lock so if you move it around the desk top you can accidentally unplug it & cabling can be messy so you have to make your own cable organizer. I hate to say this but a D-sub and custom snake would have made it really cool.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jun 10, 2024 19:40:31 GMT -6
Lexicon MPX110, PCM70, PCM91, Reflex, Alex Yamaha Rev500 Roland SRV-330 My Sony R7 and D7 are having static issues unfortunately, and it’s tough to find a guy to service them I really like the PCM 70, 91, and the 110. The Rev500 is no slouch either when I put it on an Aux in the DAW. I also really dig the SRV-330. Oh the wonderful full world of Sony and their off again on again relationship with pro audio, some pretty awesome products with no service, yeah it absolutely sucks. Remember the OXFORD! |
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Post by timcampbell on Jun 11, 2024 2:21:12 GMT -6
Well I own a Lexicon PCM 80 with upgrades and a PCM91 but they certainly weren't cheap when I bought them and are in another league from many of the "cheap" units we are discussing.
Another trick with cheap reverbs is to run one unit into another therby multiplying the adjustable parameters.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jun 11, 2024 9:07:04 GMT -6
Well I own a Lexicon PCM 80 with upgrades and a PCM91 but they certainly weren't cheap when I bought them and are in another league from many of the "cheap" units we are discussing. Another trick with cheap reverbs is to run one unit into another therby multiplying the adjustable parameters. So Tim you have all the cards for the PCM80? It’s funny but these days it’s cheaper to just buy an 81! |
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Post by guitfiddler on Jun 11, 2024 10:34:17 GMT -6
Well I own a Lexicon PCM 80 with upgrades and a PCM91 but they certainly weren't cheap when I bought them and are in another league from many of the "cheap" units we are discussing. Another trick with cheap reverbs is to run one unit into another therby multiplying the adjustable parameters. So Tim you have all the cards for the PCM80? It’s funny but these days it’s cheaper to just buy an 81! If you can find one used that’s in good shape. I found some 80’s, but 81’s are difficult to find. If you find them the condition is questionable. I agree that the PCM series weren’t that cheap, however I bought mine used the second time after my older units died and couldn’t get them repaired after Lexicon quit repairing them and parts depending on what they are could be an issue. Does anyone know where you can get these repaired? |
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jun 11, 2024 10:45:49 GMT -6
So Tim you have all the cards for the PCM80? It’s funny but these days it’s cheaper to just buy an 81! If you can find one used that’s in good shape. I found some 80’s, but 81’s are difficult to find. If you find them the condition is questionable. I agree that the PCM series weren’t that cheap, however I bought mine used the second time after my older units died and couldn’t get them repaired after Lexicon quit repairing them and parts depending on what they are could be an issue. Does anyone know where you can get these repaired? I have about 5 pieces needing repairs, however they aren’t going to be easy repairs. I haven’t really looked in a couple of years, I was about to pull the trigger on an 80 thinking all the cards were in the box marked Fullco retail drawer shit but they were gone😳 |
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