Recording - August 2016 - 46

PLUG-IN OUTLET
Eventide Anthology X
by Paul Vnuk Jr.

You may have seen these boxes while surfing Ebay, where they can be
had for $300-$400 on average. The Little Dipper was first introduced
in 1970 as an outboard equalizer with an exceptionally tight set of
bandpass filters... one of the first "surgical" EQ boxes for solving problem frequencies in the early days of post-production. It is a dual-band
parametric EQ plus two 18 dB/octave high- and lowpass filters.
The EQ45 is a recreation of the even rarer UREI 545 Parametric
Equalizer, which offered four overlapping bands of parametric EQ and
a pair of 12 dB/octave Butterworth style high- and lowpass filters. This
unit is much more adept at standard channel and program equalization.
Omnipressor
Next up is 1971's Omnipressor, also an analog device that offers a
interesting implementation of compression, limiting, and expansion, all
with the turn of one knob. It could even do dynamics reversal, making
loud hits soft and soft hits loud in a weird, swooshing, sucking way.
It offers normal dynamics controls like threshold, attack, release,
and various attenuation and makeup gain controls, but the magic of
the Omnipressor lies in its Function knob. This is actually a sort of
ratio knob: Left = Expansion, Center to 3 O'Clock = Compression
and 3 O'Clock and beyond = dynamics reversal.
If you are looking for simple vintage-style compression, this is not
the box. While it can handle some "normal" compression tasks, it is
even better at being aggressive, driven, and even unpredictably odd.
It is very much a finesse piece and little adjustments can have big consequences. I liked it best on bass, snare drum, electric guitars, and for
crushing the drum bus. I would love to see Eventide add a wet/dry
mix feature in the future; Omnipressor would be a natural for parallel
compression, as well as sidechaining if your DAW supports it.

Eventide's Anthology started out as a set of plug-ins
for Pro Tools TDM. Now, as with most of Eventide's
plug-in fare, it is available natively in VST, AU, and
AAX Native for all of the popular Windows and
macOS DAWs. Renamed Anthology X, this amazing
H910 and H949
plug-in bundle puts 40+ years of Eventide processors
and effects into one package.
The H910 is a very archaic harmonizer and delay by today's stanEventide is The Godfather of digital effects, having
dards, but therein lies its charm. It's not a seamless "choir in a box" like
created the first commercially-available digital delays
we're used to now, with pitch correction, formant modeling, etc. This is the
and pitch-shifting boxes as far back as the early 1970s
sound of old Bowie records, and those of early sonic studio pioneers like
and arguably giving birth to the world's first multieffects
Frank Zappa. The H910 offers modest delay (112.5 msec) and two
boxes in the process. The Eventide sound can be heard
octaves of pitch adjustment with minimal modulation, called Anti-Feedback
on albums by Queen, Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, and
on the unit. These can be used separately or both at once. It's lo-fi, quirky,
most famously as the sonic stamp of David Bowie's
and filled with glitchy tracking anomalies... in a word, it's awesome!
"Berlin Trilogy". Eventide would shape and influence
The H949 was a significant upgrade to the H910. With more
the sound of both the synth bands and hair bands of
memory, it offered longer delay times, and added features like
the 1980s. The H3000, launched in 1989, would go
reverse delay and chorusing as well as micro-pitch steps. It also
on to be the sound of guitar processing in the 1990s
added a deglitching algorithm. It was a significant upgrade at the
and beyond. You'll still see H3000 units and their many
time, but is still truly "vinatge" in today's landscape.
descendants in studios and guitar rigs today.
Note that both the H910 and H949 come in single or dual versions.
In a world overflowing with plug-in models of
The point here is to offer dual unit capability with delays and pitches set
famous analog boxes of yore, the Eventide Anthology
differently for each channel. There is even a stereo width control, and
X bundle brings the sound of vintage digital boxes into
the real fun comes when you start to automate parameters in a mix!
the modern studio. In many cases these aren't just
Instant Phaser and Instant Flanger
models... you're getting the code, algorithms, and
even some original presets, from the company that creUnlike today's guitar pedal phasers, the Instant Phaser was more
ated them in the first place!
like part of a modular synthesizer, complete with an oscillator and an
Anthology X contains 15 processors/effects. With the
envelope follower. Its swept filter bank offers metallic, psychedelic
exception of Eventide Reverb being re-born as
whooshes and washes and is fantastic on drums, synths and guiUltraReverb, the X bundle is exactly the same as the older
tars-it is the sound of late-1970s phasing. (Need an audio cue? The
Anthology II TDM-based version. Each of these plug-ins
drums on Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".)
could easily fill its own review, and two of them recently
The Instant Flanger is one of the first solid-state emulations of early
have: Devon Brent reviewed H3000 Factory in March
tape flanging. Like the Instant Phaser, it may not be what you have been
2013 and I looked at UltraReverb in our July 2015 issue.
used to all these years from your various flanger pedals. Its controls
But since we haven't reviewed Anthology
since the TDM days (Bill Stunt reviewed it in
Delivery: Web download only
October 2006), it's time for a re-introduction
Formats: Windows 7+, VST/AAX Native; macOS 10.7+, AU/VST/AAX Native
and broad overview of the whole bundle.
Copy Protection: iLok USB license key or iLok License Manager software
EQ45 and EQ65
License: multiple installs allowed; single use at a time via iLok
Documentation: PDF User Guide download from website
Interestingly, the oldest units modeled in
Price: $999 (or $299/yr. as part of Eventide Ensemble)
Anthology X are (a) analog and (b) not made
More from: Eventide, www.eventideaudio.com
by Eventide! The EQ65 is a model of the
UREI (Universal Audio) 565 Little Dipper EQ.
46

RECORDING AUGUST 2016

http://www.eventideaudio.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2016