The Sound Board

Passing this on if anyone can use it.
https://www.jrrshop.com/eventide-blackhole

I have Blackhole and do get decent use out of it. If I want long, glossy, frozen it's the first place I go.

Thanks for chiming in Guy. Dismissed it after listening for just a bit, but might reconsider it now. Anything you can't do with other Verbs? I only have, oh, I don't know, a dozen...

Very much depends on what you have, Luke. I've little doubt that anything Black Hole can do something else can also do. But I lacked something good and easy with that infinite space feeling, it sounds great and it's dead easy to use and control. But if you're well covered for infinite spaces, it's an easy pass.

(Slight tangent - listening to The Revenent soundtrack, sounds like Sakamoto was using Blackhole or similar - interesting effect on the strings)

Harry Gregson Williams talks a little bit about using Blackhole for sound design and on piano in the video thats in the HGW studio tour thread. When it's regular price @$199 I would recommend Vahalla Shimmer for $50, but when there the same price I would go for the company that invented the algorithm.

Thanks for the feedback Guy. I can't even tell you off the top of my head what I have, but to my recollection, only Sparkverb is capable of some of those long effect tails - maybe UltraVerb, don't remember. Most are for quality tails rather than effects. Good sell though on your part. I'm picking it up ;-)

James, great point about Shimmer: it's the one missing from our collection here, but maybe it is not needed after all. I like supporting small developers who do great work like Sean, but in this case, I'm with you.

there is a difference between really long reverb tails (lots of reverb plugins can do that) and Black Hole, which seems to start there<G>! I consider it a sound design reverb, and a very good one at that. I didn't even try the demo before the sale because, well, it was out of my league, or rather if I was going to spend that kind of cash I was going to save up and spend on things I needed more (e.g. microphones, loudspeakers, etc).

At this price I downloaded the demo and I like it even more than I expected. Gotta remember to pull the trigger on that one.

When you start using the feedback control Bill is when you get that special Eno/Lanois sound as well.

wst3 wrote:Gotta remember to pull the trigger on that one.

That. Thanks for the input.

I'm just trying it, it's huge fun - should press the trigger on Valhalla shimmer as well, but at 49 bucks, I'm sure I'll grab it.

Spent quite a bit of time with Black Hole last night - now I understand the appeal completely. Originally figured it was really more of a sound design tool, but dang, it is magic on guitars, drums, strings, horns... the only place I didn't find magic (so far) was vocals.

Cool tool!!!

This is great!

Definitely not your typical reverb, but you can certainly use it to create some great sounds (whilst still sounding under control).

At that price, I couldn't resist and can see it being used quite a bit.

Just as with the sale on their channel strip recently I couldn't resist. It's fun and easy and really delivers magic. Have always thought of Eventide as an outdated company but their sales attract despite the outdated GUI

Finally had some time to play with this and I'm happy with the purchase. Barely loaded, with the default preset, and I immediately used it on a piano piece - it changed the whole mood of the intro with its beautifully long tail, making it a different and more interesting piece. Thanks to everyone who chimed in...

how is it on CPU?

Larry, not too bad. I'm running a 12-core MacPro 5,1 @ 3.06 and adding four of these in a row on the same track, besides producing a quite interesting sound (!), doesn't seem particularly taxing in my CPU meter. A very scientific method of testing, I know...