Ribbon and Hotswitch provide two different ways of moving between two sets of parameters you've set up. Then there's Feedback, which just loops the whole shooting match, to further magnify the sense of enormity! Blue Ribbons A Kill button mutes the the dry input to the reverb section, so you can audition the way the reverb tail decays, while Freeze mutes the input and causes the current state of the reverb tail to be perpetuated until the next power cut. There's also Resonance, which peaks up the resonance of the high and low filters, so even the EQ is not as conventional as it might first appear. Used gently, this can emulate the modulation found in more 'normal' studio reverbs, but there's enough range to produce more obvious churning effects. The weirdness factor comes largely from the reverse reverbs and the modulation section, where Mod Depth and Mod Rate parameters affect the reverb tail in a more-or-less chorus-like manner. Of course, there's more to the Blackhole than big reverbs with tempo-sync'ed pre-delay.

In Tempo Manual mode, the tempo is set by entering your own numerical value, up to a maximum of 300bpm, the Pre-delay control again being used to set the beat division. In Tempo Sync mode, the pre-delay tempo is locked to that of the host DAW, and the Pre-delay value is measured in musical beats. When this is switched off, the pre-delay time is shown in milliseconds, up to a maximum of two seconds. There's also an innocent-looking Tempo button. At the smallest size setting, the reverb sounds like the inside of a coffee tin! At no time does the reverb time ever get short enough to be termed modest! Size, predictably enough, adjusts the subjective size of the synthesized environment, spacing out the reflections at higher settings and bunching them up at smaller settings. It turns out to be the Blackhole's equivalent of decay time, but it also switches the algorithm from a conventional reverb in one half of its travel to a reverse-envelope type in the other. The Mix, Size, High and Low EQ and Pre-delay parameters all do what you expect, but the Gravity knob is not quite so commonplace. The reverb controls on offer mix the familiar with the weird. If you're after a subtle plate to add to vocals or 'a bit of wet' for the drums, this is most definitely not the reverb to choose! Spaces & Times Whereas most reverb effects are designed to emulate real spaces or plates, Blackhole is intended to create more abstract spatial effects for use in sound design or experimental music. An iLok dongle is required, and a time-limited demo version is available so that you can try before you buy. It runs on both Mac OS and Windows machines, with AU, AAX and VST plug-in formats supported. There are hundreds of reverb plug-ins to choose from, but none quite like Eventide's Blackhole.īased on their hardware stomp-box of the same name, Eventide's Blackhole native plug-in is described as a 'massive reverberator', and draws its inspiration from an algorithm first developed for their DSP4000 processor (the same algorithm was later included in the H8000).

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