Developed in collaboration with Tony Visconti, Eventide’s Tverb plug-in was inspired by the recording technique used on title track of David Bowie’s 1977 Heroes album.
The plug-in has its origins in a meeting at Human Studios in NYC between Visconti and Eventide’s Adrienne Humblet, Joe Waltz and Tony Agnello. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce Visconti to some of Eventide’s latest products as he was about to embark on the production of Bowie’s Next Day. Visconti recounted the ways in which he had used various Eventide effects to create some of his signature sounds. He described how powerful an instrument Bowie’s voice was (‘Bowie histrionics’) and how he was able to harness that power by employing various microphone techniques.
Recorded at Berlin’s Hansa Studios, and needing only its vocal track, Visconti set up three microphones – the first for Bowie to sing directly into, a second positioned about 15ft away and the third further back in the hall. Visconti placed gates on the second and third microphones set to open as Bowie sang louder.
Tverb integrates three independent reverbs, with compression and selectable polar patterns on Mic 1 and adjustable gates on Mic 2 & 3, to recreate Visconti’s effect. It also adds features that enable new soundscapes and effects. The use of stereo microphones enhances the effect and DAW automation can be used to program the microphones to wander around the hall as the track plays.
‘One of the challenges in developing Tverb was to design reverbs that captured the rich ambience of the Meistersaal and yet were efficient, ensuring that the plug-in would run native without burdening the DAW’s CPU’, says Eventide’s Tony Agnello. ‘By running the three independent reverbs, the two far microphones can be convincingly placed anywhere in the hall.’
‘I have plug-ins that emulate rooms but this concept, to have the set-up all on one page, I never thought it was possible’ Visconti says‘The three microphones are correct, the room is correct, and now that it’s in stereo, you’re actually hearing something that I never got around to doing when I was in Berlin.’
Tverb includes presets created by Tony Visconti and other artists, and is available for AU, VST and Pro Tools AAX (Mac and PC) at US$199.
More: www.eventide.com
