Eventide Effect Apps for iOS & iPadOS
Whether it’s because of hardware units such as the H9000, or the various plug-ins that are now available as part of an Anthology bundle, there are probably few people reading this who won’t be familiar with Eventide’s audio processing algorithms. Developed over the company’s nearly-50-year history, Eventide’s effects have a reputation for quality with a unique twist. And now, in a move that’s become increasingly commonplace, the company has started to bring its expertise and products to the iOS and iPadOS platforms in the form of six Universal apps.
The first three of Eventide’s apps — Blackhole, UltraTap, and MicroPitch — arrived in July 2019, followed by Rotary Mod, QVox, and MangledVerb in November that same year. Each of these require iOS 11 (or later) and run in one of three modes: standalone (where you can use the effect independently with the built-in audio I/O on your device), Inter-App Audio, or as a Version 3 Audio Unit (AUv3) extension. The latter is probably the most useful, partly because Inter-App Audio has been deprecated (meaning it will eventually disappear), but mostly since AUv3 extensions offer more flexibility and are becoming the primary way of using third-party audio effects in popular host apps like GarageBand, Cubasis, and AUM.
Commonalities
All the Eventide apps present a similar user interface, which will be recognisable to users of the company’s H9-series plug-in. The control layout is based around two rows of virtual knobs, with some switches where necessary, and the familiar Ribbon Controller along the bottom. This latter control enables specific ranges of one or more controls to be assigned to a single controller for simplified, live sonic manipulation. Certain controls (such as the Ribbon) can be triggered remotely via MIDI CC messages, although this won’t work when using an app in AUv3 mode — however, in this case you can use the host app’s automation system (where it’s supported) to read and write control data instead.
Each of the apps also implement the same preset management system, accessible via the preset menu to the left of the user interface. This is always visible when an app is run independently on an iPad, and accessible by pressing the top-left hamburger button when using the app on an iPhone or as an Audio Unit extension. Of the different preset categories, Factory (and, in some cases, Artist) provides one or more subcategories of goodness to explore as you get to know an effect. A User category stores your own presets, which are created by pressing the Save Preset button — inexplicably depicted in a mobile app by a 3.5-inch floppy disk icon — and can later be deleted by sliding your finger left over a given entry and tapping the round ‘X’ button.
User presets can be imported and exported via the iOS and iPadOS Files app by pressing the Import/Export Presets button, which are also then accessible via iTunes File Sharing. (For some reason, though, this button isn’t available when running an Eventide app as an extension.) Such user presets are stored as Eventide *.tide files that can be also exchanged with the appropriate plug-in version, and you can load these into a text editor to see what’s going on, since the preset data is written in an easily-readable format.
The preset menu also contains a Mixlock button, which preserves the setting of the Mix (wet-dry) control when switching presets, and a handy Info button that opens a brief guide to that effect.
Reverb & Delay
So what about the effects? No matter the platform, I think Blackhole is a must-have reverb. This cavernous algorithm is capable of near-unquantifiable vastness, offering a great way to make sparse sounds spacious. At £19.99 ($19.99) it’s admittedly the most expensive of Eventide’s apps, although if you look at the overall pricing of the apps, I don’t think one can quibble too much at the cost. The expenditure for all six apps works out at just under $83, which — at least in US dollars — is less than the cheapest individual plug-ins Eventide offer that start at $99, such as, say, Blackhole.
If you want a reverb with less civility and more “good verb gone bad”, as Eventide put it, MangledVerb might be for you. MangledVerb is essentially what happens when reverb meets distortion, giving you both the size and dirt to play with in a musically interesting manner. It’s quite a specific effect, working best on any string-based instrument, although MangledVerb can also tear through synths and pretty much any kind of bass sound.
UltraTap could be written off as just another multi-tap delay, and there are admittedly many such effects already available within host apps and other AUv3 extensions. But equally, UltraTap brings its own distinctiveness with controls like Spread (to group taps closer to the start or end of a series to give the impression of speeding up or slowing down), the so-called “Slurm” to slur or smear taps together, or, my favourite, a pre-tap-signal Chop control that makes creating rhythmic patterns from sustained material trivial. Likewise, there’s no shortage of rotary speaker effects that simulate Hammond’s famous Leslie, although RotaryMod is the cheapest of Eventide’s app offerings and is easily worth the money if you want a flexible, high-quality implementation.
Imperfect Harmony
MicroPitch and QVox take us into familiar Eventide territory, with the former having its roots in the legendary H3000 harmoniser and the latter, as the name implies, in the Quadravox plug-in. MicroPitch is a two-voice pitch shifter, with each voice having a dedicated interval and delay time, along with global depth and rate controls for chorus-like modulation, plus feedback and tone controls. Quadravox gives you four voices that can be pitch-shifted from the source signal with a specified interval, as well as delayed in manner from being evenly spaced or spread out based on the time set by the Delay D control. Rather than each voice having an independent delay control, the delay time of each voice is successively longer, with Delay D specifying the final (and therefore longest) duration.
In Conclusion
When Waves dipped the company’s toes into the waters of Apple’s mobile platform, they partnered with Steinberg to make AudioTrack, L1+ Ultramaximizer, and Q10 available within Cubasis as in-app purchases. And, in the same vein, plug-ins from the likes of FabFilter, PSPaudioware, and more can only be purchased for use with Auria via the integrated Auria Store, which is also based on Apple’s in-app purchase model. So I think it’s great Eventide have opted to make the company’s iOS and iPadOS offerings usable within a variety of host apps rather than just one. Let’s hope the company continues to keep these apps current, and that more are on the way.
