Other Digital Effects

Digital Effects Processors are everything that is great about digital signal processing and provide multiple effects in a single box. Everything from digital reverb, digital delay and modulation effects are included. The ability to combine these effects takes everything to another level altogether. Eventide was one of the very first companies to head down this path with the Eventide H910 Harmonizer. The H910 was the world’s first commercially available digital audio effects processor. The H910 combined pitch effects with delay and feedback to create a very unique device for the time. The success Eventide enjoyed with this first product spawned many products over the years, and Eventide deservedly own the multi-effects processor market to this day. Their latest product the Eventide H9000 is an extraordinary bit of technology that will take them through the next decade.

A number of companies over the years have tried to take on Eventide, some with great success, some not so much. One such company that did succeed was Yamaha with their range of SPX signal processors. Yamaha introduced their SPX90 processor in 1985 and it offered everything from reverb to delay, chorusing and a multitude of other effects in a single rack space. The SPX90 was a massive hit for Yamaha who followed it with a string of even better processors. Companies like Alesis, Ensoniq, Korg, Kurzweil, Lexicon, Roland, Sony and TC Electronic all got into the multi-effects processor market with varying degrees of success. There are however some real standout products for those looking to buy hardware based multi-effects processors besides the Eventide and Yamaha offerings, and that includes the Ensoniq DP/4 and DP/4+ processors, as well as the Sony DPS-V77.