Latest User Reviews

I really liked its sound – but I only had technical issues with that unit. Once it was up and running I really loved the 1980s alike Reverbs.

I like this reverb but I’m a little confused by Mr Nichols statement. He says he used this unit on all the Steely Dan mixes, yet this unit didn’t come out until 1986 and most of the Steely Dan stuff was much earlier.

We have sourced the original EQ Magazine article where Roger Nichols talks about the Sony MU-R201, please click here to read it.

I have watched these things on eBay for about a year now and read reviews here and given their low price I took the plunge. I noticed the preset on the image here of 31 so tried that on snare and wow! This preset is worth the price of entry on its own, it adds a great live sound to snare drums and works pretty well on most things actually. I have not yet had the chance to play around editing or anything but seems easy enough and at around $200 I can not understand why everyone does not have one as it seems like a bargain to me.

I don’t know why more people don’t know about this great reverb. I love it on snare, brass, vocals everything, it just works.

This is a hidden gem of old reverbs. I love this thing on just about anything and use it on every drum mix I do. Snares sound wonderful through it, so Roger Nichols was onto something way back when. Ignore the limited bandwidth as I actually think that is what helps this reverb to sit in a mix so well. My favourite!

Most of the reverbs, inclusive IR-Reverbs, makes good jobs, when you hear them alone. I my case I love the DN 780 for its unspectacular way it fixes my mixes. Its my analogest digital reverb. Yes, I replaced the fan, I replaced the bridge rectifier and the battery. Now my DN 780 works like new, without noise. I give 10 point to all, because it is in view of its age an absolut authentic representative of the sustainability engineering of these great 80s!

Owning several EMTs, Yamaha Rev1, AMS RMX16, Bricasti and Lexicon 300, I really have to admit that the Sony DRE2000 is the most incredible tool in my workshop. Throw it on snare drums, on analog modular synths, electric guitars, even on orchestra, it S-H-I-N-E-S ! That’s all – simply the most 3d “artificial flavoured” reverb out there, bar none, ever, period. things it cant do: giving dimension to upright bass, bass drum and hihat. anything else: rarely something greater than the Sony! sadly it is hard to service, sometimes impossible. anyone experienced in repairing those precious gems? mine starts to bother me sometimes with weird noises coming out of the DA converters at times…

Yes the previous reviewer is correct…the fans in these go bad…had to replace the one in mine. Some of the buttons were bad too, dirty and intermittent common in units this old. Sound wise I found it too flutterly 80s…not worth it for my tastes, nothing really magic in there. Yeah maybe the non lin is kinda cool, but how often do you have a use for non lin.

Editing was slow too, and not much variation available. The stock presets were useless like either way too bright or dark, no safe middle ground, or just plain weird too effecty unusable “show off” presets you’ll never use but sound impressive as overblown effects, like many units have, to sell them with the wow factor but you never use those.

The Klark Teknik DN 780 is often referred to as a poor man’s AMS RMX16, some suggest the algorithms are ported from the AMS, with the DN 780 being more affordable and albeit lower quality digital reverb when compared to the AMS. However it is a very good reverb in it’s own right and has one of the best Non Linear reverb presets of any reverb from this period in my view. You do have to be careful with the fan on the rear panel, because if it fails the power supply WILL overheat and blow. You are best served by paying a technician to replace it. Other than that, like all Klark Teknik gear it is a very solid unit that proves more than useful in a studio for mixing.

This is a nearly-forgotten relic of the late ’80s. I was amazingly lucky to buy a couple from a local distributor in the late ’80s when they were being discontinued. Got mine for only $300 (US), both floor models in perfect condition. This is among the best bargains I ever purchased in my many decades of music production. For vocal processing, it put much-more expensive vocoders to shame, and the noise floor is almost below perception, despite its 16 bit resolution. The build is amazing, but be careful with the plastic remote which is essentially vital to using the unit. If it gets smashed or lost, you’re out of luck.

Not really sure whether this is the right place for the DN-50 as it is a completely analogue spring reverb with two six-spring reverb tanks (which makes it “stereo”…). Oh, it sounds decent (less “boink!” than, say, a Furman oder Vesta-Fire unit of the same breed), effective tone control, and an overall rather pleasant, albeit not overly spectacular sound (and nowhere near as dense as an AKG BX-15 or 20, for that matter).

Nice to add some extra flavour to your mixes, or where some kind of “vintage-days-of-yore”-type of colouration is required. It does this job very well, I must admit. Its build quality is decent, with plenty of sheet-metal all around, which makes it a light-weight yet sturdy 19″ rackmount — not sure about shielding, though, since mine picks up an awful lot of transformer hum even when set up a good distance from all other sources of electro-magnetic radiation. Whether this is a design flaw or due to ageing components (or cabling used), I cannot tell.

Since a service manual seems to be made of unobtainium, its service situation seems slightly doubtful to me, although every capable tech can make something of the arrangement of various types of op-amps, resistors, and capacitors inside. There even is an option to add output transducers as an extra but since the production of the DN-50 ceased a long time ago, it seems unlikely these transducers are still available somewhere (or replacements are known).

If you can buy one cheap, you won’t be disappointed – but something tells me these things do not exactly come cheap due to their rarity and their “vintage” tag.