Audio Thing Outer Space
Fancy getting your hands on a Roland Space Echo for a fraction of the second-hand price? Carlo Castellano’s new one makes it possible…
AudioThing’s new tape delay (VST/AU/AAX) emulates one of the most desirable effects in the history of music technology: the Roland RE-201 Space Echo. It supersedes the briefly-available Outer Verb, and is a free update for owners thereof.
Just like the Space Echo, Outer Space comprises three tape heads and a spring reverb (Outer Verb just modelled the reverb); but unlike the original, of course, delay times are syncable to host tempo. It also includes three tape variations for a range of frequency response and saturation characters, and a background and tape noise generator for analogue authenticity.
Outer limits
All 12 of the Space Echo’s routing modes are onboard, switched with the Mode Selector knob. Every possible combination of tape heads and reverb is covered, as well as each head or the reverb on its own – although you have to zero the Reverb Volume in various modes to get certain head combinations sans ’verb.
The Send switch kills the delay input (but not the output, so existing echoes can be manipulated in the feedback loop for classic dub effects, etc), while the Wet Only switch takes the dry signal out of the picture for use on auxiliary send/return channels. Hitting the Stereo button applies a 15ms offset to the right channel, which is handy for widening mono sources.
The three delay tap times (ie, the positions of the three tape heads) are set independently, synced between 1/1 and 1/16 (with triplet and dotted options), or unsynced from 60-175ms for Head 1, 115-340ms for Head 2 and 175-500ms for Head 3. We’d like the ability to sync/unsync each independently. The Repeat Rate knob adjusts the tape speed, stretching and compressing all three delay times collectively, as a percentage of their dialled-in settings when unsynced, and by stepping up and down through the note value menus when synced. Feedback is applied via the Intensity knob, and with AudioThing having modelled the “ballistic response of the delay rate”, the essential pitchshifting caused by changes to tape head positions is fully represented.
The Bass and Treble controls offer simple EQ shaping and can be used to process just the delay or both delay and reverb. Speaking of the reverb, Outer Space’s spring tank allows only adjustment of Decay time (Long or Short) and Volume.
Finally, the noise generator has its own level control and an Envelope switch that, when activated, has the noise only appearing when an input signal is present.
AudioThing have truly nailed the Space Echo’s rich, warm, spatialising sound, with the three tape modes opening up a good range of base flavours, and the Wow/Flutter and Noise controls proving wonderfully effective for taking things lo-fi and ‘vintage’. And let’s not forget the reverb, which sounds beautiful – as you’d expect, given that it was previously a plugin in its own right.
We could bemoan the limited reverb parameters and inability to tweak the details of each tape emulation, but really, that would be asking too much of what’s intended to be a faithful emulation rather than a radically enhanced version.
One of AudioThing’s best effects yet, Outer Space succeeds spectacularly in bringing the sound and spirit of Roland’s beautiful box to the software studio.