New Music Gear Monday: Eventide Tverb Room Reverb Plugin

We all love great room sounds and one of the most famous rooms ever recorded was on David Bowie’s “Heroes” by Tony Visconti. Visconti set up three microphones in the hall of Berlin’s Hansa Studios; the first for Bowie to sing directly into, a second positioned about 15 feet 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 and louder. This same sound can now be duplicated with the new Eventide Tverb, which consists of three completely independent reverbs with compression, selectable polar patterns on microphone 1 and adjustable gates on microphones 2 and 3.

What’s more, the original effect was mono due to track limitations, but Tverb provides it in true stereo. 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.

Tverb consists of a variety of parameters, like 2 moveable microphones to adjust reverb size and tone, a custom Eventide reverb algorithm with EQ, diffusion, and decay control, 2 linkable post-reverb gate modules with control of when the gates close, the speed at which they close and the length of time they are forced to stay open. Signal inversion buttons are also available to remove (or create) phase cancellation, and a Mix Lock allows for scrolling through presets or settings while keeping the wet/dry mix constant.

The user interface is based on a “console” that was inspired by the one used in the session and is complete with Visconti’s “grease pencil” labelling, and provides post-reverb channel processing for each individual mic and the master. The room mixer module alters the sound of the room itself with control over decay, diffusion and frequency attenuation.