- in Gear , New Music Gear Monday , Plugin , Production , Software by Bobby Owsinski
New Music Gear Monday: Eventide Ultratap Delay Plugin
If delay is your thing when mixing, then you probably have a couple of multitap delays in your toolbox. It’s probably safe to say that none of them are as powerful as Eventide’s new Ultratap, which may very well be the ultimate example of the genre.
What makes Ultratap so special? It goes beyond just having different delay taps, (and it features 64), in that it has a number of controls that you won’t find on a similar plugin. First of all, there’s a unique Ribbon control that allows you to transition seamlessly between two settings of any combination of controls. Then there’s the Slurm control that lets you smear taps together or modulate them to create reverbs (love the Futurama reference). The HotSwitch allows you to assign changes in effect and sound to an alternate version of the current settings in a flash.
You can speed up or slow down the rhythmic space between taps using the Spread knob, or use the onboard LFOs and envelopes to chop the sound source into stuttered rhythms. You can control the stereo image of the taps to alternate between hard-panned and mono, and sync the Length and/or Chop LFO speed to the DAW session. And that’s only scratching the surface of what this unique plugin will do. Finally, there are over 150 presets, including artist presets by Chris Carter, Colin Newman, Sasha and many more.
Even though Ultratap is a new plugin, it actually has history dating back to 1982 with the Eventide SP2016, where a flexible 64 tap delay debuted as part of its Factory Program suite. By the late 80’s UltraTap had migrated to the legendary H3000 Harmonizer effects processor and then to the DSP4000 and H8000. Thanks to advances in technology, UltraTap was then included in a portable compact form factor in the H9 Harmonizer stompbox. And that brings us to the very cool plugin that we have today; an unusual journey to be sure, but one that’s certainly less expensive and more reliable than the previous hints of the function in hardware versions.
UltraTap is compatible with just about any DAW, and is currently on sale for $49 through September 5, 2017. There’s a free 30-day demo available. Check out what this baby will do in on the website and in the following video.
