Eventide 2016 Stereo Room - Part 1 - History and Overview
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The sp2016 was designed starting in 1978 or 79. When it first shipped in 1981 it had a small number of effects including Room and Plate reverbs. Stereo Room was developed a little later. New effects were created by Eventide and a start up company called First Order Effects for several years up until 1986. These effects included some first ever effects like Shimmer, Band Delays, Timescramble as well as vocoders, etc.
Eventide used the term “plug-in“ as purely descriptive because you added effects by plugging in a ROM into a ZIF socket (Zero Insertion Force). The unit shipped with several empty sockets and users were sent new effects as they became available. They used the term plug-in from the beginning of the project in 1978 and, as far as they know, this predates any other use of the term. The first Macs and PCs appeared around then but there was no notion of plugging in new software. Back then it was floppy disks.
The SP2016 was innovative in other ways. For example the front panel button labeled Soft Key. Another was the Position control which is not simply a mix of front and rear reflections but instead modifies the complex delay network to more realistically simulate the sense of moving within the room.
The sp2016 first shipped in 1981 with a small number of effects but by 1984-5 there was a ROM that contained a ‘standard set’ of effects. Additional effects were later created by Eventide and by ‘First Order Effects’.
Standard set (1985)
Gated Reverb
Stereo Room
Room Reverb
Plate Reverb
Hi Density Plate
Generic Reverb
Loop Edit
Flanger
Envelop Flanger
Chorus
Multitap Delay
RMX Simulation
Timescramble
Band Delay
Musical Combs
Dual Robots
Long Delay
Add’l Plug-ins
Channel Vocoder (required 2 ROMS)
Stereo Synthesis
Automatic Panner
ROM Labeled 2.1
Small Room
Inverse Reverb
ROM Labeled 3.0
Split Halls
Split Plates
Split Hall/Plates
ROM Labeled 4.0
Dynamic Reverb
Dynamic Digiplex
ROM Labeled 5.0
Dual Digiplex
Long Digiplex
Lossless Room
Stereo Shimmer
Random Ambience
Psycho Panner
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