New Echosystem firmware
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I watched a video from Empress yesterday that said "New Tape was originally born in our Superdelay" and "Old Tape comes from our Vintage Modified Superdelay." It makes me think that they didn't rework the algorithms and just reused the existing ones. But I could very well be wrong as I've owned neither and it sounds like you have. What seemed different about the tape emulations in the Echosystem?
I've had both as well as two EP3 an EP1, and both a Fulltone TTE and SSTE.
The big difference is the modulation. The VMSD had the funny "reverb meets delay" sound that you get from real echoplexes (well EP3's, the others not so much), where the repeats blend and blur over each other. The Eric Johnson sound. Its partly a function of the preamp, partly the echo repeats. Some of the pedals do it well, others don't. The Belle Epoch and Alter Ego 2 have that quality, as does the MXR echoplex to some extent. I don't really hear it on any of the echosystem programs, but I suspect it is capable of doing it with the right programming. The Echorec has a very similar quality, but the multi head sound is unique. I've tried the Catalinbread and Boonar, both are very good. The echorec emulation on the Alter Ego2 isn't quite as good. The big advantage to the the Echosystem is that it could be the one pedal that does all these sounds well, and in true stereo, which I love.
The algorithms may well be the same (or very similar), but a lot of other things have changed in this pedal and it just doesn't quite sound right to my ear. I found the VMSD noisy in my setup (I think it was the digital signal path, the analog path in the echosystem is dead silent) but otherwise I would still have it.
The big difference is the modulation. The VMSD had the funny "reverb meets delay" sound that you get from real echoplexes (well EP3's, the others not so much), where the repeats blend and blur over each other. The Eric Johnson sound. Its partly a function of the preamp, partly the echo repeats. Some of the pedals do it well, others don't. The Belle Epoch and Alter Ego 2 have that quality, as does the MXR echoplex to some extent. I don't really hear it on any of the echosystem programs, but I suspect it is capable of doing it with the right programming. The Echorec has a very similar quality, but the multi head sound is unique. I've tried the Catalinbread and Boonar, both are very good. The echorec emulation on the Alter Ego2 isn't quite as good. The big advantage to the the Echosystem is that it could be the one pedal that does all these sounds well, and in true stereo, which I love.
The algorithms may well be the same (or very similar), but a lot of other things have changed in this pedal and it just doesn't quite sound right to my ear. I found the VMSD noisy in my setup (I think it was the digital signal path, the analog path in the echosystem is dead silent) but otherwise I would still have it.
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Thanks for the great response @zdogma !
I've tried the Catalinbread Belle Epoch and Echorec and liked them very much. I actually had the Belle Epoch Deluxe for a day, but the expression wasn't working quite right, so I had to take it back.
I owned the Empress Reverb for a little while as well, and something about it didn't sound right to my ear with that one as well. The top end seemed abrasive to me. It would be a shame if the Echosystem suffered from issue.
I had a look at the latest release notes and I don't see anything about changes to existing modes, mostly just improvements to the looper, the new Echorec mode, and saving/loading presets from an SD card. Full release notes are here:
Echosystem Release notes
Even with its potential challenges, it does seem like a pretty cool all-in-one pedal, especially if the new Echorec mode comes close to the other great Echorec pedals.
I've tried the Catalinbread Belle Epoch and Echorec and liked them very much. I actually had the Belle Epoch Deluxe for a day, but the expression wasn't working quite right, so I had to take it back.
I owned the Empress Reverb for a little while as well, and something about it didn't sound right to my ear with that one as well. The top end seemed abrasive to me. It would be a shame if the Echosystem suffered from issue.
I had a look at the latest release notes and I don't see anything about changes to existing modes, mostly just improvements to the looper, the new Echorec mode, and saving/loading presets from an SD card. Full release notes are here:
Echosystem Release notes
Even with its potential challenges, it does seem like a pretty cool all-in-one pedal, especially if the new Echorec mode comes close to the other great Echorec pedals.
I really liked the both the Belle Epoch and the Deluxe, but I think there were quite a few bugs with the first couple of batches of BED's. From the TGP feedback it seems that that is improving. My BED was good functionally, but I didn't like that there were no detents between modes (it was very easy to knock it into a different delay mode), and a lot of the modes were kind of useless to me. Also, I don't really like using an external pedal for adjusting the delay time, I still find it odd they didn't include tap. I sold it after a month or so. If they introduce a stereo version (with tap tempo maybe), just the echoplex mode, with the adjustable preamp like their EP pre pedal, I'd be all over it.Thanks for the great response @zdogma !
I've tried the Catalinbread Belle Epoch and Echorec and liked them very much. I actually had the Belle Epoch Deluxe for a day, but the expression wasn't working quite right, so I had to take it back.
I owned the Empress Reverb for a little while as well, and something about it didn't sound right to my ear with that one as well. The top end seemed abrasive to me. It would be a shame if the Echosystem suffered from issue.
I had a look at the latest release notes and I don't see anything about changes to existing modes, mostly just improvements to the looper, the new Echorec mode, and saving/loading presets from an SD card. Full release notes are here:
Echosystem Release notes
Even with its potential challenges, it does seem like a pretty cool all-in-one pedal, especially if the new Echorec mode comes close to the other great Echorec pedals.
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