Review: Anthology X UltraChannel & E-Channel Plugins

Eventide has gained immense popularity over the years with professional musicians and producers. Their new Anthology X bundle comes with 17 of their most sought after products ranging from the classics from ye olden times to new future classics.

Now some of you may know this as the bundle that was only available for the Pro Tools crowd and which many Grammy Award Winning artists have used to give life to their albums and yes this is that bundle and now it is available for all of us as in VST, AU, and AAX plugins format for MAC and Windows in 32 and 64 bit versions.

Anthology X comes with 17 plugins: H910 / Dual H910, H949 / Dual H949, H3000 Factory, H3000 Band Delays, UltraReverb, UltraChannel, Octavox, Quadravox, EChannel, EQ65 Filter Set, EQ45 Parametric Equalizer, Precision Time Delay, Precision Time Align, Instant Flanger, Instant Phaser and Omnipressor and we will be doing a review on every one of them over the next few weeks so keep an eye on ProducerSpot.com for more info on this great bundle.

UltraChannel

First up is UltraChannel, a high precision channel strip with a few nice extras added in. UltraChannel is made up of 8 modules the input and output a gate, two compressors, 5 band parametric eq, micro pitch shift and a stereo delay unit of which the gate, compressors, and EQ can be moved around to suit your preferred signal flow and each of these units can be switched on or off with the in/out buttons above each of the modules. So, that if you don’t have a need for a specific unit you can effectively remove it from your signal chain.

On the input, we have an invert phase button to change the polarity of the signal you are feeding through UltraChannel which is usually an easy fix for phase issues (if is the case).

The Gate-In unit is fast and precise but still very smooth and easily adjusted via the slider or you can just enter the value you want in the value box so this gate is just great for cleaning up drums or removing unwanted noise in vocal tracks. It also has sidechain capabilities which can be really fun for creating some nice ducking effects or other effects of that nature.

The compressors in UltraChannel are outstanding, also extremely precise and work great to mould the dynamics of your track just to your liking, the normal compressor like the gate has a slider to set your threshold or a value box with a gain reduction meter right beside it so you can accurately see how much gain reduction you are getting from your chosen settings this part of the unit also sports a saturator and a De-Esser which is nice to remove some of the sibilance in vocal tracks or add some saturation for added character in your signal.

The O-Pressor in this unit is a baby version of eventide’s legendary Omnipressor hardware compressor it is a single knee compression only version and is very aggressive which adds character to your compressed signal the unit also sports a bass cut knob because this compressor can be a bit sensitive to low-end signals.

The 5 band parametric equalizer in UltraChannel spans the entire frequency spectrum where you can adjust the bands using the knobs or you can click and drag the points in the display, each band has multiple filter modes and has all you need for precision boosting or cutting. This is a part of UltraChannel that you won’t find on any other channel strip plugin.

The Stereo Delay unit is also a nice feature to UltraChannel because of the feedback unit where you can send the delay tail back into say the eq or the compressors or the gate to have it processed by them the amount of which can also be adjusted positively and negatively where a negative value inverts the phase of the feedback. You can adjust the delay times left and right and the level and panning of the delays making it a lot of fun to play with.

In conclusion, Ultrachannel is a great channel strip with some bonus features not found on other strips it is easy to use and to figure out it comes with allot of presets which sound awesome from the get go and also offer up a great starting point to shape your sound just the way you like it.

E-Channel

E-Channel is one of the two channel strips that you get when you purchase the Anthology X bundle and is basically the Ultrachannel’s little brother, but one should never underestimate the smaller sibling as they can be just as fierce which I was pleasantly surprised to find out at how good these two plugins actually are.

E-channel comes with all of his “big borhter” functions except for the “O-pressor”, Micro Pitch Shift and Stereo Delay units. However this does not take away that it is a really nice sounding and versatile channel strip which also has the interchangeable signal flow to suit your needs. E-channel also comes with a huge batch of presets to get you in the place you need to be quickly. I personally found this plugin great for my drum tracks and bass guitars so far.

Now, at first, I did find it kind of superfluous to have two such similar plugins in the same plugin bundle but I have quickly found out that each of these units do have their own strengths and do stand out on their own. They are both intuitive, highly versatile and will probably end up being one of the mainstays in most of my signal chains for quite some time to come.

Pros

• Easy to use and learn
• Movable signal chains
• Lots of presets which can be a great starting point

Cons

• Sidechain capabilities only for AAX and AU, however, there was some talk on the forum of it being made available for VST3 but there were still some bugs and testing to be done. But that won’t matter for some DAWs because they won’t add the vst3 support to their program. (Looking at you here Ableton)

In conclusion, both Ultrachannel and E-channel are great channel strips to have in your arsenal they sound great and do what they do precisely, intuitively and both definitely have their own place and merit in the Anthology X bundle.

Be sure to check ProducerSpot.com out for the continuation of Eventide’s Anthology X Review .