Eventide DSP4500

At first I was overwhelmed by this unit as one flick through the manual was enough to make me think I needed to get on the phone to Berklee and apply for a comptuer programming course just to scratch the surface of what this thing could do. Having owned a H3000 SE, this was a giant step for me as everything had become more indepth. However, I turned on and started messin' about, and actually was very surprised to find the user interface more friendly than that of the more basic H3000 SE. It took me pretty much 1 minute to figure out the basics and within 2 was whirling through all the cool pitch shifting presets. Editing was soooooooo easy. Just twirlin' that knob gave me a hard on. The 'expert' feature is much easier to comprehend than that of the 3000 series too. So editing on this thing is easy as well. In fact I didn't need to look at the manual for ANYTHING. But maybe this was because I was familiar with the H3000 SE, as the basic inteface is the same.

So I conclude that this is very easy to use, considering that its a computer in its own right. Obviuosly with the more indepth stuff I'm sure I would have to consult the manual, but besides that, anybody with decent knowledge of processors should be able to work this one out.

I was so pleased with this unit when I turned on I had to rush to this computer and write a review on it straight away - I was only playing for 10 minutes. I hooked it up to my Mesa Boogie Road King Head through the 1st loop to give a wet sound through one signal. I went out of a 1x12 celestion cab just to test it. The guitar I tested it with was an Ernie Ball JP7. But seriously, I could've played an encore through a tin bucket with this in the middle and it would've sounded amazing. I was quite simply blown away. I suppose if I compare it with the H3000 its basically 'Same shit, different day', only better. What I mean by 'same shit' is that you still have those characteristic eventide sounds with the lush subtle choruses and the great pitch shifting capabilities, but when I say different day, I mean things have advanced - A lot. The sounds are beautiful, lovely, powerful, passionate, and emmotive. The sound is just perfect. The unit is dead quiet too! All the effects were great when I checked them out. The only tiny criticism is the tracking on the diatonic shifter is not perfect and it still rides a little slow when it comes to thinking about what key its in. As a guitarist this is one of the main features I would want on the Harmonizer to be perfect above the rest. But hey ho. I guess I'll have to get an H8000.

Only had it a few hours so I can't vouch for that. But I did have an H3000 SE for a long time and it never fucked up. This seems even more well built though. The metal is nice and cold so the vent holes can be smaller as not as much air is needed to circulate, which means less dust can get into the circuitry, something you must be extremely careful of.

I've spoken to them before. And quite frankly I think its an outrage that you should have to pay for a manual. If you buy one of the older units secondhand then they should just give them to you as an act of kindness for having faith in their products and choosing them above others.

You heard it all before. Its great. Although I'm hoping its not as good as an H8000, so that when I buy one of those I'll be even more pleased.

Very easy to use. The presets are very good and useable. Over 1000 to choose from. The presets in ROM include those from the GTR4000, The DSP4000 and the DSP4000B as well as those from the Alchemy 101 preset card. See www.eventide.com for their contents. There are complex and simple presets to learn from and to build upon.

The manual comes in a full 3-ring binder and is very detailed and well done but is not very helpful in patch/preset creating for the novice. More examples and tutorials would be helpful.

Patch editing is well thought out but time consuming and cumbersome to do using the front panel. Patch editing is not for the novice and can be quite overwelming. There is a free preset editor that is available for the PC (Win 3.1, W95, W98) that makes preset editing friendly and a pleasure. ROM presets can be down loaded so that you can see how they were built/created. Patches/presets can be created or modified in such a way as to hide the contents and paramaters from the user.

The DSP4500 shipped with v2.2 firmware. v2.3 is available and required with the purchase of the Ultashiffter presets. (New gender bender pitch shifting option)

The DSP4500 comes standard with a 87-second mono / 43-second stereo sampler. (mine has the upgraded max sampler - 174-seconds mono / 87- seconds stereo.) The sampler is easy to use and can be triggered to record or play from the front panel, footswitch, or MIDI message. The sampler also has pitchshift capability as well as timesqueeze and can be used with 1-2 simple effects (reverb/delay/chours). 16-seperate samples can be held in memory and samples can be saved on a PCMCIA card although this is a very, very slow interface.

Pitchshifting is great and is possible with 8-voices, 4-octaves up and 4-octaves down. Anything more that 2-octaves up or an 1-octave down is not going to be realistic but it is a cool effect.

MIDI capability is flexable and endless. Any preset paramater can be controlled by MIDI. Digital I/O is complete and easy to switch from analog to digital mode with 24-bit AES and S/PDIF with the ability to manually set the SCMS flag.

Excellent noise free sound. 24-bit 128x oversampling A/D/A. 56-bit processing. The most complete set of effects that can be included in one box. Any effects combo or path that you can think of can be created. A very good front end to a DAW and/or as a plug-in insert. Can be used for Mastering in either analog or digital mode.

The presets are arranged in seperate banks and are well laid out. The
guitar presets are quite good and the pedal board templates
are very easy to configure and use which displays 4-round knobs on the screen at one time that look and operate just like foot pedals.
The distortion presets are quite good considering they are digital. These include Tube, transister and THD modeling. Hard knee and soft knee compression are of the highest calibur as well as the parametric eq. The reverb is smooth and of excellent quality. Much better than the H3000 series. To compare, I would say the reverb is somewhere between a Lexicon PCM80 and TC M2000. If you have ever used any Eventide in the H3000 series, I would say that the DSP4000 series is about twice as good in all aspects.

Over 2-years of use with zero problems. This is constant studio and
live use. Power up and manual diags with helpful messages.

Great support by phone and email for any question that I have had, and I have had many.

The most awesome piece of equipment that I have ever owned or used. That big blue graphics capable LCD sceen is really helpful. 8-lines of info can be displayed per page and graphics as well as paramaters can be displayed at the same time. My only real gripe is that now that I know how to drive it and make full use of it, it runs out of gas on me. Meaning that as powerfull as it is, I can think up preset/patch combos that I would like to create but the DSP4500 is not powerfull enough to implement. I'm talking about creating monster preset/patches that would normally take a full rack worth of gear.

I use mine a lot in dual machine mode where one channel uses one
preset/patch and the other channel using a completely different preset/patch and both are linked by the internal digital mixer to the stereo outputs. Like a guitar preset/patch in CH-1 and a vocal preset/patch on CH-2.

My wish list would include: 1)More power for bigger presets. 2)An even bigger sampler. (4-5 minues). 3)SCSI interface for saving those samples and big presets. 4)88K/96K A/D/A. 5)at least 4 more user programable buttons on the front panel. 6)reverb that was of Lexicon PCM91/M300 or TC M3000/M5000 quality. 7)more user memory for presets. 9)TOS/ADAT digital I/O. 10)Insert capability.

I am a Musician/Songwritter of guitar/keyboards/voice and an Audio Engineer so I was looking for an all in box that could meet all of these needs. Money was not an issue as I knew this was going to be
thousands of dollars and a long term investment in a high quality tool. There are not a lot of choices for an all in one box. I compared and looked at buying a Lexicon 480L/M300 and a TC M5000. While the reverb in the DSP4500 is not as good as the others, the DSP4500 was a far more complete package. The included ROM presets/patches, flexability and custom algorithm construction kit along with the PC editor is what really sold me. Any configuration that I think of, or any ROM preset that I want to tweak made this a better tool for my needs. No other box that I know gives you this power and flexability. I now create and modify presets that I sell to other clients for the DSP4000 family. I've owned or used all of the high end effects boxes made since the mid 1980's and the DSP4500 is among the top ten.

This is a pricey beast and after I bought mine they lowered the list price by $1000. But it is a limited edition and is no longer made. I am very happy with it and would like to have another to link with it for extra power. This is clearly one the most flexable and customizable effects box that money can buy. I call it my digital swiss army knife and it is used or goes with me to every single session of audio work that I am involved with.