Has Echo Farm got a future (EchoBoy + Tape Delay)

[DaveSB]

Hi Im wondering if Echo Farm still is a smart buy and also because of the very popular SoundToys EchoBoy.
I cant see a viable market for Echo Farm any more with Digidesign making their own brand of Tape Delay now because my guess
they will do no more development on the product.

I use EchoBoy and have stoped using Echofarm because EchoBoy uses 1 Accel chip for two instances and with EchoFarm
you get only one instance.
Also the code base is much more modern for EchoBoy and I think it has a slight edge over Echo Farm soundwise although that might be wishful thinking on my part

I would love to hear from users of both Echofarm and Echoboy and pros and cons.
Im still curious as to why Echo farm is still popular

cheers Dave

[JFreak]

Im still curious as to why Echo farm is still popular

It emulates TC 2290 very well, that's why.

[Evil Jack]

I think Digi could update the standard Digirack delays with some new features/GUIs - I still use them.

[dtmprod]

I loved that effect on Echofarm as well. But when I figured out that using a side chain compressor (after the delay) to duck the delay when the vocal is going thru gets the same effect, I quit using echo farm & only use Echoboy. Try it...

[tlester]

I loved that effect on Echofarm as well. But when I figured out that using a side chain compressor (after the delay) to duck the delay when the vocal is going thru gets the same effect, I quit using echo farm & only use Echoboy. Try it...

That's an old-school technique. I've been using that for years on PCM41's.

[DaveSB]

To set up a TC 2290 emulation with Echo Boy what do you use to trigger the sidechain input of the compressor
ie is it a send from the main vocal track?

[Lee Blaske]

Hi Im wondering if Echo Farm still is a smart buy and also because of the very popular SoundToys EchoBoy.
I cant see a viable market for Echo Farm any more with Digidesign making their own brand of Tape Delay now because my guess
they will do no more development on the product.

Well, there are a lot of plug-ins that have been essentially "frozen in time" from their introduction. A lot of the Digidesign plug-ins have remained the same. That's also true of most Waves Products (if improvements are made, they come out as a new plug-in which you get to buy). The advantage is that they work exactly as they always did when you call up older sessions. When plug-ins undergo major updates, sometimes it's hard to maintain backward compatibility. It can be tricky to drastically alter a plug-in, and ensure that old presets work exactly the same.

Other companies do continually improve and add features, like AltiVerb.

I expect that Echo Farm will be kept "alive" for a long time as PT, Digi hardware and operating systems change. In that way, it will remain viable. For a company like Digidesign, assets like this are valuable because they can be included in bundles that come along with new systems, or as part of Massive Packs. It's similar to things like the Focusrite Red d2 and d3 plug-ins, and many others.

For new individual purchases of older plug-ins, there are always secondary markets like eBay. iLok makes transfer of these sorts of assets fairly simple.

Lee Blaske

[mixer]

i love echo farm..i have echo boy and the others but echofarm has some great sounds