Published: 2018-11-18

Mac/PC VST/AU/AAX $199. While the majority of reverbs in our list are primarily aimed at creating realistic rooms, halls, plates, etc, Blackhole - originally an algorithm in Eventide’s legendary H8000 Ultra-Harmonizer - is specifically aimed at sound designers looking to realise wholly unreal spaces in their Mac, PC or iPad DAW. The Classic Master Limiter VST plugin is specially designed to boost the overall level of your final mixes, but is also highly useable on very dynamic instruments. With just one control on the front panel operation is as simple as it gets; just turn the Threshold down and hear how your mixes gets louder and louder.

Vst Plugin Black Hole Puncher

A Reverb is usually a reverb. They are there to emulate a space. This is where reverb has been in different forms to emulate space in different ways we can do it in a digital realm. Plate reverb, small reverb... terms you probably know by now. Impulse Response brought a new meaning to the idea what a reverb could be sounding like. Because impulse responses is a basic analysis of what the room is doing inside an audio file. This gets translated to what the reverb is doing and ya da ya da... I won't bore you with technical details in this article.

Reverb is usually limited by 'space', and that is... basically its limitation. Just because it tries to emulate a specific type of space. Sometimes I want to create something else than a Cathedral space. And often I find myself playing around with filters, delays and other effects just to create a reverb that sounds different than traditional reverb should sound like. Because why does a reverb always have to resemble space? It can just be an effect for what it is worth. Hence we have all these different reverb plugins that emulate space in different ways.

Blackhole was designed to give you extensive control, allowing you to craft your own signature sounds. Included with Blackhole is a carefully curated set of 50 presets that serve as a launch pad for your explorations. These presets cover spaces as small as a room and as large as space itself. With flexible modulation capabilities, a Freeze control for the infinite reverb effects, and tempo-synced delay effects built-in, you'll be blown away by the surreal soundscapes you can create with the Eventide Blackhole native reverb plug-in. Eventide Blackhole Native Reverb Plug-in Features: Reverb plug-in for Mac/PC - VST, AU, AAX. Eventide BlackHole v2.0.8 PC OnlyOverviewClassic Eventide reverb effect capable of producing huge spaces and out-of-this-world soundscapes!Blackhole is a massive reverberator that has evolved over the years by pulling in mass quantities of time. Blackhole has a bit more going on, with extra modulation. It also has synced pre delay which is pretty cool. Anyone who is a reverb slut should probably own Blackhole and Shimmer. And here is a demo where you can hear them both. Comparison Experiment Eventide Black Hole - Valhalla Shimmer by Sampleconstruct Free Listening on SoundCloud.

Blackhole emulates gravity

Today I purchased Blackhole from Eventide. It is a reverb plugin that emulates gravity... I know this is a silly joke because gravity is just a setting inside this plugin.

Eventide their Blackhole Reverb is a plugin reverb that does not try to emulate reverb as we know it. It is where you take reverb to the next creative level more or less

The reason why I had my eye on the Blackhole Reverb myself is that of two major things:

Blackhole was designed to give you extensive control, allowing you to craft your own signature sounds. Included with Blackhole is a carefully curated set of 50 presets that serve as a launch pad for your explorations. These presets cover spaces as small as a room and as large as space itself. Blackhole Plug-in Presets. Factory Presets.

1. The size of this reverb is totally driven to insanity mode.
2. Modulating a reverb has never been that much easier to do so (without the clunky audio stops that a lot of reverb tend to have).

Now, to be honest, this always a thing with these type of plugins. It is your thing, or it isn't. It is that simple. And the above pointers already made me wanting this reverb VST plugin for a really long time. Also, since I am about transparency, there might be a reason why you should not get it... If you expect a reverb that has more then just one algorithm to emulate a specific reverb type, then this plugin might just not be your thing. Since Blackhole is about 'creative' stuff. And not trying to emulate anything in real life (maybe the sound of space... hence blackhole... but who knows).

While originally this thing has a price tag of $199 (which is totally insane, even if you compare it with the TSAR-1 from Softube, which also has just one algorithm just saying) currently while I am typing this reverb plugin is on sale for $69.

Installing blackhole

Now, here comes the big thing though. Eventide decided to use ILOK for their license thingymabob. Which means... installing this will be a little like a mindfuck in case you have no idea what ILOK is. In theory, it just comes down to this:
You set up an account on ILOK
You buy the product at the Eventide shop
You use your ILOK account to connect to the shop
You download an ILOK manager tool
You buy the product
You register the product using the ILOK manager tool (two computers at maximum)
You launch any DAW
And if everything goes alright... it should be registered.

and... if all is good, Blackhole should be registered as an effect. Now if you compare this with the amount of work that goes with for instance setting up Komplete 12... that is a different story (but ok. I thought I would just mention it, so you are warned).

While trying to install it inside Ableton, I have to manually trigger a re-scan of all VSTs to make this one work though. Rescan a VST folder can be done using two different ways:
1. Click the rescan folder
2. Deselect the 'use VST in custom folder' (turn it off) and when done so, turn it on again (this triggers a full scan of all VST plugins). The latter solved the issue on my end

So with that, all said, installing this Blackhole Reverb is like trying to make the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs but you'll end up doing it in 24 instead. It took me quite some time to figure out most of the pieces of the puzzle. For a lot of reasons, Google was my friend in most cases to figure out how things would turn out. Because I experienced this issue, I thought I would just throw this on the table in case you have issues with installing Blackhole in your own DAW.

Besides the installation hiccup, once you have passed the insanity test you are ready for some insane Reverb sound effects.

Putting Blackhole to the test

Now I know it is just easier to throw in specs on the table to tell you what this reverb can do and what it can't do. I think it would be just easier to show this in a (private) video instead.

Vst Plugin Black Hole Tool