WELCOME TO THE XL-305R PLUGIN FOR MAC & WINDOWS FROM AUDIOSCAPE

12 Springs Equally Tempered

AudioScape’s hardware version of the XL-305R has its roots in the digital-free XL-305 Spring Reverb released by Micmix in 1979. An immediate success, it quickly found its way into major studios worldwide. Owing to its smooth decay and unique sonic signature, it has been a secret weapon reverb over the years and has gained cult-like status. Unlike many spring reverbs, this spring assembly has 12 springs tuned together making it equally tempered, very similar to opening the lid of a piano, holding the damper open and singing into the strings . Working from this core design principle, we re-imagined the rest of our hardware version of the XL-305R from the ground up. After four years of R & D under the direction of Wayne Kirkwood (original designer of the XL-305), we brought our take on this ground-breaking design from the last century into this one. 

Now we’re proud to bring you the software version of this classic with our new XL-305R Equally-Tempered Spring Reverb plugin. We’ve stayed true to our philosophy of more-real-than-recreated by making this plugin nearly a doppelganger of our hardware offering.

Features:

• INPUT controls drive the signal to the tank, signal overload LEDs son each channel

• MIX controls blend the wet/ dry ratio

• 4-band boost/cut EQ on each channel, for shaping the tone of the wet signal

• Mono Drive Lighted Push-button Switch stereo links the channels together ,and makes it easier to bring the stereo image together

• Mono Return Lighted Push-button Switch sends the signal from the Reverb assembly out, summed to mono

• LED indicators on the right side of the unit allow the user to monitor the total output level of the Reverb itself

Artist Presets from:

• Armon Jay

• Matt Lange

• Joe Carrell

• Melissa Bell

• Clifton Miles

• Adam Sliger

• More on the way!

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From Wayne Kirkwood, the original designer of the XL-305:

“What makes the MasterRoom reverbs unique are the spring timings. They are "equally-tempered" following a log progression very similar to the musical scale.I have never seen another mechanical reverb system that worked this way - most get their diffusion from the material whether its a metal plate or the less-than-random delays of a single spring or 2 or 3 springs operating in parallel. The plate has a lot of diffusion - small numbers of springs don't and usually "boing."

”I'm standing on the shoulders of its inventor William "Bill" Hall. The MasterRoom actually began life as an acoustic burglar alarm, a side project in the early days of MicMix. MicMix's first product was an industrial-strength field mixer in a deep drawn aluminum Halliburton case. They sold a few but it wasn't very successful. Thus the name "MicMix."The burglar alarm didn't work on the Doppler principle, it "pinged" the room, mapped the echo returns and then looked for changes. In order to test his research Bill needed a diffuse room which provided the most-difficult test. Bill was an amateur organist and knew about the Hammond spring system. Bill decided to use Hammond springs to provide his alarm's "test chamber." Using his math skills Bill determined that a log series would diverge and create a diffuse room. Once he pinged the "test chamber" he quickly realized what he had. The alarm project was dropped and the MasterRoom born by accident.”

”You can create a similar effect by opening the lid of a piano, holding the damper open and singing into the strings.”

”Bill after several years of success knew that digital reverbs would quickly come onto the scene and urged the co-founder, John Saul, to move in that direction. There was a lot of resistance and eventually Bill left the company. In the process I got handed several projects including the Time Warp, DynaFlanger and the XL-305.”

”Before Bill left he called me in his office one afternoon and taught me how to calculate spring timings. I still have his and my original notes and draft copies of the patent application. While waiting for digital to mature I built an XL-305 clone out of Reticon BBDs as a proof-of-concept. I left MicMix in the early 1980s to go into speech recognition and then onto studio maintenance doing a brief stint with SSL. By the early 1980s the Rev7 killed spring reverbs and MicMix was gone.”

”I'm glad we could bring a piece of it back.”

FEATURED VIDEO DEMOS OF THE HARDWARE UNIT

Benny Grotto of Mad Oak Studios in Boston, USA compares the new AudioScape XL 305R to one of his studio's plate reverbs on a variety of source material.

“It’s really just an awesome, awesome tool….it blends so easily”

“the sense of space that the spring provides and this kind of sense of lushness and sustain, is so good.”

Colt Capperrune of Dark River Studios in Nashville, USA with an in-depth look at the AudioScape XL-305R

DOCUMENTATION:

• XL-305R QUICK-START

• XL-305R MANUAL

HEAR IT IN ACTION!

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