The Eventide Blackhole Immersive and MicroPitch Immersive plugins, which debuted during the AES NY 2023 Convention, are designed for surround and immersive workflows, including Dolby Atmos, and they’ve both now been updated to add mono and stereo support, and more.
Specificallly, they offer 7.0.6, 7.1.6, 9.0.4, 9.1.4, 9.0.6, and 9.1.6 loudspeaker configuration support, and full upmixing support for 5.0.2, 5.1.2, 5.0.4, 5.1.4, 7.0.4, and 7.1.4 channel configurations (previously these layouts only supported mono and stereo upmixing). New presets have been added to both as well, including artist presets from Scott Michael Smith for Blackhole. They’ve also been made more efficient to reduce overall CPU usage.
With Blackhole Immersive, the enhanced workflow gives more control over the reverb across channels, for an evolving immersive experience. Meanwhile, MicroPitch Immersive users can spread, tilt and dynamically morph the effect across the width, depth and height of an immersive mix. With both plugins, the Front, Top and Rear speakers can be equalized separately, and users can morph between two distinct settings.
“Blackhole Immersive,” says engineer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Scott Michael Smith (The Walking Dead, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Revenant), “provides a way to design infinitely vast soundscapes while maintaining precise multichannel control. Instantly musical and absolutely gorgeous sounding. I love this plugin!”
Blackhole Immersive’s Gravity, Size and Feedback parameters for faster tailoring of the reverb to an immersive space, while the crossfeed control lets users blend the reverb between loudspeakers – a mono source can become truly immersive with one gesture. “Blackhole Immersive takes my favorite reverb ever and makes it even more vast and otherworldly,” says composer/producer Matt Lange. “An absolute must-have for immersive mixing and production.”
“MicroPitch Immersive,” adds producer/engineer Andrew Scheps (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele, Jay-Z), “is an invaluable tool for spreading sources around in ways from subtle to in your face. You might think it isn’t doing much until you turn it off; then you get sad.”
With up to 12 channels of spatialized, detuned delays, plus modulation, EQ and crossfeed controls, MicroPitch Immersive can be used in creating both real and unreal immersive realities with boundaries that reflect, move, diffuse and dissolve. Tilting the Left/Right, Front/Back and Top/Main Detune parameters allow quickasymmetrical detuning and space fine tuning. The plugin’s enhanced delay and modulation capability can be used to create slapbacks, add movement with pitch modulation, or create exciting motion with patterned Loop Delay.
Ocicat Ruan of L+R SoundSystem Studio calls MicroPitch Immersive, “Fast and powerful! Everything I wanted about delay is in there, and you can use it to recreate spatial depths and tones. The best part is that all of this can be done in seconds!”
Both have a UI optimized for immersive workflows with identical core controls for all channel layouts – no menu diving is required. Individual loudspeaker levels can be quickly set using the integrated Levels control section whether mixing in the supported LCR, Quadraphonic, or one of the expanded range of immersive multichannel layouts.
Kill Dry, Kill Wet and Freeze controls allow the creation of drastic effects, while the Mix Lock function allows for scrolling through presets or settings while keeping the wet/dry mix constant. The resizable GUI offers Undo/Redo and A/B comparison. Both the plugins come with comprehensive presets libraries.
They’re available for download at a U.S. MSRP of $499. (USD) each. Owners of the stereo versions save 20 percent of their purchase. Current users can download the updated versions for free.
