Eventide Clockworks Review

Eventide recently hooked me up with their new Clockworks bundle to try. It’s very good.

Disclaimer: Except for one plugin I already owned, I didn’t pay for these plugins. They were offered to me by Eventide to work with them for a while and then write a review only if I wanted to. The article contains sponsored links. If you wish to see less sponsored content, please consider supporting the work I do directly via Patreon. It really helps and you get many nice benefits.

The Eventide Clockworks Bundle review

The Clockworks bundle brings you eight plugins, each modelled after vintage outboard units:

• Omnipressor
• H910 Harmonizer (plus a dual version which can create further effects)
• H949 Harmonizer (plus a dual version)
• Instant Flanger
• Instant Phaser
• SP2016 Reverb.

The units Eventide have modelled here are quite legendary and date between 1971 and 1981. With one exception, I had never used the units in this bundle before so I was super curious to check them out.

I’ve been using these plugins in my productions now daily for about a week. I’ll give you the quick summary first, then my impressions on each plugin, and finally a full conclusion in detail.

Quick summary

The Good

• The plugins sound great.
• The modelling is very detailed. The plugins feel alive.
• Good looks and usability. Extra controls have been added that make sense in todays world.
• You get some characters and specific effects that aren’t available elsewhere. I haven’t come across anything else that sounds quite like the Omnipressor or the H910 in particular.
• Good presets and documentation.

The Bad

• They feel a bit pricey to me. But you are paying for some pretty elusive sounds. I have paid for the Omnipressor myself and for me it’s absolutely justifiable as it gets a lot of use. Or you can hunt for the discounts.
• If you’re looking for clean sounding plugins, these are not for you.

Eventide Omnipressor

The Omnipressor is the analog juice of the gods. It makes things sound big, fat, round and tight. It pumps and squeezes but instead of squeezing the life out of things, it gives them new life. I know that is a lot said about a plugin, but I don’t say it lightly and I stand by my words.

I bought the Omnipressor a few years back after demoing it because I loved the sound and its ability to completely rework the dynamics of the source material. I eventually fell out with it because the first version of the plugin was missing an output gain control. A small thing, but very important for my workflow. Thankfully, Eventide have not stood still. In fact they have totally overhauled the plugin in an update a while back.

This new version has new output gain, wet/dry mix and sidechain options, updated graphics (looks very nice on my 5k screen) and a reworked algorithm to make it sound even better. I do love companies who keep refining their older products and making them better. The original unit was released in 1974. There is nothing wrong with taking what is good about it and adding some thoughtful features.

Besides just sounding great, the Omnipressor is super versatile. In addition to compression that ranges from subtle to infinite, it does gating and what Eventide call “dynamic reversal”.

The one thing you can’t do with Omnipressor is transparent compression. It colors sound even with zero gain change. And it gets real crunchy (in a good way) if you push the output gain enough.

Presets are often not very useful in a compressor. But because Omnipressor can do so many things, I’m glad it has a bunch of well thought out presets to showcase its powers. My fav is “Analog Juice”. Works a treat on drums and I’ve even been using it on the mix bus. Another favourite trick of mine is to put two Omnipressors in series and see what happens.

The Omnipressor has made its way onto my tools hall of fame, and that is the best testament I can give.

Link: Eventide Omnipressor

Eventide H910 Harmonizer

The H910 Harmonizer was developed in 1974. It was the first digital effects unit in the world. It offers a combination of pitch shifting, delay, feedback and gritty texture that gives it that classic sound you are likely to recognise.

I’ve really enjoyed using it to colour drums by driving the input and output stages (they can be driven separately and the input also has a limiter), and then playing with the feedback and other controls to get some nice grungy lo-fi tones going. The micro-pitch presets are an instant way to create big stereo width (watch out for possible phase correlation problems though).

Of course it will also sound equally nice on things other than drums. A mix control is very helpful for dialling back the effects. The H910 is a bit of a wild beast. It likes to drift and generally just do stuff you don’t expect. That is part of the fun and it clearly shows that Eventide have gone through a lot of trouble with modelling the quirkiness.

The bundle comes with the H910 Dual Harmonizer plugin, which has an instance of H910 for each side of the stereo image, along with some thoughtful stereo controls. It’s a powerful thing that gets you well on your way into outer space.

Link: Eventide H910 Harmonizer

Eventide H949 Harmonizer

Released in 1977, the H949 Harmonizer was the follow-up to the H910. It has a cleaner, less gritty character and introduces flanging as well as random and reverse delays. It is the grand daddy of crystal/shimmer effects. It’s a favourite of many guitarists in particular and has also been used a lot for doubling vocals. The H949 also does the micro-pitch thing for that super wide stereo effect.

The H949 gets very crazy very quickly. I don’t find those kinds of sounds particularly useful for the way that I usually work. It took a while to understand that for me the magic of this unit is in using it subtly. It can bring the most boring sounds alive by adding a little bit of beautifully evolving texture. I like using it for pads, synths and things of that nature. I really like the default preset that the plugin loads up with for that in fact! H949 also sounds great as a delay. It has this sort of elusive vibe that is hard to pinpoint.

Link: Eventide H949 Harmonizer

Eventide Instant Flanger

The Instant Flanger does what it says on the tin. Great sounding flanging with quick and easy to use controls. It has several different modulation controls that can all be used in tandem, adding a layer of unpredictability.

The Instant Flanger has three different operating modes. I tend to favour the one labeled “Shallow” for its metallic tones. To be honest, I don’t find myself using flangers much. But when I do, I don’t think I’ll be looking elsewhere anymore.

Link: Eventide Instant Flanger

Eventide Instant Phaser

Introduced in 1971 – over 50 years ago – the Eventide Instant Phaser is the first studio phaser and the first rackmount effects unit in the world.

The plugin sounds really great and very analog. Like Instant Flanger, it has three different operating modes that all sound quite different. The “Wide” mode is quite something. It introduces great depth and dimension to anything you put it on, making it sound larger.

Link: Eventide Instant Phaser

Eventide SP2016

The Eventide SP2016 is a commended multi-fx unit that was released in 1981. The plugin includes three vintage reverb algorithms from the original (Stereo Room, Room and High Density Plate) as well as three modern versions of these.

The unit has a bunch of controls that are clearly laid out. They’re all pretty self explanatory and it’s a breeze to dial in a sound that sits well in the mix. There is one rather rare control available called Position. It sets the front-to-back position of a sound and is very useful. I wonder why more reverbs don’t have something like this – seems like a no brainer to me now.

The SP2016 is a bread and butter workhorse mix reverb. You’re not going to find flashy shimmers or reverse effects here. It sounds pretty soft, natural and unobtrusive. It doesn’t want to take over your sounds. It’s the tool to draw for when you need something to sit better in the mix. It does a great job at that.

True to my nature, I did find a way to abuse this unit and turn it into a character machine by driving the input and output to the brink of apocalypse. You should try it, too.

Link: Eventide SP2016

Eventide Clockworks Review – Conclusion

Eventide Clockworks is a wonderful collection of some of the most classic vintage effects out there. Eventide stays true to their pedigree. Everything is carried out with finesse. It feels like these plugins have a life and soul of their own, and they will impart that on your music.

These are precise emulations of very old outboard units. You have to be mindful of your gain staging when working with them. They will produce different results depending on how loud the signal is coming in and going out. They might run your signal off phase if you’re careless. You can even run the reverb into distortion. In my mind those are very good things. That type of unpredictability and attention to detail in the modelling is exactly why I love these plugins. But it might catch you off guard if you’re used to working with safe and clean plugins, like the ones that come with most DAWs.

I would also like to commend Eventide on the documentations.

First of all, the manuals are quickly and easily accessed directly from within the plugin interface. Just hit the “i” button and a PDF opens up. I really wish more plugin manufacturers would do this. There is nothing I hate more than having to go look for a manual from a website, only to find the only way to access it is to download the installer and then find the manual from inside the package (yes, talking to you Crave DSP). The documentation should be easily accessible when you need it (which is usually when working with the plugin). Eventide clearly get that.

Second, the manuals itself are succinct and very clearly laid out. All the relevant info is very easy to find. Great job.

The plugin interfaces look and work great on my 5k iMac screen, but they’re not resizeable. Personally I’m perfectly fine with their sizes. During my testing (I used Ableton Live 10) I didn’t suffer any glitches or crashes.

Omnipressor is the star of the show for me here. It is an immensely great sounding and useful plugin for what I’m doing. The H910 and the H949 offer plenty of unique character for different situations. The Instant Flanger, Instant Phaser and the SP2016 are simply great sounding solid performers.

So, well done Eventide. I’m happy to recommend these plugins and you’ll be hearing them on my music from now on, that’s for sure!