Recorded via Apogee Duet to Garage Band with Fender Jazzmaster, and Fender Vibro Champ.
Drum machine recorded with room mode reverb.
Rhythm track uses room setting at 20-30% FX level, and modest modulation rate and depth.
The lead track moves through room, digital, peak, and gate reverbs in that order.
At 1:28 the gong reverb appears on a separate track along with the wave reverb set to high depth and modulation rates.
RatingsPros:Scads of unusual, vast-to-tasteful reverb tones. Thoughtful, ergonomic, flow-oriented design. Great contrasts between modes. Fun! Cons: Doesn't do super-accurate spring or plate sounds. Some digital artifacts. Expensive. Street: $395 Death By Audio Rooms Stereo Reverberator deathbyaudio.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value:  |
As wild as reverb pedals can be in this digital epoch, I find many of them a little same sounding—even in their spaciest incarnations. Leave it to Death By Audio to shake that up with Rooms. The digital Rooms makes many unusual and unpredictable sounds—but it's not so quirky that you can't dive in intuitively and fearlessly. It's just as capable of beautiful, subtle-to-lush reverbs. It's forgiving. And it's potent and varied in ways that transcend guitar use. In fact, Rooms sometimes feels and functions like outboard studio gear. It's also incredibly fun and sends you along many unexpected creative trajectories. If you can't have fun with Rooms, you might just be a zombie.
Space Brick
Rooms was designed with little concern for the miniaturization trend. In my humble opinion, it's a better, more useful pedal for it. The controls are easy to identify, and there is great ergonomic satisfaction in being able to move assuredly among the controls, confident in the function and the results. The critical bypass and “alt" switches, which enable movement between two very different settings, are far enough apart to avoid accidental activation. The powerful, expressive time knob is outsized and situated prominently so you can make adjustments with your toe. (There is also an expression-pedal jack for controlling the time or frequency in the alt mode.) The independent effects mix and dry controls, meanwhile, open up endless possibilities for foregrounding, backgrounding, or adding clarity to the most radical sounds. (Both controls also function effectively as boosts.)
Individual controls have huge range, and the resulting sound-crafting potential is immense. Given Rooms' lack of presets (unless you count the single “alt" setting), that range and sensitivity may give control freaks fits. But I returned to near-identical or approximate settings with ease, and was happy to be unburdened by preset recall functions. Switching between primary and alt settings can also generate transitionary sounds like pitch swoops and slides that could become killer song hooks.
To the Valley Below…and Spaces Above
Rooms is overflowing with tasteful-to-powerful sounds. And in each mode the function of the frequency and depth controls shifts to suit the mode. Room reverb mode is capable of subtle and cosmic-scale sounds that are well suited to volume swells. Digital mode sounds are less colored by overtones at equivalent settings, but can still go positively interstellar. The peak mode is awesome—particularly if you've wearied of high-octave-emphasized “choral" verbs. Peak mode achieves the less cheesy side of that ambience, but the filter frequency function in this mode also enables you to emphasize heavy low-frequency reverberations to awesome ends. Applied to detuned guitars, the effect yields massive, ominous, deep-Earth tones.
Gated mode helps create solo and chord textures that have the attack and mood of super-splashy ambience, but won't bury everything else with dense, runaway reverb trails. The modulating wave mode generates a range of undulating textures that can be shaped into dry, in-your-face '80s Brit-chorus (Cure, New Order) or super-spacious, high-speed vibrato sounds. (Another awesome possible contrast you can exploit with the alt switch.) The ultra-fun gong mode, meanwhile, creates unorthodox near-fuzz tones at settings with quick decays and low-mid frequency emphasis, or—at the right frequency and time settings—ring modulated colors that sound like a gamelan-and-sitar duo lost in the bowels of an endless cavern.
The Verdict
Impressively, the many possibilities described merely scratch the surface of Rooms' capabilities. In fact, the only vaguely crappy thing about Rooms is the price. For me, the $395 sticker price is justifiable: First, because much thought, labor, and development went into this circuit, but also because I can imagine using it with other instruments, in composition, or, more intriguingly, in mixing, where the bounty of unexpected sounds and stereo output functionality could yield truly unique outcomes. If you're strictly a gigging player who likes occasional extreme-reverb colors but generally sticks to simpler fare, there are cheaper options. But if you're fascinated with the outer limits of pedal reverb and sound design, you have to try it. Rooms isn't for everyone, and it favors an impressionistic, not-too-precious approach to sound creation. But for those who relate to its quirks, the fresh ideas it inspires are likely to flow hard and fast.
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Truetone 1 Spot Pro XP5-PS 5-output Low-profile Isolated Guitar Pedal Power Supply
The XP5-PS is a package containing the 1 Spot Pro XP5, along with a 12Vdc 2.5A adapter, which allows you to power the XP5 without having a CS11. The adapter comes with an array of international plugs so that you can take it with your pedalboard anywhere in the world. Some musicians may even choose to get one of these, plus another XP5, to distribute their power around the pedalboard and have the dual XP5s acting as two pedal risers.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
