i got an ECHO PARK!!!!!

[troubledtom]

oooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh my!
                i've only played w/ it for a 1/2 hour. i was play'n w/ the reverse delay and my wife came running down stairs and said,
" thats @#$%^&* cool" i said ," yep, it sure is!"
   i have $1000.00 dollar rack units that don't do some of this stuff.
                        bad ass,
                             - tom

[Mark Hammer]

Since I am confident that your tolerance for mind-blowing is pretty high, do this:

Plug into one channel and run a patch cord from that output to a chorus or flanger or phaser.
Now run a patch cord from that device into a volume pedal, or simply a clean booster whose output level can be damped down.
Now, run a cable from THAT into the OTHER channel.  Take the output of the other channel and feed that to your amp.  Turn the delay to something longer than a few hundred milliseconds, and, uh...kiss the sky.

No, let me revise that.

First, take an anti-psychotic drug of your choice, find a quiet room and comfy chair, and THEN plug in.   

What you'll get are a stream of repeats which never stop changing.  Playing with  Just make sure you have some means to keep a lid on the recirculation volume to avoid irritating feedback.

The Sweep, Swell,  and Reverse modes are tons of fun, but you can ramp up the fun even more by setting the mix to completely Wet and using short delays.  In the case of the Reverse mode, you can get it to mimic a Slow Gear by setting the delay to zero.  There's a change, huh? Making a true reverse fake a Slow Gear? 

Now, if I could only get mine back from Jeorge.

[PharaohAmps]

I bought one, too.  I have a full-sized DL-4, and it's great, but it EATS space on the old pedalboard.  The one thing I like best about the Echo Park is that the TONE of the echo is now separate from the effects on the echo.  What I mean is that on the DL-4, you had your tape delays (tube and solid-state,) analog (with and without modulation) and digital (ditto.)  The tone of most of the rest of the delays was either digital or solid-state tape.  On the Echo Park, you can have a Sweep Echo with tape, analog, or digital - whatever you like.  Ditto for Reverse, Ducking, etc.  I think it's a neat feature to separate the tone options.

I leave mine in Tape / Quarter Note / Trails On all the time, except for 2 songs - one uses Reverse and the other uses the Sweep Echo patch.  For my purposes, it's great, and I have enough room on the board to cram my modified MM-4 (I put a footswitch on the top, by the Line6 logo, to switch between "heel up" and "heel down" on the expression pedal input.  Thanks, Jeorge!)

I'd really love to get a Liqua-Flange, but it'll have to wait a while.

Matt Farrow

[moosapotamus]

Oh, man... too cool... I want one, too!!!

~ Charlie

[troubledtom]

Since I am confident that your tolerance for mind-blowing is pretty high, do this:

Plug into one channel and run a patch cord from that output to a chorus or flanger or phaser.
Now run a patch cord from that device into a volume pedal, or simply a clean booster whose output level can be damped down.
Now, run a cable from THAT into the OTHER channel.  Take the output of the other channel and feed that to your amp.  Turn the delay to something longer than a few hundred milliseconds, and, uh...kiss the sky.

No, let me revise that.

First, take an anti-psychotic drug of your choice, find a quiet room and comfy chair, and THEN plug in.   

I'LL DO IT AFTER I DRINK 3-4 BEERS TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!
   cool mark,
          - tom

What you'll get are a stream of repeats which never stop changing.  Playing with  Just make sure you have some means to keep a lid on the recirculation volume to avoid irritating feedback.

The Sweep, Swell,  and Reverse modes are tons of fun, but you can ramp up the fun even more by setting the mix to completely Wet and using short delays.  In the case of the Reverse mode, you can get it to mimic a Slow Gear by setting the delay to zero.  There's a change, huh? Making a true reverse fake a Slow Gear? 

Now, if I could only get mine back from Jeorge.

[SeanCostello]

Anybody know what DSPs are being used in these?

Sean Costello

[Transmogrifox]

I don't know who makes the DSP's, but that honestly is not significant to the consumer.  The DSP architecture is more important to the engineer/programmer in terms of making his/her life easier in more efficiently accomplishing what they want.  The specs looked good:  I think they use a 24 bit A/D D/A CODEC module and 32 bit processing.  I can't remember for sure, but I also think they are using a 96 kHz sample rate.

Since they have more than adequate high-quality digital audio hardware, the important thing is the programming of the unit.  They have done some fabulously wonderful programming on some aspects of the pedal, but I think some of the delay modellers are a bit much, since I notice a tone that is just not right as the delays start to fade out.  There's something sterile in there that i can't put my finger on, but I know the more it gets processed, the more steril it becomes.

My theory is that the nature of digital filters (especially IIR filters) adds error upon error:

If sample "n" is recorded with p% quantization error, and [n-1] also has p% quantization error, then n + [n-1] has p% +p%, or in simple terms, double the error---but there is a probability that the error on sample [n] was too high, and sample [n-1] was too low, so adding n to n-1 cancells the error.  This becomes random enough that this begins to look like noise.  Digital noise. 

So in an FIR (finite impulse response) filter, the number of additions of this sort generally looks like [n] + [n-1] + [n-2]... onto however high order filter you desire to use, thus not as prone to increasing noise rapidly, however, when you put this into a delay loop and feed it through the digital filter multiple times, this -120 dB noise may quickly increase to an audible level.

An IIR (infinite impulse response) filter feeds the output back to the input, so after "[n] + [n-1]" has added it's error, it's fed back to the beginning to do it all over again, and this can potentially increase noise quickly--very quickly.  Now feed that back into a delay loop and repeat that process multiple times, it's not a wonder that the output starts to sound grainey when multiple delays are repeating and fading out.  The S/N ratio is getting worse every time around the loop.

This is the crux of it, though.  You couldn't do any delay modelling if you wanted to avoid the compounding error because you couldn't use digital filters to a great extent.  You would not be able to improve this by looping to an analog filter since you would have to do the A/D D/A trick every time around the loop, which would probably make the problem even worse--though the noise may be different and produce a less sterile type of problem.

I think the only way to improve this is to use a compander--that would be doing the compression in the analog section before the A/D conversion, then use the DSP to expand it once it's inside the 32-bit processing brain where it could be normalized to the entire 32-bit resolution.

You would think 24-bit resolution would be more than enough, but if you think about it--when you're guitar signal is fading out, or you roll off on the volume knob, you may be using less than 1/2 the bit resolution so now you're down to 5 or 10 bit bull scale capacity, and this is when I notice the sterile sound of the unit--is when the note's softer and on the sustain and release portion--it's like it kinda turns to mist or dissipates into almost silence, but not really.

With a compressor, you will keep your amplitude up around the higher resolution mark, then expanding into 32 bits, normalized, would make all the difference, I think, because you would be using the full 24 bits, and you wouldn't lose much information of the signal due to truncation errors if expanding into 32 bits.

All that said, I think Line6 has done an excellent job on their digital stompboxes and are making a significant mark in music history.  No damn analog pedal using BBD's could sound very good on that many repeats with that long of a delay time.

[Transmogrifox]

I did some math and...well I have to take some of my theory back.  If one assumes a 5V full dynamic range, then 5/(2^24) is the discrete step between each voltage level.  The error could be a maximum of half that, so the error is somewhere between 100 and 200 nV.

If the guitar level has faded to 10 mV, and is fed through a first order FIR filter, then on the 10th repeat through the delay loop the signal-to-noise ratio due to quantization error is still better than -70 dB.   It's hard for me to imagine being able to detect this--just a little more oomph on your guitar, to an RMS of 100 mV, then your S/N exceeds -100dB, which is even good for hi-fi audio.  At the full-scale 5 volts, your S/N is about -144 dB, which is about the thermal noise floor and better resolution would be overkill.  In other words, a 24-bit digital converter could accurately reproduce the ANALOG NOISE on the digital output, let alone a signal that is 1000 to 10000 times greater.

I think I'm just biased and I'm hearing sterility that isn't there.  Maybe it's just the voicing of the filters they use that makes something not feel quite right.  Maybe it was all in the amp at the music store I demoed it on.  I should try a different amp before I say the thing is sterile.

[vanessa]

I have a couple of questions. Can you isolate the chorus from the delay on this and if so do you get a full sounding chorus effect? Also does this thing eat up batteries?

[bwanasonic]

I have a couple of questions. Can you isolate the chorus from the delay on this and if so do you get a full sounding chorus effect? Also does this thing eat up batteries?

The chorus is just what is provided by the modulation control, in addition to what you have the delay time/mode set for. Each of the tone modes (analog, digital, tape) provides a different type of modulation (pitch shift, chorus, tape *wow*). I do have a bit of modulation dialed in most of the time, but I don't use the EP for mod effects per se. I can't remember thinking "I could replace my chorus with this!", but I would need check out that aspect of the pedal again. The envelope/filter effects are what makes the EP for me, in addition to the *meat&potatoes* delay settings. Oh, and the tap-tempo. I suppose I should try running it with batteries as an experiment, but I always use the adapter (I use the *blessed* Line 6 adapter). Speaking of experiments, I still need to try Mark Hammer's Electric Kool Aid Feedback Trip. 

Kerry M

[vanessa]

I just remember having the DL-4 wishing the chorus could be made a little pronounced. I'm not much of a chorus person, so it would be cool if it were under the hood (or in the ball park) just for that once-in-a-while cover of ZZ Top’s version of "I Thank You". 

[jimbob]

Fine! I want one too! I am just another sheep following you all (the herd) Im serious. They sound like one of the best deals out there for what you get.

[MartyMart]

I have the Tap Trem and Space chorus, they EAT batteries in an hour or less !!
The "cheap n Nasty" one that is supplied lasted about 15 minutes 
Great pieces of kit, but the weight for a pedal board is way too much !!
I gig in Europe a lot, so we're alway's having to be careful with weight of
equipment on Aircraft, over 1Kg per pedal, is just too much ....

Marty.

[vanessa]

Has anyone compared this to the Ibanez DE-7? I know that there is more functionality with the echo park but I hear the DE-7 sounds better, is better on batteries and is half the price.

[robbiemcm]

Any schematic for the Echo Park or DE-7?

[Mark Hammer]

Any schematic for the Echo Park?

  Wouldn't do you any good at either cloning one, understanding one, or modding one.

Batteries:  I'm not sure what battery drain is on the others, but when I inquired about the nature of the stereo in the Echo Park, Angelo (the programmer) told me that they had made some compromises in the stereo implementation in order to be able to still get about 6hrs duty from a fresh alkaline 9v (fancier DSP code that demands more operations per second eats more current).  Whether that remained a kind of benchmark target for all the pedals, I have no idea.  The pedals were not really conceived of as intended to depend on battery power for anythng more than a brief period.  I take it that at least part of their thinking was that the pedals should be easy to try out in a music store without having to wait for the sales staff to find the right wall-wart, look for an available outlet behind the amps, etc.  Once the pedal is in the hands of the owner, the external supply would likely be a permanent fixture on their pedalboard.  Remember that another part of the thinking behind the Tone Core series was to provide much of what the modeller series offers in a more convenient and pedal-board friendly package, where a regulated supply would more than likely be part of the rig..

[bwanasonic]

Has anyone compared this to the Ibanez DE-7? I know that there is more functionality with the echo park but I hear the DE-7 sounds better, is better on batteries and is half the price.

I would never again use a delay pedal with batteries for gigs. The other guitar player in my old band used a DE7, and it was plenty functional for basic delay functions. If that's all you want, check one out. The tap-tempo  alone makes the EP a better deal for me. Sound wise, I'm not too sure about any claims of the DE7 sounding *better*. Different for sure. I really like the *tape* setting on the EP, and the DE7 has no comparable setting. Maybe alone in your bedroom, comparing *analog* to *analog* on the two pedals, you could convince yourself the Ibanez sounded *better*, but I haven't done this comparison. Once you try the other features of the EP, a *plain* delay loses it's appeal pretty quickly 

Kerry M

[cd]

Also does this thing eat up batteries?

Anyone who relies on batteries in digital stompboxes is either a sadist, or owns stock in Energizer/Duracells' parent company

[vanessa]

Has anyone compared this to the Ibanez DE-7? I know that there is more functionality with the echo park but I hear the DE-7 sounds better, is better on batteries and is half the price.

I would never again use a delay pedal with batteries for gigs. The other guitar player in my old band used a DE7, and it was plenty functional for basic delay functions. If that's all you want, check one out. The tap-tempo  alone makes the EP a better deal for me. Sound wise, I'm not too sure about any claims of the DE7 sounding *better*. Different for sure. I really like the *tape* setting on the EP, and the DE7 has no comparable setting. Maybe alone in your bedroom, comparing *analog* to *analog* on the two pedals, you could convince yourself the Ibanez sounded *better*, but I haven't done this comparison. Once you try the other features of the EP, a *plain* delay loses it's appeal pretty quickly 

Kerry M

Well I had all those features (and more) in a Line 6 DL-4 and I wound up in the end just using the tape echo effect. The tap feature is really cool if you use delay to make melody (like say the Edge from U2) lines that really depend on bmp. It can be done without. Before the Edge started to use DD's with tap capabilities they used to start those types of songs with the delayed guitar parts so that they could Q the bmp.

I don't use delay that way. I guess I use it in a traditional sense. Slap-back for rhythm stuff, picking, and some leads. And longer delays for lead stuff.

The Ibanez DE-7 does have two settings and one is tape emulation. Echo = Tape, Delay = Digital. I hear the Echo (Tape emu) is amazing. There are a whole crowd of delay freaks over on Guitar Geek and The Gear Page that claim that in that price category the DE-7 wins hands down over the two. There are endless hate threads about the longevity of the Line 6 Echo Park and the lack of customer support. It seems that there may be a problem with circuit (from what I gathered it may be prone to fault do to a power source issue or possibly static electricity). People have complained about getting a very bad hiss from the unit. Some say right out of the box, others say within weeks, months. The other big complaint is battery life. This same problem seems to plague other pedals in the Tone Core series. Most of the bad press comes from people who gave it the thumbs up in a the honey-moon review thread months prior. Please keep me posted, I would like to know if they have addressed this issue with the series.

[MartyMart]

Also does this thing eat up batteries?

Anyone who relies on batteries in digital stompboxes is either a sadist, or owns stock in Energizer/Duracells' parent company

"I only did it the once ..... your honour !! "

M