While at Eventide Audio, I was the Product Lead for a long-awaited, much-needed project – overhauling the ancient H3000 Factory and Band Delays plug-ins. These were software recreations of beloved algorithms from the ubiquitous H3000 rackmount FX processor, released in the late 80s and used by such great minds as Brian Eno and Steve Vai.

The original plugin’s were dated. The UI was small and lacking modern sensibility, there were bugs all over the place, and advancements in hardware modelling meant that we could get the plugin much closer to the sound of the original unit.

Here’s what they looked like originally ~

And here’s where we ended up ~

Thanks to the keen eye of designer Evan Pittson, we pulled off a complete graphical and stylistic overhaul of the plugins, dragging the hardware (kicking and screaming) into the modern era.

Eventide DSP engineer Woody Herman did much poking and prodding at the unit itself to refine the core modelling of the unit’s converters. Many a day were spent exasperated, trying to get the unit to behave so we could get a reliable test setup. Especially for sonic effects as subtle as the H3k ADC, it was difficult to feel confident we had gotten it right. Even moreso as the unit kept electrocuting us. The final result was worth the effort – experienced H3000 hardware users confirmed that the plugins capture a je ne sais quoi that puts one at ease. To learn more about the technical details of the modelling process, check out the interview Woody and I did:

Attack Magazine also did a fantastic interview and writeup on the product as well.