Reverber- rate or hate? - Trying out an 1980s HiFi Reverb Amp 

For anyone with suggestions about *splitting the audio signal to enable the lights to flash without using reverb* etc - here's my reply to the first comment that mentioned this: *"Yes, for a while I was thinking about just running off a tape output to it - but I think I've run out of space. When I do my HiFi reorganisation in a few weeks I want to simplify things down a tad...there's just too much plugged in at the mo."*

LMAO High five for the rant about the 'listen to music without any equaliztion' crowd

5:26 made my day. I love the "cry as much as possible part".

You forgot that you need to blindfold yourself and sit in a sensory deprivation pool to truly appreciate the music.

"Sounds best when turned off" was that in their ad for it ;)

I love the purist rant at 5:25 - brilliant!

I just lost it at the audiophiles disclaimer 😂😂😂

That light display is bloody beautiful.

I adore 1980s tech look! So streamlined and elegant! Much better than those rounded-plastic "messes" they produced in the late 90s

That is the best use of the Green Muppet I've seen so far.

you shouldnt wear glasses. that distorts the visual presentation intended by nature.

Just in case anyone asks... No, it's not for sale, I'm not in the selling game, I just make videos.

As a composer, to Hell with my intentions. How you shape it is as valid as how I chose to shape it.

Music should be fun

I spent hours watching your videos. It was a trip back in time to a wonderful period of my life. Thank you!

That swing at the people moaning about how to properly listen to music... I loved it!

5:25 - That is the perfect nerdish, trainspotter voice!

One of the best channels with some of the best content, as well as one of the most engaging personalities on RU-vid!

I appreciate your dry sense of humour as much as the immense effort you put into making these retro vids. Keep on keeping on!

Man I love your voice and enthusiasm, and especially these retro gear videos! Congratulations on the very nice channel!

That was pretty much every audiophile on the internet to the 'T' TechMoan. 5:20

I loved the audiophool impression at 5:25. And thanks for showing the insides; much appreciated!

I remember wanting one of these really bad back when I was a teenager in the 80's. I never did come up with the money for it at the time, and a few years later they seem to have disappeared. So it was neat to see you demonstrate it. I'll agree that it doesn't really make the music sound any better. It's more of a novelty than anything else.

Thanks for giving 'it' to those sanctimonious audio so-and-sos.

RE not using a graphic EQ Those people don't have the first clue about sound if they think that colouration is always negative. I've done enough work as a live sound engineer to know that without a graphic EQ to compensate for the dimensions of the room you'll get a shit mix. The same goes for pre-recorded music. Compensating for the sound of a room is perfectly fine. If I bypass the EQ in my setup there's a real nasty resonance at around 500Hz because of the shape of my living room. Knock it down a bit on the EQ and my music sounds much better. Sorry for the rant, I just hate people who speak in such ridiculous absolutes

such a mesmerizing display :) Thanks for sharing!

4 years later . . . . RU-vid suggested your videos and I’m glad about that. I’ve often toyed with thoughts 💭 of buying some vintage audio or video equipment, not quite on your scale. There were some interesting products in the past and you do an impressive job of demonstrating and providing great details and history. It’s all very addictive. Too bad there isn’t an internally adjustable pot for sensitivity of the lights on this unit. Thanks for your videos

Friend of mine way back when had a spring reverb in his car and just make the music sounds so much better. I was just blown away and remember it to this day

This sounds more like a slapdelay than a reverb.

Loved the psychedelic effect at the end!

I'm finding your videos strangely addictive, and very entertaining!

I love this video! You really hit your stride balancing information and entertainment.

I love how English this man is....he called it 'Reverberation' every single time...never once was 'reverb' even on offer for a proper gentlemen...

You should try a better reverb effect. My living room sounds kinda dead (carpets, sound absorbing tiles in ceiling, drapes), so when I'm having a party, I'll often run my computer's output through a VST reverb effect. Modern reverb sounds a lot more realistic, and in small doses, it really gives the feeling the room is a lot more open, and the party's much bigger than it is.

Great video as always. Your videos inspired me to build out my own vintage HiFi assemblage last year and I too went a bit overboard with vintage visualization devices but as nice as the lights are you, do eventually get tired of them. After your last video I acquired an equalizer with delay/reverb setting built in. Things do sound better tuned to my room/ears or sometimes I even do offset (all bass out left channel, all mids and treble out the right) to create more stereo disparity.

A friend had one of these back in the early 80s. I always thought it sounded like shite, and I'm glad to see it's not just me.

Nice use of fractals at the end :)

As always good review even my young son hangs around for the puppet bit : ) .

Great video, thanks for sharing! It reminded me that my father in law bought an old eighty Toshiba equipment for a bunch of dollars, some kind museum equipment with tape recorder, disc player , multi-band radio and equalizer. However it didn't know where to put it, and gave me to me... well I don't have space also(!). It is awesome seeing how many technologies became 'obsolete' and however they're working quite alright.

That rant just before 6:00 was awesome.

your videos got my dad into youtube . thanks for your time mister !

Ha ha ha ! laughed loud at the puppet ... well done !

The memories this is bringing :)!!! I remember owning a reverberation device like that & married with an equalizer!!! That was awesome...

Another enjoyable video from the Techmoan!

does that unit smell as smoky as it looks?

I know this is an older video and I'm quite late to the game, as it were, but here are my two cents on adding reverb. Back in the 60's, when Top 40 music radio was developing into the sound we know and love here in the States (and stations may have done this in the U.K. as well; I'm not sure), they started experimenting with adding reverb in their processing chains. Depending on the personal tastes of whoever was in charge, that ranged anywhere from some subtle, light reverb that's just barely audible when something suddenly dropped to silence... all the way to full-on slapback echoes that sounded no better than when you cranked this thing all the way up. Some of the most popular stations in major markets were somewhere on the lower end of the middle ground, and that success inspired stations across the country to match them -- a sound which lasted even through the 2000's (I even noticed the contemporary hits station in Detroit using it as late as 2006 or so), though it seems to have disappeared almost entirely by now. Part of the reason why stations did that was a misunderstanding of technology. We've all heard of the Loudness Wars? That wasn't just limited to recording, it happened in radio, too. The reason why the AM stations made themselves so big and boomy is because (and this is a correct understanding of technology) the louder an amplitude modulated signal is... well, modulated, the more powerful it is, the further it travels, and the more people can hear it; the idea being that you keep your station as loud as possible for as much of the time as possible so that you can cover as far a geographical range as possible. The misunderstanding came when adding reverb. Some engineers got it in their heads that they could back off on the compression and limiting if they added reverb to sustain the amplitude longer than the natural source material lasted. Of course, we know now that that's not how it works; you still lose loudness with reverb, the signal doesn't travel as far, and if the timings are mismatched, you end up with an audio trainwreck. Once that fact was realized, it became more about making the sound more pleasant for the listeners than anything technical. My suspicion is that these units were an attempt to give record and tape listeners the same experience with some range of options to tailor it to their own tastes, but the problem there is that the range of options is limited to what the manufacturer thinks is best. That reverb on AM radio 60 years ago was all homebrew. Sure, there may have been some consumer or even professional-grade technology at the start, but engineers tweaked it like crazy to make it do what they wanted it to do. Analog audio processing for broadcast was in its infancy; these were the mothers and fathers of what exists today, and they set the standard for even the digital methods in use now, as well. If you wanted to match that sound in the 70's and 80's, you would either have to build it yourself or open that box and change things. Of course, digital plugins make this a breeze nowadays. I use a VST reverb effect in the audio processing chain on my living room computer. It took me a long time to get the timing and room size settings exactly the way they should be, but it sounds exactly how I want it to sound every single time. It's that subtle tail end of hall sound that adds just a little realism. I would be willing to bet that I would never get that sound out of this unit.

I built a reverb from a HeathKit back in the 1980s. Loved playing with that thing.

Nice video! that was an interesting piece from the 80's! I like your vintage equipment videos! I wonder what will be the next thing you'll review ;)

hilarious! well done Matt! during the 80s and early nineties "entertainment systems" were all the rage and the more buttons and lights the higher ranking the owner would be. That unit was in the line up. The best enhancement unit in the Kenwood system was the "Base enhancer" before subwoofers we needed to get all the base from the mains and the base enhancer was just the ticket. again Bravo on a hilarious episode sir!

Try this with "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". You'll probably get some insane reverbs :)

Thank you for a channel with great substance!

We have an old reverb amplifier and I'm using it now because of this video. Thanks!

Always watch Techmoan's vids to the very end, even when it's for a Kenwood chocolate teapot :-)

That thing sounds terrible, but is sure does look pretty ! Also, I'm one of these people who think you shouldn't tamper with the music, but honestly graphic EQs can be really useful. I'll go back to staring angrily at my grey wall sitting on my wooden chair now.

Thanks for another review / showing another piece of likley forgotten hi-fi tech keep up the awesome work!

5:49 This is the reason I subscribed to you, besides loving the look of retro tech. Bravo!

US. Military Japan 1983,,,, You always knew who just came back from Japan. We came back with These and other. Four feet tall of Stereo equipment. I think my parents stuck it in the basement 30 years ago. By the 90's all that stereo was looking out of date .. Fun Times

Not sure if you or anyone else that subscribes has thought of this, but one particular application of this reverb unit could be if you had a quadraphonic decoder (eg Sony SQD-1000); so that the front two speakers receive dry stereo sound, with the rear two speaker feeds going thru this reverb box and then thru their respective amp? thus allowing you add the reverb to the rear sound-field only...

A classic effects unit. I've only ever had Alessis for effects, and some guitar pedals of various brands. This old things looks and sounds lovely

fantastic videos as always! thanks techmoan!

The reverb sounds more like a really bad multi tap delay.

there is a reason it's called an equaliser,

I had one of the spring units in my car in the late 60's. Every time you hit a bump it sounded like the kitchen was falling down around you. It was fun for awhile. Keep up the good work. I look forward to your videos.

I remember this unit when it was new in stereo store in my area and they had it set up in a special little sound room displaying equipment demoing this and as a teenager just getting into stereo, when I heard this, at the time I thought it was amazing. I never heard anything like it and thought it brought a whole new light to music. Now I look back and think, what was I thinking! But it was new to me at the time as something different to make things sound "live" I guess. Thanks for this video, I have been trying to find what I experienced back then and finally found what I think was the gear I was hearing with your video. I remember the lights and I thought they had depth to them like 3D.

Another great review, thanks. Back in the late 70s I had a reverb amp, I think it was a kenwood, that had a large coiled spring inside with a transducer at one end, and to change the reverb time you turned a knob that would contract or stretch the spring. If you could find one of these and do a review I think a lot of people, including me would find it very interesting. Thanks.

Should this be called an "Echoing amplifier" . I thought reverb was different then a rapid echo...

Nice test setup especially the Pioneer amp. Didn’t catch the model number but didn’t remember seeing it anywhere. Thanks for your efforts and cheers from Oz

Enjoyed that, thanks! Brought back memories of a time when everyone had or wanted a component system. Nowadays it's jam boxes or all-in-one systems. Obviously, the reverb works best with certain types of music or to an individuals taste. I agree with you man, it's totally your business how you listen to your music. Thumbs up!!

Thank you so much for posting this. I've laughed so much I'm going to have to dry my face now.

Excellent video as always. Do you like minidisc? when will you make a review of minidisc equipment? Thanks!

Firstly, thanks for another really enjoyable review. Being of the same vintage as you, I too share a curiosity about old tech gear. Many of us used graphic equalizers back in the day because they could really benefit the sound and tune the output to match the environment. Coupled with feedback calibration (I used a scope, pink-noise generator and mic) the peaks and valleys of the output curve could be flattened to some extent, and I found they would make budget equipment play in a higher league. These days I have a dedicated theater used for music and movies, and I have to point out that most mid-upper range receivers are quipped with mic and calibration program. In reality, a set & forget equalizer.

Things like these are what makes your channel even more special! All that weird shit an eastern european/post soviet dude cannot even imagine - it existed for real!

Radio Shack in the 1980's made a similar but not as cool looking reverb unit you could plug through your stereo. A lot of all-in-one Karaoke systems have this kind of microphone reverb circuit too. These analog "bucket brigade" reverb circuits always sounded cheap and muddy to me. If some company could make a new unit for home stereos with programmable digital reverb and delay it might be a worthy addition to a stereo and not just a gimmick.

That reverb is based on the old Bucket Brigade Device chips sold by Reticon, Panasonic, Philips and other manufacturers of the time. Compared to a good old spring reverb, I think they sound kind of "choppy" and not very pleasing at all...

Interesting device and glad you don't mind using the equaliser, is useful even with the expensive headphones!

Quite the enjoyable rant on the music listening police! :D And a great series on eighties HiFi equipment. Ah! The glory of the days where the height of your stack of boxes was a measure of HiFi enthusiasm.

It seems to me that it's using Bucket Brigade Delay ICs to generate the reverberation effect. Those kind of reverbs are so bad that not even guitarists wanted to revisit it unlike BBD based delays and choruses (which are pretty good sounding).

The spring reverbs definitely sounded better, and the majority of these units were sold in the 1960's and 1970's with spring devices. Digital reverb just never worked as well, they just lost the "warmth" and "sense of space" that analog spring reverbs had. Also quadraphonic sound, which of course was a product of the 1970's, reduced the desire to own one of these as the ambient affect was derived from the actual source material. Today we know that as surround sound. So really consider an old reverb as an attempt at music surround modes of a modern system.

I have been subbed to this channel for about 2 years and I dont think I can recall a time I have ever seen your face.

I like the sound of that acoustic bit. Very nice.

What is the name of the song played at 4:36 ? I'm looking for it for a while now.

I have to say that of all the equipment I've been through with my hi-fi (and it changes quite a lot) the only thing I've kept and intend to keep is the Pioneer SR-303. The reverberation units were produced mostly (I think) to re-create the experience of a live performance. However, I set it up to sound more like a double tracking. Both dials facing 10 to 12. Double tracking vocals in a production sense can give more depth and phase to the vocals arguably delivering more character. Place this effect on the whole track and I find it delivers more layers and I pretty much always have it bleeding into the signal, subtlety is key! However, I do run two amps with at least four speakers. Only one amp runs the reverb so it's always a careful mix between wet and dry. I really enjoyed the comment about 100% dry signal. It's ridiculous. You should always enjoy music to taste, every-bodies ears are different and if you think you're listening to music how the artist intended, fully dry, you're very mistaken. You are listening to music how the producer and mastering team ended up outputting. Sure some times the artist and producer are the same person but some of these mixes are absolute crap and I don't subscribe to it being character or an authenticity. Besides, EQ's were created to balance the music within the environment. What if you want to hear your music to your taste in two different environments? There was a time when I moved house quite a bit and the EQ was dialled in to cope with carpeted floors vs wooden floors. Oh, but the artist intended you to listen to their music in a studio environment, instead of your 1987 Ford fiesta. So you better hire the same studio the album was recorded in before you press play.

It's great to hear you defend the Equalizer! Always a vital part to my Hi-Fi systems despite all the critic's opinions. As for the reverb, I still have my Pioneer SR-60 that bought in '85 and it still works great. I always liked it with headphones to add some depth. However, to go over 3 on the Reverb Depth sounds the same as the Kenwood, not good.

I am glad I'm not the only person who enjoys the graphic equalizer, I also have a sansui reverb unit, I only use it to play my guitar and sing along to music, though. reverb units are great for stopping feed back. or a particular sound effect. love your posts by the way.

The reverberation amplifier seems so unnecessary. It just muddles up the otherwise pure and pristine audio signal. It just seems like a novelty or even worse, a sales gimmick. The colors and lights are pretty to look at, though.

What was that Guitarr Tune you were litsening to?

Love the description of what the people say about "correct" listening to music 5:23

I really enjoy how that display looks.

In audio engineering, there are usually multiple instruments on multiple channels. Then there's a master channel. Effects don't usually belong in the master channel. Reverb is an effect and quite a heavy one, too. This might be why you don't like it much. It doesn't belong there. Subtle reverb effects can be used on a synths, where there isn't a microphone in play that would have added naturally occurring reverb.

Anybody remember the 4way quadrifonic system with a single piece that you could adjust the sound!!!!

Great review. Love that Akai equalizer.

Fascinating review. As a kid in the '80s we tended to dislike the fashionable 'reverb snare' that seemed to plague so much in the Top 40. Nowadays I cant stop adding post-production reverb to things I record. Love making big sounds even bigger.

you should not listen to the music though any device you should go to the band that made the song and listen to it directly from them playing it live because thats the musicians intention (sarcasm not serious)

Does anyone know what song is at 4:56?

The Eminent 310 Unique which was the the key sound in Jean Michel Jarre's early works was a normal Home Organ which incorporated a very good reverberation unit (the first one to do so). Of course it helped that he could adjust the reverb on that without affecting the drums etc.

i absolutely love it! i need one of these

Great video. My local hi-fi shop was horrible to deal with. Telling me i don't need bass or treble controls or any kind of EQ or reverb on my amp. They don't even stock any gear that does. Bloody audio nazis! :-(

good god, that is prolly the worst "reverb" unit I've ever heard; and I've heard quite a few.

Brilliant documentary video - TechMoan is objective, informative and entertaining!

I used a reverb box when listening to concerts and other live recordings. Listening to the Yes 90125 Live Concert with a little reverb thrown in was amazing... at the time. Of course this was a VHS being played through a mid80's technology HiFi so that probably makes a huge difference.