Universal Audio has announced that two of its EMT reverb emulations are now available as native plugins, meaning that UAD EMT 140 Classic Plate Reverberator and UAD EMT 250 Classic Electronic Reverb can be used in any DAW on macOS or Windows without any Apollo or UAD hardware.
Introduced in 1957 by German manufacturer Elektromesstechnik, the EMT 140 was the first plate reverb, an invention that gave studios an alternative to a spring reverb or dedicated echo chamber for the first time. Plate reverbs work using a thin sheet of steel suspended on springs inside a frame: a transducer vibrates the plate and pickups capture the result, producing a lush and silky reverb with a smooth and dense decay.
Abbey Road installed four customized EMT 140s in 1957 that have featured on recordings by The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and more. Alan Parsons, who engineered The Dark Side of the Moon, has claimed that the 140 was the only reverb used on the album.
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Released almost two decades later, the EMT 250 was the first commercially available digital reverb, and also offered several modulation and time-based effects. An ultra-rare piece of music tech history, it was originally priced at $20,000 and only around 250 units were built. The EMT 250 can be heard on Prince’s Purple Rain, alongside records from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Michael Jackson.
UA’s EMT 140 plugin emulates three different EMT units modelled at The Plant Studios in California that can be switched on the front panel, and complements the original controls with additional settings for balance, width and modulation. Each of its three plates can be set to an independent reverb time from 0.5 to 5.5 seconds, and you also get a choice of original EMT or Martech input filter models, a two-band shelving EQ and reverb time modulation.
The EMT 250 plugin is built on an algorithm sourced from a “golden unit” at Ocean Way Recording, and the plugin features six program modes covering Reverb, Delay, Phase, Chorus, Echo and Space. Three of the panel’s four levers are remapped for each mode, controlling decay time and separate LF and HF decay multipliers in Reverb, or coarse and fine delay times and repeat damping in Echo. A front/rear switch gives you access to the four discrete outputs of the original hardware and a Noise control models its noise floor.
“Some sounds never go out of style,” said Bill Putnam Jr., CEO of Universal Audio. “The EMT 140 and EMT 250 have inspired generations of great recordings, and we’re excited to bring them to even more creators.”
The UAD EMT 140 Classic Plate Reverberator and UAD EMT 250 Classic Electronic Reverb are priced at $149 and currently available at an introductory discount of $79, and both are included in the UAD Spark subscription. Owners of the non-native versions are eligible for upgrade pricing.
Find out more on Universal Audio’s website.
