Nevana X2 
by joe pasquale from Nashville, December 2007
Music Background:  secret agent man!!

This is an awesome addition to your outboard gear- having had a 2254 for many years and using it only on vocals(which when you have only one of something is about all you can do) the ability to use multiple instances of it was worth every penny and then some. Just a retrofitted stereo piece of hardware is going to run $6K and trust me on this- while they are great- it does need work from time to time- and the number of guys outside of Brent Avril who work on this stuff is a small number indeed. I live in Nashville and wouldn't even know who works on vintage gear here. So, beyond just the maintenance of it, it occurred to me that even if these guys were 80% of the real thing that would still be much better than the majority of compression and eq solutions out there. Add to that the 1176, the EMT 140 and the eq- and this is just a must have if you are serious about getting the most out of your production budget PERIOD!

Gear- i am running a OSX on a quad core with DP5.2 and lots of RAM and it really runs smooth- i have just been noodling for a day but running about a dozen of the plugs on a track along with the Waves stuff- and the latency issues that i was worried about are pretty much non-existent-

I am rating 4.5 for a couple of reasons and this is nitpickey but hey... this is my review right. I am not crazy about the 33609 interface which they refer to as a 2254 R3- the 2254- is a really simple and intuitive interface and Waves V-Series really nailed it- even tho is not licensed from NEVE- also the buttons are a bit clumbsy- the user should be able to click on a button and then use the mouse wheel to adjust value- especially when the track is playing- its so much more effective.

Additionally to my ears, the Waves V-series sounds a bit warmer and closer to the 2254- while UAD is probably close to the R3- which i never owned so i can only guess. But lemme tell you that the difference is that between that of a Lexus and Mercedes- both are great so choose your colour.

That being said.... this is so much for the money and the presets are a great place to start for those who are not really familiar with the actually units. it was fun to play with the bass vocal and drum sounds- not only with the NEVE but with the LA 2-A and 3-A, those seemed really spot on and the only time i got to play with a rack of those was at an Oceanway or Conway- so to be able to pull em up in a home studio environment is just beyond cool!!

Add to this all the other great emulations and this piece works very well- i am just hoping that in the spring i am not looking at new UAD cards with Quad processors on them ;(

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