The Sound of Motown’s Legendary Attic Reverb Chambers
Neither an IR (impulse response) nor a general algorithmic reverb plug-in, the UAD Hitsville Reverb Chambers leverages Universal Audio’s revolutionary hybrid techniques to combine the best of both worlds. The result is an exacting emulation of the two legendary reverb chambers that were custom-built into the attic of Hitsville U.S.A. studios and were huge contributors to the iconic sound of Motown featured on hits by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, and many more. How were these illustrious rooms captured? Four different stereo pairs of microphones were recording signals sent into each chamber by two pairs of historically accurate speaker setups common to Hitsville Studios U.S.A. As usual, UA makes operating a breeze with simple controls and loads of UA artist presets to get you started.
Note: Do you own Apollo hardware? By purchasing this plug-in, you will receive two licenses: one license allows you to run the plug-in via your computer’s CPU and the other allows you to run it via your Apollo hardware. Please contact your Sweetwater Sales Engineer if you have any questions.
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Chamber 1
Located at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Chamber 1’s parallel surfaces and bright decay give it a presence that works particularly well on vocals and percussion to bring them upfront in the mix. Historically, the most frequently used combination in this chamber was the Shure Unidyne 545 with Bozak 800 8-inch aluminum cone speakers (which had four EV T35B tweeters per side in a series-parallel array). The UAD Hitsville Reverb Chambers plug-in puts this combination (and more) front and center in all its historically accurate glory.
Chamber 2
Chamber 2 was situated right next door at 2644 West Grand Boulevard. Its pentagonal shape and wide 90-degree north end gave it a width, depth, and full-range decay that will forever invite study by serious acousticians and audio engineers. Using it on drums, piano, or horns and strings will surely add beautiful movement and wider stereo images to your mixes. In Chamber 2, the Neumann KM86s mics are placed in a Blumlein configuration when paired with the high-fidelity Altec 605 Duplex speakers. Blumlein is one of Sweetwater studio engineers’ favorite stereo mic setups for capturing great room sounds.
Dynamic Room Modeling
Though incredibly powerful, the UAD Hitsville Reverb Chambers plug-in couldn’t be easier to use. Width, Pre-delay, Distance, Decay, Crossover, and Mix (with Wet Solo switch) are all you need to make Motown magic. UA’s Dynamic Room Modeling enables you to reposition mics in real time with accurate volume and proximity effect representations. And UA studio professional presets not only sound amazing immediately, but they also give you excellent springboards for tweaking your sounds.
You better read around
Reading your product manual is always good advice, but with the UAD Hitsville Reverb Chambers case, Sweetwater insists — and not so that you can learn how to use the product. UA gives detailed stories about how they emulated the two Hitsville attic reverb chambers, including insights from the original engineers who designed, built, and captured them. We can’t do these tales justice in this limited space but suffice it to say: they’re incredible.
Universal Audio UAD Hitsville Reverb Chambers Plug-in Features:
- Emulation of two custom-built reverb chambers from the attic of the legendary Hitsville U.S.A. studio
- Licensed and authenticated by Hitsville U.S.A. with design guidance from Hitsville alumnus John Windt
- Simple controls including mix, depth, width, and hi/lo crossover
- Reposition mics in real time using UA’s Dynamic Room Modeling
- 4 different stereo mic pairs for either chamber – Shure Unidyne 545, RCA 44-BX, Electro-Voice 631, and Neumann KM86
- 2 different speaker setups for each chamber
- Presets from UA studio pros including Joe Chiccarelli, Dave Issac, Romesh Dodangoda, Rik Simpson, and many more
- Includes a native license that will run with any interface and a UAD-2 license that takes advantage of Universal Audio DSP-accelerated hardware
Chamber reverb send and return section from original Hitsville desk
