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The Oto Machines BAM is a stereo reverb processor inspired by the late 70s / early 80s digital reverberator units. These units are sought after by sound engineers, producers and musicians for their grainy, warm and musical reverberations.
“Here at OTO, we are passionate about the technology of the digital reverberators, especially the old models! We have carefully listened to all digital reverb units built from 1976 to 1986, studied their architecture and read all the available papers (from 1961 to nowadays) on digital reverb design. It seemed obvious to us that the musicality of the early digital reverb processors is partly due to the algorithms (the way the processor synthesized a natural reverberation), but also to their hardware limitations.”
The audio signal was severely high-cut filtered (10 kHz was standard at that time) because of the limited sample clock. Some units used 12 bit gain stepping converters to achieve a 15 bit resolution and others used the first 16 bit converters. Then the samples were digitally processed through a 16 to 20 bit fixed-point CPU with limited memory. The algorithms had to be simple but efficient to create the most musical and versatile reverberation from these limitations. And the hardware itself added grain and warmness to the sound.
Features
• 7 algorithms: Room, Hall, Plate, Ambient, Chorus, Non-Linear and Primitive
• Input gain up to +15 dB with analog clipping
• Pre Delay up to 500 ms (with the PRE DELAY pot) or 1500 ms (with the TAP switch)
• Continuous control of the reverb Size parameter for fine tuning
• Low-Cut Filter: 20 Hz, 80 Hz, 150 Hz, 250 Hz, 450 Hz
• Hi-Cut Filter: 1,8 kHz, 4,5 kHz, 7 kHz, 9 kHz, 15 kHz
• Chorus parameter can add modulation to the reverberator signal
• Tap Tempo assignable to Pre Delay or Reverb Time
• Freeze switch
• 36 user presets
• MIDI input: BAM responds to CCs and Pgm Change
• 3 bypass modes: Relay, Spillover and Aux