Benidub Digital Echo - Review
Can it cure your hunger for a Tape Echo?
My all-time favorite delay plugin is by TAL and it’s called Dub. A very simple delay plugin that has such a distinct sound I could not find anywhere else. So when I talked with Benidub who offered me to review their Digital Echo, I was secretly hoping I will find a hardware version of my favorite plugin. Well, it turned out the Digital Echo is way more than that and also has a sound of its own! So let’s go through what it can do and why I think it’s a very unique pedal.
The basics
Digital Echo is, as you’d expect, an Echo effects unit. It’s a digital echo but with an analog signal path. It has two 12 dB/Oct sweep frequency filters, one for High-Pass and one for Low-Pass, and an analog limiter circuit that creates an analog saturation instead of some harsh digital clipping when it gets loud.
It also has a modulation section where you can control the Depth and Rate of the modulation, a Loop functionality, and a very creative way to control the Time that can be divided or multiplied by sweeping the Beat Multiply knob.
On its back, you have the power input that accepts a 12DC power supply, the input, the output, and a Dry/ Wet output. Sadly, the Digital Echo is Mono. Just like the legendary Space Echo, you cannot use it in Stereo which would open up a few more options but that’s ok.
Looks to kill
The Digital Echo is a quite large, sturdy, and well-built pedal. It has huge & satisfying knobs and its black & white aesthetic makes it one of my favorite-looking pedals. I don’t think there is a bigger knob than the Beat Multiply on any pedal in the world. The buttons are clicky and the knobs are so smooth that urge to play with them. An important thing to know is that there are no footswitches. To turn the pedal on you’ll just press the Mute button that’s in the middle.
Controls
For each size, this pedal has a ton of controls. 8 knobs and 3 buttons to be exact. Besides the obvious on/ off Mute button, the Digital Echo has a few very unique twists for a delay unit.
The most profound is that instead of time, you get a BPM knob that actually has BPM values on it. Since it doesn’t have a Tap Tempo, this choice is so much better than a typical Time knob. It’s so much easier to sync your delays by just setting the BPM of your project and it saves you a lot of time! And you can also go to divisions much quicker just by setting it to half your tempo, double, or anything in between. Very handy!
Another crucial knob is the Beat Multiply. Here you’ll find the multiplies or dividends of your main time for example 1.25, 0.5, etc. You can think of this as the division’s control you’d often find on a delay pedal. But the cool thing about this one is that instead of being a set of time divisions, you can freely sweep the knob and find weird and rhythmical sub-divisions! That is relative to the Beat Multiply button that sets the knob to react in a linear or quantized fashion. When it’s set to linear you can set it anywhere you want to to. But if want fixed sub-divisions, you can switch to Quantized where you have 8 with musical sub-divisions. I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’ve played with a delay pedal that is so easy to experiment with time divisions. Just by moving around this knob, you can find so many rhythmic delays and can always play with it live to get even more creative!
Feedback & Volume are more straightforward. Feedback uses the delay’s output that is fed back to the pedal to create echoes and Volume control the overall volume of the echoes. A thing to notice is that Volume also increases or decreases the Feedback as you turn it up or down.
The Modulation section uses a Triangle waveform to modulate the time, essentially affecting the BPM knob. You have dedicated knobs for Depth and Rate and you’ll get the usual modulation sound you are used to. Both knobs are very sensitive, so to have musical results, I would advise you to just add a tiny amount of modulation. Unless you want to go wild with it!
The two last knobs are the Filters. Low-pass and High-pass filters are there to help you shape the sound of the echoes. A very useful feature for the studio and a creative tool for live situations! Both filters are not very resonant so you get a soft cutoff and depending on your input, you can clear some unwanted frequencies for the delays.
Lastly, there is also a Loop button that loops the last sampled audio while you can still play your instrument above the loop. This is not a looper record button, it just grabs a slice of audio and repeats it forever until you turn it back off. The most useful technique for that would be to grab a loop, increase its volume until it starts self-oscillating and use the filters to fade it on and off your mix. A very cool way to create transitions and build-ups and because of the filters it can be a very interesting tool for your recordings or live sets.
But what does it sound like?
Now that we are done with the specs, let’s find out how this thing sounds. The Benidub Digital Echo is a great-sounding echo unit. The tone-shaping features are great and it has that beautiful echo sound that we all love and reminds us of the tape echoes of the past. The analog signal path after the digital echo makes a lot of difference to its sound. By filtering your echoes you can let them breathe in your mix and get that degrading echo sound you’d normally get from an analog delay. To be honest, if it wasn’t on its name, I would probably guess that this was an analog pedal.
The Beat Multipy & BPM knobs are amazing and help you create some very unique and interesting echo lines and the modulation section adds up to the overall sound by making it even more broken and warbly.
I think that if you’re into the “Tape Echo sound“, the Digital Echo will not disappoint you. It does have its own thing going on, it’s playable, and the sounds coming out of it are excellent.
Overall Pros & Cons
I really enjoyed playing around with the Digital Echo. Even though I have a ton of delay pedals, this one was quite unique, sounded great, and was fun to program.
Pros
Playability: It’s a joy to play with this pedal. All the controls are chunky (in a good way), satisfying, and highly responsive. It’s a hands-on unit with no secondary functions which is always a plus for me.
Time Divisions: As I said earlier, probably the easiest pedal for changing and experimenting with time divisions. The Beat Multiply & BPM knobs should be standard on every delay pedal!
Filters: As I come from a synthesizer background, I always appreciate a filter on anything. And this thing has two of them!
Sound: It does sound like an echo and not a delay pedal. The difference is, most of the time, minimal but the Digital Echo has its own sound which happens to be a great one.
Looks: That is completely subjective but I actually love how this looks. The size, color scheme, and knobs look beautiful and that always inspires me to play more with it.
Cons
Modulation: It’s great that it’s there but I think that it lacks options, like for example waveforms, and it’s only usable with very low settings.
Mono: I think it’s a pity that this is not stereo. Returning to my favorite plugin, TAL Dub, I can unlink the time for left and right channels and create some amazing stereo delays and that’s not available on the Digital Echo. It could have a ping-pong setting or even different times for each channel which would make it even more powerful.
Price: The Digital Echo is a quite pricey echo unit. It comes at 370€ which is a lot of money if you consider the competition in the pedal & effects market. If you compare it to the Boss RE-202 which is a clone of the original Space Echo and costs around the same, you’ll probably go for the Boss one that has more features, it’s stereo with an expression input, and, although it doesn’t mean a lot on its own, the Space Echo branding on it. But, to be fair, we all have to acknowledge that Boss is a massive corporation, while Benidub is more of a boutique independent manufacturer and it’s so important to support companies like that.
Conclusion
Benidub’s Digital Echo is an awesome Echo desktop unit. It’s uniquely designed with a few important and effective twists that sounds great and it’s one of the most playable pedals I’ve come across. It’s rare to find an effects unit that urges you to play live with and experiment and I love it for that. Benidub is clearly influenced by Dub music for its effects but that certainly doesn’t mean they can only be used for this genre.
The Digital Echo will work with any sound fed to it. Guitars, Synths, Vocals, and even Percussion can be expanded and have rhythmic echoes added to them very nicely. It has character and personality and while it’s not a budget pedal, it compensates you with amazing built-quality, sound, and features!
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