Nothing bad to say about this pedal, it’s great. Switching between engines is easy. It’s not a benidub, I dont think it’s meant to be played live that much, but yeah it’s easy and well done. Go for it.
I owned this pedal for awhile but sold it. Of courze loved it when i got it but i lost interest rapidly. Im not sure if i had concrete reasons at the time of selling but retrospectively i disliked a lot about it:
- so many features but layout didnt jive with me.
- the delays and reverbs were sterile/not tonally full.
- i was interested in some of the glitchy/ambient/weird options but they didnt ever find a place in stuff i was doing.
- the knobs themselves feel very light and have very little resistance = feels sorta fake or cheap….to me of course!
- looper wasnt too fun to use.
That being said, i can entirely understand someone loving this thing if they liked the versatility, the tones worked for them (theyre good quality for sure) and didnt care how the interface and knobs and buttons acted.
I dont think im too finicky (in terms of needing lots of features) about delay though. I like the rytm delay and it does enough for me tonally and feature wise. I dont like Octatrack delay but i still use it so i guess its serviceable.
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Exciting news for Empress Echo System owners. The following news was shared with me and I understand will be posted on the Empress Effects blog shortly.
The Empress Echo System and Empress Reverb "are based on the same DSP platform, and either pedal can run either firmware. If you have one and would like to try the other, we recommend that you back up your presets and perform a factory reset, as described in your product manual. Then, follow these steps:
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Download the latest firmware for the pedal that you’d like to try.
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Rename the firmware so that it follows the naming convention for the other pedal.
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For instance, “eees0214.bin” would become “eerv0214.bin”, and “eerv0609.bin” would become “eees0609.bin”.
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Copy the firmware to a supported SD card, and follow the standard firmware update process for your Echosystem or Reverb.
There will be a few limitations because of the different interfaces. For instance, the Reverb doesn’t have a button to switch between the available delay engines (single, dual serial, dual parallel, left/right), and doesn’t have a light to show the currently selected time base (global tap, local tap, knob)."
Post your experiences if you try it!
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Just converted my Reverb to an Echosystem 
and it works great.
I love free stuff.
Just need to rig up something for sync as the tap button is hard to get exact.
Can I send it cv clock or trig I wonder.
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It’s official
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Back to this. Tried to work more with plugins, but found that I just vastly prefer having a hands on interface. Leaning more towards Zen Delay right now, as it seems really playable and more instrument like. Am I correct in thinking that Echosystem is more like a studio delay box that you set to a certain setting and then not touch it?
Thinking of also re-buying an Empress Reverb and selling my Specular Tempus. I like the reverbs on the Specular, but not the delays. The Empress Reverb output level is better for my setup and it has more control, e.g. hi and lo. I had it once and loved the sounds. Might be able to check the Echosystem on the Reverb then, I hear it’s working quite well?
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I think that echosystem is the only delay I need. It can be compared with the flexibility of any plugin and sounds very good, specially the modulations.
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Damn, that’s the reply I feared. I basically have to decide whether I want to have a swiss army knife, studio quality delay and reverb box on my desk. Or if I do that with plugins when producing and buy a more performance/jam oriented delay pedal. A bit torn at the moment tbh.
I just prefer to try out how things coukd/should sound first with pedals and maybe use plugins later when I know how the track will be structured and record audio of tracks. Maybe having the Empress pedals first and maybe later replace them with Valhalla Reverb/Delay in Ableton is the easiest way, as quality and choice of algos should be comparable.
I don’t know … I’d say that if you can make things work without echosystem search another things… There are very very good plugins, like replika or the sound toys… if you work in the box maybe would be better use plugins but… I love my echosystem. If you use external hardware I’d use it instead of plugins.
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I’m only using hardware synths/drum machines/samplers as sound sources. I jam out ideas on them. I like to have a good sounding reverb or delay pedal for that phase so I can dial in settings quickly and see what the sound of a track could eventually be.
I then record snippets in Ableton and use Ableton arrangement view to try out arrangements for tracks. I then program that on song mode and record each track individually while playing around with knobs. Until recently, I then sent these recordings through effects pedals and recorded the audio again. I found this quite tedious tbh and thought I should rather use effects plugins for that, if it’s not some really characterful, crazy effect like Microcosm, that I won’t get via plugins that easily. However, I found that I rarely do that in the DAW since I just don’t want to sit in front of the screen and fine tune parameters with a mouse or connect a USB device and map it.
Yeah, some soul searching needed I guess. But good knowing that Echosystem delivers as that versatile delay which can be your main delay.
I see now how you work. I’d suggest keep the echosystem. Is a great device for the studio!
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It wouldn’t be a keep, more a replacing Specular Tempus with Empress Echosystem and Reverb.
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Not exclusively a Delay but the Endorphin.es Ghost sounds really fun. I’ll try it today in exchange for an H90. I’ll probably get the Golden Master too but that’s for another purpose.
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Sorry, didn’t read it well. I bought the echosystem because the delay of empress zoia. Echosystem it’s the most versatile delay I’ve found. I’m sure that there are better options but the possibilities that you have with echosystem are huge. The delays in series and parallel, the types of delays… you can do a lot with it
But it has a very specific sound, I suggest see demos in YouTube.
Have you considered the Reminder from Enjoy Electronics? Too big?
Only saw that mentioned once in the Zen Delay thread. Looks way too big for my taste.
I think I will try the Zen Delay for now. The Elektrons already have a pretty good delay, if I need a more experimental one the Microcosm has that as well. The Zen could bring that extra for live performance and also serve a role as some kind of looper.
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Did it really work? I don’t want to toast my Echosystem 
Yes no problems.