Eventide DDL-500 (ca. 2014)
Documentation for the Eventide DDL-500 is unusually thin. No original brochure, service manual, or specification sheet from the manufacturer has turned up in the Archive’s research. Almost everything that can be said about this unit comes from a handful of nearly identical press references that appeared across a few audio trade publications in 2014.
What those references describe is a 24-bit digital delay line. Pro-Sound (June 2014, p.9) noted that the DDL-500 offered 10 seconds of delay at a 192 kHz sampling rate and 160 seconds at 16 kHz, and that its controls were split between a digital delay section and an analog mix section. The same copy, often verbatim, appeared in Mix magazine later that year (October 2014, p.29), suggesting a coordinated launch push. Both sources tied the DDL-500’s lineage to the stack of Eventide digital delay lines that delayed the speaker feeds at the 1973 Watkins Glen concert — a piece of company lore that the 2014 campaign leaned on heavily.
Beyond those press mentions, the record is empty. No production year range, no suggested retail price, no user reviews, and no confirmed serial-number run have been documented. The DDL-500 appears to have been a short-lived or limited-distribution model, and it is absent from Eventide’s own product-history materials covering the H910, H949, SP2016, and H3000 lines. Anyone who owns one or has studio notes on it is encouraged to share what they know.
- Type: Digital delay line
- Resolution: 24-bit
- Maximum delay: 10 seconds @ 192 kHz / 160 seconds @ 16 kHz
- Controls: Digital delay section + analog mix section (specific parameter set undocumented)
- Period press: Pro-Sound (June, Sept, Dec 2014); Mix (Aug, Sept, Oct 2014)
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