EH SMM w/ Hazari

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

First review here (that I'm aware of) of this new playa in the field of 
looping stompboxes.
(note: all prices in € and based on German street prices)

1. FEATURE SET AND PLACE IN THE MARKET
The recent time has seen some growth in the field of looping devices in 
general, but of stomp boxes in the comparably lower price range 
especially. While earlier in the stompbox format there have only been 
delay pedals which could also be used as loopers (and with the for the 
time huge amount of delay time, the Digitech PDS8000 stands out), recently 
there have been both delay pedals with a looper thrown in (this trend was 
started by the Akai Headrush and the Line6 DL4 - don't know which came 
first) and dedicated loopers, among them both Boss' RC series and the 
Digitech Jamman. Lately, even Eventide with its Timefactor has joined that 
market - with the Eventide-typical price tag.

The ElectroHarmonix Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai (for short: SMM) falls 
into the former class. With a price of €215, it directly competes with 
the Boss DD20 (€225) and also a bit with the Line6 DL4 (€319). As the 
DL4 is considerably more expensive, so is the Akai E2 Headrush a lot 
cheaper (€109). (For completeness, the Boss RC series comes for €159 
(RC-2), €222 (RC-20XL) and €399 (RC-50). The Digitech Jamman is 
€250).
So the all-important question: how does it compete to the Boss? And also, 
how does it fare against the cheaper Akai and the more expensive Line6?

As a sidenote, I will not compare it to the vintage Digitech PDS (no 
longer available), the Eventide (about double the price, and I don't know 
or have it), nor to the Digitech Jamman or Boss RC series, as they are of 
a different concept (pure loopers).


2. CONCEPT, PACKAGE ETC.
The SMM is, as I mentioned, a delay with a looper thrown in. It offers 
seven different delay modes and a looper in addition to it (which you can 
record to and play back in six modes, it only plays back in the 
MultiTap+Rev mode due to UI restrictions). The maximum delay time is 3 
seconds (but with an additional 6 seconds reverse echo in MultiTap+Rev) 
and 30s of loop time (at standard playback rate).

Package-wise, the SMM comes in a sturdy metal box (smaller than a Boss 
DD20) with two metal footswitches (DL4-style) and five knobs on top. There 
are a few LEDs (active, tempo and mode). No connection of an external 
footswitch or expression pedal.
Connections are 2xinput on the right and 2xoutput on the left. While this 
may seem nice to the typical stompbox people, it doesn't look nice for me 
because it makes arrangement on the pedalboard more inefficient from my 
POV (I prefer connections on the rear).
The SMM comes with an AC transformer power supply and won't run off 
batteries (why?)

Everything here is stereo, the sample rate is some 46.88 kHz with 24 bits 
of conversion and 32 bits of processing.

As mentioned, the looper is available in addition to the delay modes. More 
specifically:
        * a recorded loop can play back in addition to you playing with a 
delay added
        * you can record a loop in all modes (except Multitap+Rev) - which 
will record your playing plus the delay used

3. USER INTERFACE
The two footswitches:
Tap/Record: with that, you tap tempo and by holding it down, record or 
overdub a loop. There is a debounce period of 0.5s to distinguish between 
tap and record - hence, no loops or overdubs which are shorter than 0.5s.

Bypass: this esentially switches off the device (delay and a possibly 
running loop). Delays will not continue to trail out. Consequently, there 
is no possibility to play on top of a delay without adding to it.

The five knobs:
Hazari: switches the mode
Delay: delay time for the delays, playback speed for the loop (Yes! you 
get continuous control from halfspeed up to doublespeed!)
Repeats: number of taps in multitap modes, feedback in delay modes, 
feedback during overdub in looper mode (for thos EDP people: "secondary 
feedback")
Filter: turning it to the left adds a lowpass, turning it to the right a 
highpass
Decay: dependant on mode - will discuss this in section 4
Blend: dry/wet ratio. This will for some reason affect both the currently 
selected delay and a possibly playing loop

You can save one preset for each of the eight modes to store your 
favourite knob positions.

4. THE MODES
a) LOOP:
I'll start with that one...ok, holding down tap/record gets you recording, 
holding tap/record afterwards gets you into overdubbing. To erase the 
loop, switch to bypass and hold tap/record for half a second.
Now what can you do with your loop?
Decay: turning it all the way CCW sets reverse playback - turning it all 
the way CW sets forward playback. The problem here is that really quick 
transport direction changes are hard to do.
Repeats: Yes, you get control of the feedback level during overdub (and I 
think this is a first one for a looper in that package/price range).
Delay: this is the loop speed from half time to double time. And this is 
for me the most outstanding feature of this looper in comparison to 
competitors. True varispeed without any artifacts!
Tap Tempo: somehow, the thing decides on a tempo based on the loop length 
and flashes the LED accordingly. By then tapping a new tempo, you can 
change the tempo of your loop. What's interesting is that this will do 
some low-quality time-stretch, not a varispeed. So you really do have both 
timestretch and varispeed available.

You can't in any way stop or restart the loop, so it's more like a delay 
with different controls here...

(Correction: While this isn't documented, when you switch to bypass and 
back on again, the loop is restarted from the beginning. So this gives you 
some kind of stop/restart functionality, and if your feet are really fast, 
even a stutter)

b) ECHO 3s/ECHO 1s:
A simple 1s or 3s echo. Why we need separate modes here is beyond me.
Decay: this offers some reverb-like diffusion for your echoes.
As in all delay modes, turning the delay knob will NOT give you the 
wonderful varispeed effect (why not?), instead it will either 
shorten/lengthen the loop or at a certain point of lengthening/shortening 
it just clear it. Disappointing. Not even ugly artifacts as with the DD20.

c) ECHO 300ms+Mod:
You guessed it - a modulated delay. What is funny is that it modulates the 
delay time phase-reversed for left and right channel. You only get one 
control for that effect (Decay) to control depth, frequency seems to be 
1/delay time, maximum depth is not enough for my taste.

d) MULTITAP 3s/MULTITAP 1s:
Again, two modes for one effect.
Here, "Repeats" does adjust the number of repeats from 1 to 30 (but the 
maximum number is also a function of the used delay time, so don't expect 
a 30-tap 3s-per-tap delay). "Decay" adjusts the volume change for 
succesive repeats (from rising to falling).

e) MULTITAP 1s+REV:
A tricky creation: Same as the Multitap 1s mode, only when you hold down 
the tap footswitch, a reverse playback of what you just played is started 
(in addition to the multitap) for up to 6s! This is perhaps the most (and 
easiest) controllable reverse playback  effect ever.

f) REVERSE ECHO:
This is somewhat tricky - according to the manual, it "is an intelligent 
reverse echo; it studies your playing so that it can produce reverse 
echoes that best suit your delay time setting". In other words, it has 
some kind of threshold setting which will trigger the reverse delay.
However, there's more to it - with the decay knob, you can set the "number 
of replay voices from 1 to 25". With radical settings of repeats and 
decay, it quickly gets into weird country. Like e), this is something what 
sets the SMM apart from other devices.


5. PLAYING WITH IT (AND COMPARING IT TO COMPETITORS):
To start this chapter, note that from the stompbox loopers, I'm familiar 
with the E1 Headrush (owned one), the DL4 and the DD20 (have both).

Right now (and at first sight, have played with the thing for less than 
two hours), the delay modes just don't do it for me. With the (possible) 
exception of MULTITAP 1s+REV, there's nothing that original here that 
really is new and has a good use case for me.
I'm also disappointed that I can't let the echoes trail away while in 
bypass.

There is however one thing that it does which nothing else does, and 
that's the varispeed option in looper mode. Up to now, the only thing that 
could do that (that I know of) with a loop time of 30s was the Repeater. 
This feature alone might make the SMM the small stompbox looper for all 
those tapedelay fans.

Direct comparison with the E2, DD20 and DL4:

E2:
        * doesn't have any reverse echoes
        * max. delay time of 21s
        * has separate outputs for the four heads in tape delay mode
        * doesn't have any tricky looping functions (record/overdub)
        * two footswitches
        * low price

DD20:
        * looping mode sucks
        * up to two 23s delays at one time
        * useable artifacts possible
        * two footswitches, additional one possible
        * user-defined presets
        * everything stereo

DL4:
        * max. delay time of 3.?? s (or was it that), half of it in 
reverse mode
        * looper reverse/halfspeed mode and stutter
        * four foot switches
        * expression pedal connector
        * user-defined presets
        * delays offer varispeed
        * loop time: 14s
        * looper + 800ms mod delay
        * very interesting delay models

SMM:
        * max. delay time 3s (+6s reverse in Multitap3s+Rev)
        * looper varispeed, reverse, start/stop
        * looper + delay algorithm possible
        * mildly interesting delay modes
        * no battery operation
        * everything stereo

Sooo, is it worth it?

I'm still not sure (and I guess the following days will show). What had 
convinced me from the ads was the varispeed looper alone. Then again, as I 
already have two stompbox loopers (plus the KP3 with some varispeed 
capability as well), and can do varispeed with the Repeater should I 
really need it, I ask myself whether I really need yet another looper for 
that function alone.
Unfortunately, the SMM does not synthesize every available looper stompbox 
into one device, rather it adds new features that one wants to 
have...anyone willing to design a stompbox which includes the best of the 
DD20 (long delays and two of them), SMM (long loop time, varispeed 
looping) and DL4 (expression pedal, four footswitches, interesting delay 
models with varispeed)?

Best,

        Rainer

Post Scriptum: After playing some more with it, I found that indeed you 
can produce strange artifacts with the delay time knob (although this 
works best when turning from short to long time - otherwise, there's the 
risk of ending up with an empty delay line). More research to do...