In 1981 a small company called Ursa Major in Belmont, MA (USA) introduced a very strange and wondrous signal processor called the SST-282. It became a much loved effects device, and in 2003 this 5.25 inch rack-mount unit was recreated in a small, tabletop form factor with digital I/O for studio use.
Princeton Digital took some of the software code from the new unit and the retro user interface from the original unit and voila, we present to you the Space Station SST-282 plug-in for Pro Tools. It's a multitap delay whose output delays are modulated (swept) to provide some really unique effects.
The Space Station is a signal processor that uses time delay techniques. It's different than just a plain digital delay those usually have one or perhaps 2 taps. The Space Station has eight taps just for listening: These are called Audition Delay Taps. There are a number of others used to synthesize reverb and echo.
You can think of the Space Station like a multi-head tape recorder, operating with a loop of tape 255 milliseconds long. The tape is like the Space Station audio memory and the multiple playback heads are akin to the Space Station's multiple taps.
The eight Audition Delay Taps are placed along this imaginary piece of tape with a resolution of 1 millisecond, and can be repositioned at will to any of 16 pre-programmed patterns.
You also have continuous control over another tap, the Echo tap (active in Echo mode), which can be set from 1 to 255 milliseconds and can be fed back to the input to create the traditional effects of tape loops.
A Reverb mode is also available. Proprietary internal programming randomizes these taps so that they can be stably fed back to produce reverberation. The equalized sum of these taps appears at a pot (Reverb/Echo Feedback) where the level of this sum can be adjusted to create any decay time from zero to about 3.5 seconds.
An important part of the Space Station's fundamental concept is contained in two groups of delay taps, one for auditioning (output) and the other for reverberation. They operate independently of each other; that is, the Audition Delay Taps set up a way of hearing the contents of memory, while the Reverberation or Echo taps, when fed back, determine the type of reverberant sound existing in the memory.
Each acts independently so that endless varieties of sound can be created. For example, a sound approximating normal room reverberation may be set up by feedback, and then auditioned with any of the 16 programs to sound like rooms, like a slap, an echo, or even a reverberating comb filter. Or, a comb-like reverberation effect can be set up by feedback and then auditioned in a room, another comb, or as echo, slap, etc.
Even more versatility derives from the built-in mixer, where Audition Taps may be mixed in any desired ratio to emphasize earlier reflections, to delay the onset of reverb, etc. The possibilities are endless yet the front panel is intuitive, due in part to the flow chart displayed on the background graphic of the plug-in.
You'll find that you will be able to create a wide variety of effects on a wide range of input sources with the Space Station.
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