ART Effects Network

£300 is becoming a crowded price point for well‑specified effects units, but ART nevertheless hope to stand out with their new Effects Network. Martin Walker decides whether it has what it takes to muscle in on the competition.

I bet most of us have been guilty of tying up a multi‑effects unit solely for reverb use — I know I have! ART have decided that enough is enough: if you want reverb, why not devote the whole of the processor power to this single effect? And if you want delay or effects, why not divert that same processor power to those? The result is the Effects Network, a low‑cost unit that, according to its manual, is "a combination of powerful processing and ease of use". Most of its algorithms are single effects that fall into one of three groups: reverbs (eight algorithms), delays (six algorithms), and effects (17 algorithms, including chorus, flanging and other pitch‑related effects, plus a dozen or so 2‑part combination effects). It features stereo inputs and outputs, 100 editable presets and better than 86dB dynamic range — and all for £299. Is your mouth watering? Let's enter the virtual world of sonic manipulation...

On Tonight's Panel

First impressions are always important, and the Network has a nicely understated front‑panel design that makes it look expensive. No go‑faster stripes here, just a tasteful, uncluttered layout in black and grey — a model of clarity and restraint. It comes in an all‑steel 1U case and, to save you nipping to the 'Cons' box at the end of this review, no, it doesn't have a wall wart: the power supply is built in. From left to right on the front panel, there's a push‑button power switch (another good point if you don't switch on all your rack equipment globally), and then the main LCD display area. The text information appears in a 16‑character x 2‑line window, which is a fairly standard display device used in many other units. To the right of this are the signal and clip LEDs, and then a large 2‑digit display showing the preset number. The free‑wheeling rotary encoder is the main editing tool, along with two buttons labelled Param and Value, each with an associated LED. One click on the Param button illuminates its LED, and changes the main LCD display from the preset name to a single parameter (such as mix level or delay time). The rotary wheel now scrolls through all the parameters available for that preset. Once you find the one that needs tweaking, you press the Value button (lighting up its LED); now the wheel alters the value of the parameter.

The next batch of buttons is just as easy to use. The top row of three (reverb, delay, and effects) all have associated LEDs, and whenever you scroll through the presets, the appropriate LED lights up to show which class of effect is being used. This saves a lot of time when you're searching for a suitable effect in a particular category. If you want to create a new preset from scratch, pressing the appropriate button from these three starts the LED flashing, and the LCD window now displays 'Pick a type' so that you can scroll through the available algorithms in that category. Once you find the one you want, press either the Param or the Value button to select it, and you can carry on editing the individual parameters in the normal way.

Beneath these buttons are two more. The first press of Save allows you to edit the preset name (using the wheel to select letters and numbers and Param to move along the name), and a second press stores your new preset. The final button, Bypass, has a red LED next to it that flashes when the unit is in Bypass mode. Finally, on the right‑hand end of the front panel, there are input and output level controls. Round the back, all inputs and outputs are on quarter‑inch jacks — left and right inputs, left and right outputs, and a socket for a footswitch, which can provide control of bypass, Repeat Hold, and tapped Time. The final two sockets are MIDI In and a combined MIDI Out and Thru.

And Now For A Demonstration

I did initially find level‑setting a bit tricky on the Effects Network when I wired it up. The Clip indicator seems to be analogue rather than digital: it doesn't suddenly switch on brightly beyond a preset level, but slowly increases in brightness. However, the Effects Network seems sensitive to overload, and the slightest dim glimmer of clip LED was accompanied by a nasty edge to the sound. The manual recommends setting levels so that the signal LED is on most of the time and the clip LED flashes briefly on transients, but I found it safer to make sure that clip never came on at all. Also, although simplicity is the Effects Network's middle name, it would have been useful to have markings around the level control knobs to return to previous settings more easily.

The Effects Network has very natural sound algorithms, and could quite easily become a workhorse in small or large studios.

Normal operation is simplicity itself — twirl the wheel about until you find a suitable preset, and if you need to do any editing, press Param, scroll until you find the appropriate parameter, then press Value and alter it with the wheel. All the buttons have a positive click action, and after a few seconds the editing technique becomes second nature. This part of the design has achieved its objectives — it's very intuitive and easy to use, and removes the need to constantly press cursor left and right keys to reach a particular parameter from several on a larger screen.

As to the sounds — well, I normally go straight to the reverbs when sounding out a new effects unit, and there's nothing to disappoint here. Lush, warm and natural were the words that immediately sprang to mind. Although there are only a few parameters available for tweaking (in the Hall algorithm, apart from mix level there are just decay time, pre‑delay time, EQ and damping), the single EQ control does more than you might expect. From its central Thru position, it acts as a variable LPF to the left (attenuating high frequencies above the cutoff point with a fixed rolloff), and a variable HPF to the right (attenuating low frequencies below its cutoff point with a fixed rolloff). This allows you to create a wide range of EQ effects which wouldn't be easily duplicated with a typical mixer's EQ.

The reverb algorithms available are Room, Hall, Plate, Chamber, Gated, Reverse, Dual Room and Dual Plate, the last two being two separate mono effects in parallel. There are between four and six parameters per algorithm, which allow most basic settings to be altered, but no exotic options such as the Density, Diffusion, and Swirl adjustments allowed on some competitors' models. This is not, therefore, an ideal unit for wild excesses, but is more useful for natural‑sounding treatments. I'm sure that many people would also agree that, on some budget effects units, the basic sounds often need a lot of frills to disguise the underlying algorithm sounds. Those from ART need no camouflage — they sound great just as they are. They also pass the big test for a reverb: turn the effect level right up, and if the sound just floats further away, it's a good 'un. (If it becomes muddy and cluttered, it's back to the drawing board.)

Delays have always been one of ART's strengths. There's a good range here — Mono, Dual, Offset (an initial delay, followed at each repeat by a separate left‑ or right‑delayed repeat), Mono Tapped, Dual Tapped, and Multi‑Tap SPFX (which let the taps speed up or slow down, for more dramatic effects). Up to 22 taps are available for all but the Dual Tapped type, which can have a maximum of nine for each channel. The third category of effects includes stereo treatments for Chorus, Flange, Pitch‑shift, Tremolo, and Panner. There's also a further selection of a dozen combinations, such as Flange plus Reverb and Chorus plus Delay, which sum the L and R inputs before sending them through the two effects in series, after which they emerge in stereo. The chorus (two‑stage or four‑stage) is rich and full; the flange offers normal or inverted settings for that full cancellation effect; the pitch‑shifting is good for the price point... What more can I say? Each combination effect uses only part of the processor power, so these effects don't come up to the same standard as the dedicated effects, but the extra versatility of the combined sound could be just what you need at the time. Unlike the reverbs, both the delay and effects sections give you up to a dozen parameters to control.

Normal operation is simplicity itself.

There are 100 presets, which run from 1 through 99 to 00. Unfortunately, the numbers don't wrap round, but you can still get from one end to the other in two big twists of the wheel. The factory sounds can be restored either singly or globally. All of them are eminently usable, and adjusting them for a particular application requires a quick tweak, rather than major surgery. The MIDI side is fairly standard, although you can control up to four parameters from MIDI controllers in a single preset for real‑time adjustments. Program changes are made via a MIDI program table, and SysEx dumps are catered for in both directions, to load and save presets.

Conclusions

This unit gave me several surprises. When I first opened the packaging, I thought it looked like a £400‑500 device. Once I'd connected it up and had a twiddle of the knobs, I realised, from the limited number of parameters, that this was a budget unit. However, once I'd spent some time actually auditioning the sounds, I was impressed — especially at this price. The ART Effects Network has very natural sound algorithms, and could quite easily become a workhorse in small or large studios. The reverbs are very usable, particularly if you use a lot of acoustic sources rather than electronic ones. The Network might not be quite as versatile as some other units, but ART specifically intended it to do a single job well, and it has achieved that aim nicely. If you want a good‑sounding effects unit that will be mainly used for a single treatment, rather than a sound‑mangling chain of them, this could be just the job.