Echoes in the Box

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Out of the Box: Full review to be posted after further testing!

EverQuest II has changed quite a lot throughout the past two years, and nowhere is this more evident than in the just-released expansion, Echoes of Faydwer. Many would call it the first "real" expansion to the game, and with good reason -- though three have been released since the game's launch, Echoes is the only one thus far to offer content compelling to players of all levels.

Our early experience with it also suggests that it represents the most refined iteration of the game yet released. The newly-added "newb" zone is replete with directed content, which makes the early experience focused and entertaining.

While the new Fae race may not be to the liking of some players, it really does grant veterans a chance to experience the low-level game in a manner that is probably a whole lot more enjoyable than what they remember. Though the game shipped yesterday Tuesday , the servers didn't come online till later that afternoon on the West Coast. Apart from that ever-so-slight delay, the expansion seems to have been deployed without a hitch over the last 24 hours. Going a from recently-updated client to the live version took less than 15 minutes though times will of course vary depending on how long it's been since you updated your game.

All told, however, it's been a clean launch for Echoes of Faydwer , and while the new continent of Kelethin is buzzing with activity, there isn't much lag to speak of. Architects designed these to create internal reflections that would enhance and project sound from the stage in the days before electrical amplification. Sometimes echo effects were the unintentional side effect of the architectural or engineering design, such as for the Hamilton Mausoleum in Scotland, which has one of the longest reverberation times of any building.

Developments in electronics in the early 20th century—specifically the invention of the amplifier and the microphone —led to the creation of the first artificial echo chambers, built for radio and recording studios. Until the s echo and reverberation were typically created by a combination of electrical and physical methods.

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Acoustically speaking, the "classic novel" echo chamber creates echoes in the same way as they are created in churches or caves—they are all simply large, enclosed, empty spaces with floors and walls made of hard materials such as polished stone or concrete that reflect sound waves well. The basic purpose of such chambers is to add colour and depth to the original sound, and to simulate the rich natural reverberation that is a feature of large concert halls.

Except in the case of live performances, most commercial popular recordings were made in specially constructed studios. These rooms were both heavily insulated to exclude external noises and internally somewhat anechoic —that is, they were designed not to produce any internal echoes or sound reverberation. Because virtually every sound in everyday life is a complex mixture of direct sound from the source and its echoes and reverberations, audiences naturally found the totally 'dry' and reverberation-free sound of early recordings unappealing.

Consequently, record producers and engineers quickly came up with an effective method of adding 'artificial' echo and reverberation that experts could control with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Producing echo and reverberation in this form of echo chamber is simple. A signal from the studio mixing desk—such as a voice or instrument—is fed to a large high-fidelity loudspeaker located at one end of the chamber. One or more microphones are placed along the length of the room and these pick up both the sound from the speaker and its reflections off the walls of the chamber.

The farther away from the loudspeaker, the more echo and reverberation the microphone s picks up and the louder the reverberation becomes in relation to the source. An example of this physical effect can be heard on the David Bowie song "Heroes" , from the album of the same name. The song, produced by Tony Visconti , was recorded in the large concert hall in the Hansa recording studio in Berlin and Visconti has since been much praised for the striking sound he achieved on Bowie's vocals. Visconti placed three microphones at intervals along the length of the hall, one very close to Bowie, one halfway down the hall and the third at the far end of the hall.

During the recording, Bowie sang each verse progressively louder than the last and as he increased volume in each verse, Visconti opened up each of the three microphones in turn, from closest to farthest. Thus, in the first verse, Bowie's voice sounds close, warm and present; by the end of the song, Visconti has mixed in a large amount of signal from all three microphones, giving Bowie's voice a strikingly reverberant sound.

His construction and engineering team perfected the echo booth at Abbey Road Studios in London.

It was one of the first studios in the world to be specially built for recording purposes when it was established in ; it remains in place and is a prime example of the early 20th-century electro-acoustic echo chamber. Buildings such as churches, church halls and ballrooms have often been chosen as recording sites for classical and other music because of their rich, 'natural' echo and reverberation characteristics.

Montreal's Church of St. Eustache is the favoured recording venue of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and many others, and is much sought after for classical recordings because of its unique acoustic characteristics.

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Some recording companies and many small independent labels could not afford large purpose-built echo chambers such as the Abbey Road chamber, so enterprising producers and engineers often made use of any large reverberant space. Corridors, lift-wells, stairwells, tiled bathrooms and toilets were all used as substitute echo chambers. In the s and s, the development of magnetic audio tape technology made it possible to duplicate physical echo and reverberation effects entirely electronically.

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The Watkins Copicat , designed and built by renowned British electronics engineer Charlie Watkins in the late s, is typical of this kind of electronic delay device. Tape echo units use an endless loop of magnetic tape, which is drawn across a series of recording and playback heads. When a signal from a voice or instrument is fed into the machine, it records the signal onto the tape loop as it passed over the record head. As the tape advances, the newly recorded signal is then picked up by a series of playback heads mounted in line with the record head.

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These play the sound back as the signal passes over each head in turn, creating the classic rippling or cascading echoes that are typical of tape echo units. The number of playback heads determines the number of repeats, and the physical distance between each playback head determines the ratio of delay between each repeat of the sound usually some fraction of a second. The actual length of the delay between each repeat can be varied by a pitch control that alters the speed of the tape loop across the heads.

Typically, the playback heads of tape echo machines are also connected to controls that allow the user to determine the volume of each echo relative to the original signal.

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