The Orban 111B Dual Spring Reverb was introduced as a two-channel artificial reverberation unit designed to offer professional-grade sound quality within an economical package. The product lineage traces back to 1970, when the first Orban reverb established new standards for price and performance in the artificial reverb field. Over the subsequent years, user feedback and manufacturing experience allowed for continuous refinement, resulting in units characterised by excellent sound quality, easy installation, and an outstanding reliability record. The Orban 111B represented the latest generation of this lineage, combining both electronics and spring delay lines in a single chassis. This integration allowed the unit to deliver full Orban quality and reliability while achieving significant advances in cost-effectiveness, making it a suitable choice for users requiring two channels of fully professional reverb.
The core reverberation element consisted of a six-spring array per channel. This configuration was selected to assure low flutter, providing a sound that was much smoother and better integrated compared to low-priced, consumer-grade competition. The complex frequency response and decay time curves were designed to effectively simulate natural reverberation. A key design consideration was the psychoacoustical interaction between direct and reverberated sound. The Orban 111B was engineered so that the decay versus frequency did not drop abruptly at high frequencies, a characteristic often found in higher-priced competition where excessive high-frequency damping resulted in a dull, brassy sound. Instead, the 111B maintained a longer high-frequency decay, producing a bright sound that suited pop music and approximated the character of high-priced plate reverbs.
Signal-to-noise performance was optimised through the use of a special low-noise IC preamp and added mu-metal hum shielding around the spring pickup coils. The steel case of the Orban 111B provided increased protection against hum fields, which was particularly important given that the spring delay lines were located in the same chassis as the electronics. A specially designed limiter circuit allowed users to utilise the full headroom available in the system without concern for potential overload and distortion. This limiter served to eliminate sudden, sharp changes in level regardless of average level, greatly reducing “twang” and “boing” noises when operated in the “floating threshold” mode. By exploiting the masking effect, where direct sound hides residual reverb artefacts, even percussion and guitar could be reverberated without unnatural effects.
The unit featured a versatile quasi-parametric midrange equaliser, which complemented the simple, inflexible equalisation found on many low-cost mixers. This allowed owners to tailor the reverb sound to their exact requirements. The midrange equaliser permitted continuously variable adjustment of the frequency of maximum equalisation, ranging from 1.5 to 5.5 kHz, the amount of equalisation up to ±12dB, and the bandwidth, or Q, from 0.5 to 5.0. It was termed “quasi-parametric” because operating the tuning control caused the bandwidth to change, unlike a full parametric equaliser where controls are totally non-interacting. Additionally, a bass shelving equaliser with a turnover frequency of 500 Hz and an equalisation range of ±12 dB was included to further tailor the sound.
Installation and connectivity were designed for ease of integration into various systems. The Orban 111B had a very high basic input sensitivity of -30dBm, and a front-panel input gain control made it usable with all mixers, even those with unusually low level sends. The output was a fully professional 0 dBm balanced, floating connection, which vastly improved immunity to RF interference and assured easy integration without introducing ground loops and hum. When used with a recording studio-type mixing console, the unit was connected to the echo send and echo return busses in the customary manner. For users without such a console, an auxiliary output containing a mixture of direct sound and reverberated sound was available, with the amount of reverberated sound adjustable via the front panel Output Atten control.
The power supply was built into the unit, featuring a 115/230 volt 50-60 Hz power transformer, making the Orban 111B suitable for use anywhere in the world. The power requirements were approximately 10 watts. The unit included a POWER ON pilot lamp and an LED that automatically lit whenever the limiter was in FIXED mode, with one indicator per channel. The audio connector was a Jones 140-Y barrier strip using #5 screws, and the power connector was a “U-Ground” power cord to United States standards.
Orban’s use of top-quality parts, industrial-quality construction, and special test and burn-in procedures made it highly unlikely that a user would experience trouble with the Orban 111B. The unit was protected by a one-year parts and labour warranty. Installation and in-house troubleshooting were facilitated by an instruction manual that included detailed installation instructions, performance verification tests, circuit description, troubleshooting hints, alignment instructions, and a schematic diagram, in addition to the user operator’s instructions. The limiter element was a Junction Field-Effect Transistor, with an attack time of less than 100 microseconds. In FIXED mode, the compression ratio was greater than 10:1, and the limiter-induced harmonic distortion at 5 kHz was less than 0.2%. The release time was adjusted by a dual time-constant circuit as a function of the program.
Features
- Orban retained all the desirable electronic features of their earlier models and added useful new equalisation facilities.
- LOW FLUTTER is assured by the use of six springs per channel.
- SIGNAL-TO-NOISE ratio is optimised by the use of a special low-noise IC preamp
- “TWANG” AND “BOING” NOISES are greatly reduced by this exclusive limiter when operated in the “floating threshold” mode.
- The Orban 111B was designed with the psychoacoustical interaction between direct and reverberated sound always in mind.
- The Orban 111B’s longer high frequency decay results in the bright sound that most pop music demands.
- FREQUENCY RESPONSE is optimised by means of elaborate fixed equalisation in the reverb circuitry.
