 Hello, Oscillator Sync here. This is the Zoom Multistomp MS70 CDR and this is the Digitech Polara and these are two pedals which appear to be pretty common with the synthy community when it comes to giving your synths the greatest gift of all, Reverb. So I own both these pedals and I've recommended both of them at various different times to people but I realized I've never actually sat down and tried them kind of next to each other to work out what the relative strengths were and ultimately I guess you know decide which one I like better. So that's what I thought I'd do today in this video. So the video is kind of going to go like this. We're going to start out with a feature comparison if you like because they are quite different beasts really. Then we'll dive into kind of like a reverb pedal FAQ and try and to just answer some of those questions, pre-empt some of those questions I think are the common questions that get asked about reverb pedals and then we'll do a head-to-head sound test. We will listen to the comparable algorithms on the two pedals and we'll work out you know ultimately which one we like the best and then I'll save my opinion to write at the end of the video so I don't cloud your judgment when you are actually listening to and hopefully enjoying the sounds that these pedals put out. So let's start with the symbol of the two which is the Pallara. Lovely solid pedal like it's properly properly weighty actually this pedal. It really surprised me when I got it. We've got a very simple control layout. So here this knob here controls the various different modes of reverb. So we have a room, a plate, a reverse, a modulated, a halo which is kind of like a shimmer reverb. We've got the hall of course and then we have a spring mode as well. This knob here literally just controls the level of the wet reverb. That's all it does really straightforward. This one here is the decay. So that's how long your reverb tail is going to go on for and then we've got this control here which is labeled liveliness. What it does on the different algorithms kind of varies a little bit but sort of put generally turn it counterclockwise and things get more sort of dampened duller darker and you go the other way and you get sort of brighter splashier reverbs instead. Switch here is a clickless switch. A noiseless switch works very well. Good solid field despite that you don't get a click. This switch up at the top here is the tails switch. What that means is if it's turned on when you turn the pedal off your reverb tails will continue to sort of bloom and blossom and die away. If you have this turned off then as soon as you turn off the pedal your reverb disappears like a switch. At first glance on the zoom you think oh I've only got three knobs here this must be a simpler pedal but of course we've got a screen here and actually each of these knobs are also buttons and then you've also got these four buttons down here as well. It's actually quite a menu diving-y kind of pedal but what that means is that you also have potentially quite a lot more control. So each of the algorithms are essentially a virtual effects unit, a virtual pedal and you can select them by coming up and down here. You can jump to different categories of pedals by pressing and holding. You can when you turn one of the knobs you go into a menu and these menus are paged so you can have multiple pages. If I go to one of the more complex ones like this one I think if you go into the menu here we've actually got three pages of controls. You can save presets which of course you can't do on the Polara and probably the most exciting thing about the zoom is what the CDR stands for that's chorus delay reverb so this is not just a reverb pedal. This is a general sort of ambience multi-effect. It also has some compressors and some noise gates and some synthy type stuff in there as well but I think probably the thing which most differentiates this pedal from this one is the fact that you can have multiple pedals, multiple virtual pedals going on in a single preset so if you want to start with an ambience pedal and you want that going into a delay pedal you can do that so you can set up entire chains of effects on this which just take a second and go and have a look at the price. Yeah I know that's ridiculous. You can have I think I don't know what the maximum is there's kind of a maximum DSP usage basically but I've had like five different effects all running into each other, reverb after reverb after delay and it can get quite complicated and quite spacey so yeah this is kind of a much more complicated and potentially much more comprehensive pedal than the Polara but of course it depends on what you're after. Okay quick fire FAQ. Okay first up let's talk about power. The Polara is powered from a 9 volt DC adapter standard guitar effects adapter. The zoom will take an adapter as well but it will also run on two AA batteries not a 9 volt battery for some reason but two AA batteries which means that if you're someone who likes to go and jam out and about in nature that's a definite plus for the zoom. Okay next how do they deal with line level? Obviously guitar effects pedals are designed for a guitar and the guitar doesn't put out anywhere near as much signal as our synths would so first of all the Polara deals with it beautifully very high head room as far as I can tell. The zoom also deals with it fine most of the time but you do sometimes drive it into digital clipping on some settings if you are driving it hard. Okay here comes a big one is it stereo Polara yes absolutely stereo in stereo out zoom yes but some of the effects algorithms are only in mono so as long as you're using a stereo effect it will be in stereo if you switch from mono effect obviously it will be mono and as soon as you put a mono effect in the chain if you've got multiple effects it will squish it down to mono so you'll lose all of the width that you have before that. Right is it analog dry through Polara yes zoom no why is this important I don't want to get into a discussion about the various sonic qualities of the digital analog converters but what I will say is that if you put the Polara in an effects loop or in a an aux sender and a mixer you won't get any weirdness happening the zoom because it always goes to digital if you put it in an aux send you will sometimes get these nasty comb filtering sounds happening which you might want to avoid just something to bear in mind if you put it just straight in front of a synth into a mixer not a problem at all if you put it in an aux send just be careful about that comb filtering. Next does it go 100% wet Polara no the level control is the level of the reverb even with it cranked you will still get the dry signal coming through at unity the exception to that is on the reverse mode the reverse mode will only have the reverb that's 100% wet no matter what you do. So in terms of the zoom sometimes some of the algorithms like the HD Hall algorithm that we'll listen to in a minute the mix control does go 100% wet some of them have a an explicit dry kill switch and then some of them the mix is more like a level control in the same way as it is on the Polara so it depends on which algorithm you are using. So finally for you ambient guys out there do they go very very long and very very weird the Polara you've got a shimmer on there that's probably the weirdest thing on there and I guess by today's standards that isn't super weird so not that weird does it go super long not really not by sort of modern reverb standards potentially where on a lot of pedals we see things go to practically infinite reverb this doesn't go super super long it goes long compared to like vintage reverbs I guess but not like ridiculously ridiculously long zoom yes there are some very very weird algorithms on here and I will demo those separately when we get to the end of the video just so I can show them off a little bit does it go very very long yes some of the algorithms will go practically infinite so if you want to go very weird and very long the zoom certainly has you covered for that okay so now the bit that I suspect you've been waiting for let's do the sound comparisons so the Polara's got seven different algorithms room plates reverse etc etc so what I'm going to do is we'll listen to the two pedals with that sort of equivalent sound so we'll do a room on the Polara and a room on the zoom and then a plate on the Polara and a plate on the zoom and so on and then at the end of the comparisons I'll also just show off a couple of the weirder algorithms on the zoom I think they are worth talking about so those were the sounds right so here are my thoughts personally I think that on every algorithm the Polara sounded better and yeah it's as simple as that I think the Polara sounded better I think the Polara's reverbs sound better than the zooms that's not to say that the zooms sound bad particularly for example I think the plate on the zoom sounds great it's not super faithful I don't think as a plate sound but it gets really angry and dirty in a way that the Polara doesn't I will say though the plate mode on the Polara just sounds huge just wonderful and big and thick and white sounds better I think this one certainly has its place what I will say is that I think the shimmer on the zoom sucks like it's bad that's it and the flip side is that I think the halo mode as it's called on the Polara is lovely it shimmer can be a bit over the top but I think the Polara does it very very very tastefully so if someone came to me and just wanted a great sounding compact set and forget reverb I'm going to have to recommend the Polara every single time over the zoom but that's not the whole story is it because of course the zoom can do so much more multiple effects not just reverbs choruses and delays and even when we talk about just the reverbs this does some weird unique sound in reverbs as well so it's not as simple as me saying just buy the Polara if you want a better reverb pedal because my question really it should be is what do you want from your reverb pedal the zoom is massively more flexible it has presets you can stack up multiple effects and that can give you some really interesting sonic places so if you're a sonic adventurer and you want to do weird stuff then the Polara probably isn't going to be weird enough for you the Polara is tasteful beautiful sounding but it's pretty conventional actually all in the zoom on the other hand does not sound as lush does not sound as wide but it can do stuff that the Polara can't even begin to think about doing so if you like weird sounds if you like to tweak then the zoom might be a better shell or do what i've done and i guess get both and use them in the position that you want to use them in so anyway i hope that was interesting i hope that was helpful let me know in the comments which pedal you like the best which algorithms you thought sounded great feel free to ask any other questions i didn't already answer i'll try and get those answered for you in the comments i'd love to hear what you think i'd love to hear which one you went for if you were trying to decide between them and perhaps are there any other pedals that you want to see checked out in a similar sort of way um i can't guarantee that i'll be able to afford to buy every pedal under the sun but there are some at the lower end that i would be tempted to get maybe to do a video on um other than that thank you so much for watching as always until next time take care bye