Most digital reverbs are trying to sell you a room. Set the decay, set the mix, and you get a smooth cloud sitting behind whatever you play. The Electronic Audio Experiments Scattering goes the other way. EAE calls it a multi-tap stereo reverb, and it's built around networks of tapped delay lines, so instead of blurring your signal into atmosphere it throws off distinct, fluttering echoes that spread out across the stereo field. Their own description calls it "a lively dance of fluttering echoes strewn into space," which is about as accurate as product copy usually gets.
We got one in front of a camera in our studio. Have a look, then we'll get into what's going on inside.
The four modes are the heart of it, and they're built on the tap ratios of the MN3011, a bucket brigade delay chip that has been out of production long enough that EAE calls it lost. Rather than build a straight recreation, they wrote proto-algorithmic versions of it, so each mode is a different way of spacing those taps. The character moves a long way between them. The core timbre can be harsh and ringing at one setting and murky and saturated at another, and neither of those is a failure state. That's the pedal doing its job.
Four knobs do most of the shaping. Space stretches both the reverb time and the separation between delay taps, and EAE is upfront that it will produce artifacts at longer settings. Dwell feeds the reverb back onto itself and will tip into oscillation in some modes. Filter is a stereo analog two-pole low pass sitting at the reverb output, so you're darkening the tail with an actual filter rather than a simulation of one. And Preamp drives a stereo analog gain stage that is clean and dynamic on its own but is very happy to add textural saturation and overload the reverb behind it. Two of those controls are documented in terms of how they break. That should tell you what kind of pedal this is.
The signal path is a hybrid, and the split is deliberate. Processing runs at 24 bits with a variable sample rate on a 32-bit processor system, while the filtering and emphasis stay analog, the dry path is a high headroom analog path, and the wet/dry blend happens on an analog VCA mixer that goes full dry to full wet. Low noise where you want low noise, real analog color everywhere else, and your dry signal never gets converted on the way through.
Expression morphing is the feature we'd point at first. Set the Aux footswitch to Morph and it jumps between two distinct knob settings, with intelligent momentary and latching behavior and adjustable rise and fall times, so a swell can be something you kick in and let bloom rather than something you have to ride with your foot for eight bars. Set Aux to Preset instead and it scrolls the first three presets. The multi-mode LFO handles the movement, with periodic and random waveforms, and it's assignable to the main front panel controls through the Mod Matrix. Between those two, Space, Dwell, Filter, and Preamp stop being set-and-forget knobs and start being things you play.
Underneath that is a deep control layer. Sixteen preset slots, three of them reachable straight from the front panel and the rest over MIDI. A full MIDI implementation with CCs and presets for every parameter, analog and digital. A CTRL jack that takes MIDI, expression, or CV. Firmware updates over MIDI SysEx, so the pedal isn't frozen at whatever it shipped with. If you run a switching system, all of it is addressable. If you don't, three presets and two footswitches will keep you busy.
A few practical notes before you make room for it. The stereo I/O runs on TRS jacks, one in and one out, so plan your cabling accordingly. It's a Hammond 1590BB2 at 121mm x 94mm x 38mm, it runs on a standard 9V DC center negative supply, and it draws about 120mA with a 200mA surge at startup, which is worth checking against your power brick. Bypass is electronic, switchable between buffered and trails with a long press on Engage.
EAE closes their own writeup with a line we like: "Reverb gives our music a sense of space. We hope Scattering is a fun one to explore." That's the right way to think about this one. It's a reverb you dig into, not one you dial in once and forget. Come play one in Wheaton, or pick it up at ChuckLevins.com.