Having had more opportunity to use ECHOES now, I have the following comments:
1.) I am still as blown away as I was at first with its sound. I like to use a little delay on lead guitar, and ECHOES is my first choice now. A recent piece in which ECHOES was used for delay on a couple of guitar parts:
Diaphanous Radiance2.) I have trouble with it not instantiating in busier mixes with lots of tracks and lots of other plugins running. I have plenty of CPU horsepower available, but at some point, ECHOES will not instantiate. The piece in the link above has 4 or 5 guitar parts, Native Instruments Battery drums and Native Instruments Acoustik Piano. On pieces where I have more guitars, more VST instruments, a dozen audio tracks of a live drummer, several group tracks and several folder tracks to keep thing organized, ECHOES refuses to open. I've read posts on here by others who have the same trouble. I've downloaded the latest version, hoping the problem had been remedied, but it has not.
ECHOES is an absolutely amazing sounding delay... when it chooses to open.
What I will have to do on the more complex mixes I'm working on is take each track I wish to use ECHOES on, pull it up by itself an a blank Cubase project, instantiate ECHOES, then export the output of the FX track with ECHOES on it, thus creating an audio file of just the delay. Then I will need to import that audio file back into the more complex mix as a new audio track, thus getting around not being able to instantiate ECHOES directly in the busier mix. Tedious, time-consuming and I am not looking forward to it.
3.) When it does open, I've gotten great results using automation to adjust the stereo and repeats knobs, as well as the delay time. These controls allow for lots of flexibility and great delay effects, and the ability to automate them opens up the doors for a lot of great musical ideas.