A fat reverb !

[valhalladsp]

This is true. I really like the Alesis reverb algorithms. I picked up a Midiverb II for $39 a few months back. The Quadraverb is a good choice for the classic IDM stuff. Noisy as all get out, but some nice algorithms in there. I have a Lexicon LXP-15, and I far preserve the Alesis boxes for synth / ambient stuff on a budget.


ITB, mind you, I like my own stuff. The new plugin, ValhallaRoom, is designed for more "realistic" smaller spaces, but it can do the big washy modulated decays as well.

If I can only buy one Valhalla verb, would you recommend I start w/ Shimmer or Room (first) and why (ps: I make melodic techno if you feel like genre is a factor)?

ValhallaRoom is more general purpose, and can be used on all sorts of content - drums, vocals, synths, what have you. ValhallaShimmer has a much different attack characteristic built into the algorithms, and is best for slower ambient stuff. Shimmer also has the ability to pitch shift the feedback, for that Eno / Lanois "shimmer" sound. Demos are available for both (I'm working on the Windows port for ValhallaRoom today) so you can try before you buy. Live is my default plugin host when I am developing my algorithms, btw.

[tigali]

thats the spirit

One downside to the speaker in the bath was when I went to mix. I had processed a bass part using this method and it sounded amazing. Was near the final part of the mix process (been at it about a week) when I suddenly noticed something in the background. Took ages to find but when I eventually did it turned out to be that bass reverb track. There was a dripping pipe into the cistern of the toilet. Totally missed it until near the very end. Ended up leaving it alone. I called it "character".
"Yeah, it's totally part of my sound"

[ze2be]

@Sean Costello: it would be great to see and hear a vimeo video of the new reverb! The sound (and the picture) on vimeo is much better then on youtube. Youtube demos are always a bit confusing because of the sound quality.

[ThomasHelzle]

Not sure what others think about it in comparison to what was posted above, but my personal favorite is Uhbik-A for some time now...
http://www.uhbik.com/
All the other included effects are great as well...

Otherwise I personally would go for Aether if the price wouldn't be as steep

Cheers,

Thomas

[arbee]

gotta give props to sean valhalla. the valhallashimmer is awesome and it part of most of my recent tracks. do not regret getting that.

but right now I seem to own a little too much software reverbs to justify this new valhallaroom one. maybe later... gotta love valhalla's work !

[ze2be]

I still haven't heard a soft algo verb that sounds as good as the good hardware ones. What is really so wrong with convolution reverbs? For some time now ive been caught up with the seemingly consensus that IR verbs sounds dead, and algo verbs sounds alive and moving. Maybe I got caught in some silly trend. But a room doesn't move, does it? To me, the IR verbs shines on top of the line for indoor rooms. While I do see the positive side of algo verbs when it comes to ram load and disk space. And for moving spaces like outdoors etc, of course, its king in the field. But IR verbs amazes me on a whole other level. Its so damn crystal clear. And im not shore I care anymore about the room being "dead". A bit of both perhaps? Ive given the IRs a rest for almost 2 years now. It might be time to bring em back.

[steko]

ValhallaRoom looks nice! Shimmer is cool, though might lead to an inflation of Eno/Lanois clones…?

+1 Quadraverb (love my Quadraverb Plus!) Anybody compared it to the newer Quadraverb II ?

[valhalladsp]

@Sean Costello: it would be great to see and hear a vimeo video of the new reverb! The sound (and the picture) on vimeo is much better then on youtube. Youtube demos are always a bit confusing because of the sound quality.

That's a great idea. I need to see what the policies are like on Vimeo nowadays concerning commercial-type content.

YouTube has a much higher profile, as far as raw views. But I agree, the audio can be horrible. I remember when the Lexicon PCM plugin came out, and the official audio examples on YouTube were tragically bad. Weird crunching artifacts, that obviously aren't part of the Lexicon plugin.

[agent314]

I've been using a library of Lexicon impulse responses with Reflektor, and I've been really happy with the results.

The stock IRs are okay, but didn't really do it for me. The Lexicons have really improved the quality I've been able to get out of the thing.

[3phase]

@Sean Costello: it would be great to see and hear a vimeo video of the new reverb! The sound (and the picture) on vimeo is much better then on youtube. Youtube demos are always a bit confusing because of the sound quality.

That's a great idea. I need to see what the policies are like on Vimeo nowadays concerning commercial-type content.

YouTube has a much higher profile, as far as raw views. But I agree, the audio can be horrible. I remember when the Lexicon PCM plugin came out, and the official audio examples on YouTube were tragically bad. Weird crunching artifacts, that obviously aren't part of the Lexicon plugin.

oh..you are the programmer himself? i miss one parameter in your reverb and that is regarding the decay curve, the damping if you want.. especially on longer reverb times its somhow too sustained. i would have wished to be able to make it decay somehow more in an exponential fashion when needed..

with the settings i tried i wasnt really able to go above 1-2 second reverb time to make it suitable for my taste..
as much i like the fatness and densety it makes on the short times. as much this density gets in my way on longer reverb times..

the lexicon 224 is a good example of a reverb where you can drown a mix in 9 second long reverb without loosing the sense of the depth and musical detail.. While your reverb defently reminds to the old lexicons on the short reverb times its somehow too heavy on the long reverb times..
problem is..even lexicon themself have lost the knowledge how to do that somehow and the old lexicon 200 is still seen in many movie mixing facilitys just for that type of fat/wet but long reverb that really builds an emulgation with the sounds in the mix..

I wonder if that type of reverb would be concievable with a plug.. in the old lexicon the AD/DA conversion is part of that game.. its 12 bit and done in a compander fashion.. I have an akg spring reverb..the BX25..it has a digital predelay unit that makes it very close sounding to a lexicon 200..allmost identical to concert hall a actually.. as soon you overpatch the digital predelay circuit that similarity is gone and we have a metallic sounding spring reverb..
more natural as the spring it is..but less of this molding sound that merges with the source sounds so well.. so the distortions theese discrete build first generation A/D D/A converters make seem to be part of the game somehow..

Abletons bitcrusher is most defently not able to produce that kind of fx.. and also the other i know sofar dont..
But would be worthwhile for oldschool reverb fx to have such a 12 bit fat maker distortion plug

[valhalladsp]

oh..you are the programmer himself?

That's me!

i miss one parameter in your reverb and that is regarding the decay curve, the damping if you want.. especially on longer reverb times its somhow too sustained. i would have wished to be able to make it decay somehow more in an exponential fashion when needed..

If you don't send any of the Early section into the Late section, the Late decay should be about as exponential as any reverb out there, especially using the Large Room and Large Chamber algorithms.

with the settings i tried i wasnt really able to go above 1-2 second reverb time to make it suitable for my taste..
as much i like the fatness and densety it makes on the short times. as much this density gets in my way on longer reverb times..

ValhallaRoom is very dense, both in initial echo density and as it increases over time.

the lexicon 224 is a good example of a reverb where you can drown a mix in 9 second long reverb without loosing the sense of the depth and musical detail.. While your reverb defently reminds to the old lexicons on the short reverb times its somehow too heavy on the long reverb times..

The Lexicon 224 algorithms were fairly sparse for short decays, and only had the time to build with larger decays. Plus, the Depth control could be used to slow the onset of the reverb, which helps keep the reverb out of the way of the original signal.

ValhallaShimmer is definitely closer to the Lexicon 224 algorithms than VRoom. None of the Shimmer algorithms directly replicate the 224 algorithms, but they all have a more gradual build of echo energy and density. Shimmer isn't very good at short decays, though, which is one of the reasons why I created VRoom. Different tools for different applications.

problem is..even lexicon themself have lost the knowledge how to do that somehow and the old lexicon 200 is still seen in many movie mixing facilitys just for that type of fat/wet but long reverb that really builds an emulgation with the sounds in the mix..

There are a few of us that seem to know the old Lexicon algorithms better than the current Lexicon engineers. At some point, I need to buy a PCM70 or Lexicon 200, and give them a good listen, to match up my theory with the old hardware.

I wonder if that type of reverb would be concievable with a plug.. in the old lexicon the AD/DA conversion is part of that game.. its 12 bit and done in a compander fashion..

The Lexicon 224 had a pretty steep antialiasing filter, but the companding would have resulted in a fairly clean sound from the A/D and D/A. The convertors were 12 bit, but floating point was used to convert things to fairly close to 16 bit quality. Very high end for the time.

I think that the noise comes more from the internal fixed point processing. The 224 had 4 bits of headroom in the accumulator, so it was effectively 20 bits of dynamic range - but this isn't a lot when it comes to long reverbs. Each of the allpass delays and one-pole filters would have resulted in a fair amount of quantization noise, which would be compounded when the feedback around the structure was turned up for long decays. So a reverb that tried to model all the vintage qualities of the early Lexicons would need to be modeling the noise at various points inside the reverb structure, which would be more expensive than simply modeling converter artifacts.

[I have an akg spring reverb..the BX25..it has a digital predelay unit that makes it very close sounding to a lexicon 200..allmost identical to concert hall a actually.. as soon you overpatch the digital predelay circuit that similarity is gone and we have a metallic sounding spring reverb..
more natural as the spring it is..but less of this molding sound that merges with the source sounds so well.. so the distortions theese discrete build first generation A/D D/A converters make seem to be part of the game somehow..

I've definitely played with digital delays that add a lot of noisy cruft, as well as cutting out the high end above 8 KHz or so. This is an interesting idea. For that matter, using your favorite vintage delay model as a predelay could probably add a lot of mojo to a reverb in a send channel.

VRoom was designed for a different type of mojo. It isn't an emulation of the old reverbs, but instead is influenced by modern reverb theory. However, combining it with various FSU techniques is certainly encouraged.

Sean Costello

[ze2be]

I believe Altiverb is good but expensive. I use Reverberate which is cheap and you can get free Bricasti impulses to load up. It has several screens and is stereo and you can eq and adjust both channels

http://www.liquidsonics.com/software_reverberate.htm

Nice tip! Havent heard about it. I like Sir2 convolution reverb for its clear and simple interface. But this looks much better, and cheeper too. Sir2 is £125, while Reverberate is £50!