Valhalla Shimmer Reverb

[mjau]

Yowza...really cool. Can totally see myself overusing this one and not even caring.
http://www.valhalladsp.com/shimmer.html

[silver sonya]

It's phenomenal.

- c

[supafuzz]

I hoped it would stay a secret for a least a little while longer.

it sucks it's bad you dont want this...it crashes your computers and messes with your cable TV...

Who am I kidding...? It's pretty frikin amazing..I can see myself composing whole spacey tacks with this..

[ott0bot]

Nice!!! Plus there is a Free download of the FreqEcho plug-in. Going to download that once I get home!

[supafuzz]

My crazy cool mastering guy Atom Fellows was at the studio and I was showing him
the valhalla..he suggested I put it on the mix bus
holy shit...it's pretty freakin nuts but in small doses it makes things move in a cool way

[mr.adambeck]

Holy Crap!

This is awesome!

[joninc]

seems kind of a lot like http://www.audiodamage.com/effects/prod ... ?pid=AD023 (minus the nice GUI)

[joninc]

now if i could only find a great plate reverb vst for $50...

[kinger]

seems kind of a lot like http://www.audiodamage.com/effects/prod ... ?pid=AD023 (minus the nice GUI)

Both algorithms were written by Sean Costello (or maybe you knew that and the subtle humour flew over my head ).

[seancostello]

seems kind of a lot like http://www.audiodamage.com/effects/prod ... ?pid=AD023 (minus the nice GUI)

Both algorithms were written by Sean Costello (or maybe you knew that and the subtle humour flew over my head ).

From my point of view, the algorithms are totally different. Eos is more of a general-purpose reverb, while Shimmer is far more focused on the long ambient side of things. They have a very different architecture under the hood. However, I'm sure that my algorithms will have a certain sonic signature of sorts. I try to design algorithms with character, without imposing too fixed of a sonic characteristic on the results.

Sean Costello
Valhalla DSP, LLC

[kinger]

Well, whatever you're doing, they both sound awesome and are an absolute steal at the price!

[joninc]

seems kind of a lot like http://www.audiodamage.com/effects/prod ... ?pid=AD023 (minus the nice GUI)

Both algorithms were written by Sean Costello (or maybe you knew that and the subtle humour flew over my head ).

From my point of view, the algorithms are totally different. Eos is more of a general-purpose reverb, while Shimmer is far more focused on the long ambient side of things. They have a very different architecture under the hood. However, I'm sure that my algorithms will have a certain sonic signature of sorts. I try to design algorithms with character, without imposing too fixed of a sonic characteristic on the results.

Sean Costello
Valhalla DSP, LLC

they may be designed totally different but they are being marketed in a very similar manner:

EOS:
"The incredibly long modulated hall sounds of Eno-style ambience are where Eos thrives"

SHIMMER:
"the classic ?shimmer? sound is produced, as heard on Eno / Lanois productions"

[seancostello]

they may be designed totally different but they are being marketed in a very similar manner:

EOS:
"The incredibly long modulated hall sounds of Eno-style ambience are where Eos thrives"

SHIMMER:
"the classic ?shimmer? sound is produced, as heard on Eno / Lanois productions"

See, we are talking about TOTALLY different Enos here!

To be honest, I feel that the strongest part of Eos are its plate sounds. The SuperHall algorithm is useful for the Harold Budd piano sounds and other ambient reverbs, but the mono and stereo plate algorithms are good for getting short ambiences, plate reverbs, and smaller room sounds.

The "shimmer" effect is kind of a shorthand phrase for an effect that Eno and Lanois developed in the early 1980's. It involves sending the output of a longish hall reverb (usually the Lexicon 224 Concert Hall) through a pitch shifter, and feeding the output of the pitch shifter back into the input. ValhallaShimmer makes it very easy to get this sound, with a pitch shifter that is optimized for the application.

Once you take the analog mixing desk out of the feedback loop, things can get unstable if you aren't careful, so ValhallaShimmer has reverb algorithms that were designed to work well with pitch shifted feedback. There are also some weird characteristics of the reverb algorithms, such as the ability to get a non-exponential reverb decay - at some settings, the reverb envelope approximates a Gaussian curve, and fades in and out. This can result in "backwards" reverb sounds; used more subtly, it can cause the reverb to have a slightly slower fade-in time, which can sound like a much large acoustic space with a longer mixing time. For example, a cathedral can take up to 1/2 second to reach full volume.

Sean Costello

[joninc]

thanks for the clarification...

do you think that EOS can do a good job of EMT style vintage plate tones?

[seancostello]

thanks for the clarification...

do you think that EOS can do a good job of EMT style vintage plate tones?

The Eos plates were designed more as "digital" plates. In other words, I was going for a dense sound, with an exponential decay, and without much coloration. The dispersion in a real EMT plate causes the speed of sound to be different at different frequencies, which some have argued can create an audible whip-crack sound at the beginning of the reverb response. I didn't try to emulate that in the Eos plates, as replicating these types of dispersive responses can eat up a lot of cycles, and I'm not sure how audible this is.

So, kind of a wishy-washy, non-answer answer. I know that some people think that the Eos plates are reminiscent of EMT plates, but they weren't designed to emulate the EMT so much as be "plate-esque" in a vaguely digital way. I think that the Eos plates sound much more like EMT plates than the Lexicon algorithms, but this, again, is my own opinion. You can try for yourself and see if you like them - the Audio Damage guys have a 30 day money back guarantee, no questions asked.

As far as I know, the Universal Audio EMT140 is the only plugin that is really trying to emulate a physical plate. In papers (and private conversations), the developers discuss how to emulate the "whip crack" sound at the beginning of the decay, but I don't know if it made it into the final product.

I have some thoughts about plate reverb emulation for future products, but I haven't had time to work on them yet - I'm still finishing up the 64-bit versions and Windows RTAS of Shimmer. I can tell you that ValhallaShimmer WON'T get good plate sounds - plates decay away very exponentially, and that isn't the behavior in ValhallaShimmer.

Sean Costello