KVR :: Effects » ValhallaRoom version 1.1.0 released. New reverb mode (LV-426), 64-bit OSX VST. [View Original Topic]
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valhallasound - Fri Feb 25, 2011 11:56 am

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I am happy to announce that the next plugin in the ValhallaDSP lineup, ValhallaRoom, is currently available for Windows and OSX:



A quick summary of the features as of version 1.1.0:

- ValhallaRoom features eleven original true stereo reverberation algorithms, designed to produce tight and subtle room sounds, large hall sounds and huge ambiences, as well as dark and grungy vintage digital reverbs with the new Dark reverb modes (Dark Room, Dark Chamber, Dark Space, Nostromo, Narcissus, Sulaco and LV-426).
- Unique Early reverb section allows user to dial in subtle and short bursts of early reverberation energy, as well as gated reverbs up to 1 second in length.
- The Late section produces natural reverb decays ranging from 0.1 seconds to 100 seconds. The decay can be controlled in 3 adjustable frequency bands.
- Both Early and Late reverb sections have adjustable modulation, to produce sounds ranging from lush chorusing, to subtle and natural long decays.

The goal of ValhallaRoom is to be a useful "workhorse" reverb, for subtle drum rooms that can be felt more than heard, lush halls, dense plates, and big ambient decays. The algorithm designs have been influenced by some of the "classic" room simulation boxes, as well as state of the art modern theory.

ValhallaRoom is currently available to demo/purchase for OSX (32/64 bit VST, 32/64-bit Audio Units, 32-bit RTAS) and Windows (32/64 bit VST, 32-bit RTAS). Price is $50 US.

Go check it out at

http://www.valhalladsp.com/valhallaroom

UPDATE: The 1.1.0 ValhallaRoom update has just been released. The new features:

New reverb mode: LV-426.

- In keeping with the Alien theme, this is a deep dark space verb. It is kind of a cross between Nostromo and Narcissus, but with a far higher earlier echo density than either of those reverbs.
- The LATE LowMult/Xover and LATE HighMult/Xover filters have been moved to a location where they act as tone controls.
- Values of LowMult less than 1.0 allow you to dial in reverbs with less low frequency energy.
- The LowXover control can be used to adjust the crossover freq of the low cut/boost.

- 64-bit VST for OSX. ValhallaRoom is now fully 32 and 64-bit compatible for both Windows and OSX.

- Optimized CPU for Windows RTAS and VST32

Sean Costello

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penguinfromdeep - Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:00 pm

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Great! Happy Valhallashimmer owner here, looking forward to this one too

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iloveasio - Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:05 pm

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Niceness!! I can't wait. I'm a huge believer in the quality of the Valhalla line of product. Sorry to sound so needy, but is there any way that there can be an early promo discount for early adopters (like the first 24hours or something)to help those of us spread thin in the wallet.

take care

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metalifuxx - Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:17 pm

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Sure to be quality

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ariston - Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:21 pm

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Great, can't wait to try this one out. You can never have too many reverbs, right? I love my Aether, but Shimmer really offered something unique. Let's see if Room can do the same.

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moocher - Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:49 pm

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Lokk forward to it.

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TristezaOrange - Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:40 pm

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OH. YES.

I have been using ValhallaShimmer on all my tracks lately. Amazing stuff - I can't wait for ValhallaRoom to be released. I've been a huge fan since FreqEcho. Your product line is top quality - ttoz almost convinced me to go for the (cheaper line of) Lexicons but I'm sure that Room will stop me from doing that.

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vata44 - Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:50 pm

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EXCITING! Shimmer customer... discount please?

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audiosabre - Fri Feb 25, 2011 2:17 pm

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I'm curious to hear how the sound of these algorithms differ from eos. I see from the controls that it operates differently


My elders convinced me that magic mushrooms were wrong, but they blew my mind in the most profound way. Hopefully this will relate

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JeffSanders - Fri Feb 25, 2011 3:48 pm

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Resonator63 - Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:36 pm

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This could be a good one

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valhallasound - Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:27 pm

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ValhallaRoom is a more "realistic" reverb, as opposed to the cosmic abyss reverb that is ValhallaShimmer.

Mind you, a modulated 100 second reverb tail can get pretty Kosmische. I designed ValhallaRoom to be a reverb that was useful for "everyday" situations, but my algorithms tend to get a bit psychedelic around the edges. The ability to independently control the mod rate and mod depth for both the Early and Late reverbs allows for dry early energy, mixed with big long wet tails that will work well for deep ambient sounds.

Sean Costello

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A.M. Gold - Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:42 pm

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Will this be markedly different from Eos?

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michael2 - Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:49 pm

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why must you tempt me with your fabulous plugs? I feel like I spent a month of my life checking KVR every 30 minutes to make sure I didn't miss Valhalla Shimmer's debut. I had more patience waiting for my kids to be born. Let the waiting begin.

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D.Wako - Fri Feb 25, 2011 10:20 pm

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Anxious to hear this.

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themossinator - Sat Feb 26, 2011 6:26 am

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This could complete my reverb collection, Eos for the big halls, this for my shorter reverb for stuff like drums and that - in fact i might even get rid of Aether altogether

also valhalla FreqEcho is such a brilliant plugin as well - well done man im sure this new one will be mega!

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hesnotthemessiah - Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:36 am

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Looking forward to this one!!

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valhallasound - Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:59 am

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Yes. Totally different algorithms, increased min and max decay ranges, different modulation schemes, an Early reverb section that has no corresponding match in Eos (or any other reverb I know of), different overall filtering, completely different approach to diffusion, and so on.

I love Eos, and am proud of the Eos algorithms, which are also owned lock, stock, and barrel by Audio Damage. The ValhallaRoom algorithms are based on new research and development on my part (there is almost 2 years between the development of the Eos algorithms and the ValhallaRoom algorithms). Once the demo is available, you'll be able to check out ValhallaRoom and see if it meets your needs.

Sean

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todd_r - Sat Feb 26, 2011 12:00 pm

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Looking forward to hearing it, looks like it might be right up my alley, any audio demos soon?

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mandolarian - Sat Feb 26, 2011 5:29 pm

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Why the demo, Sean? Couldn't the DSP Gods of Valhalla just invoke the superaural annual subscription system, skipping this tension building phase entirely? We'd just wake up in the middle of the night with lush verb dripping down our ears and fewer coins in our pockets. What's not to like?

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TFF - Sat Feb 26, 2011 5:48 pm

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Sick. Anticipating.

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valhallasound - Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:53 pm

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I just subscribed you all. With my MIND. WINNING!

(sorry...I'm obsessed with Charlie Sheen's rants right now...)

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A.M. Gold - Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:21 pm

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And then see if my wallet meets its needs.

Thanks for the rundown---I look forward to trying it out!

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mandolarian - Sun Feb 27, 2011 12:57 am

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It's fifty bucks. You spend more everyday just maintaining your golden oldie nom de plume.

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A.M. Gold - Sun Feb 27, 2011 1:40 am

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You wouldn't believe how many things I bought for "just fifty bucks" over the six Black Fridays that happened between the end of Novemebr and the first week of January.

I'm fresh out of fifty dollar bills, so to speak.

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mandolarian - Sun Feb 27, 2011 2:01 am

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Yeah, it's been a tough season for fifties. Not to mention the hundreds. But, those brutal bargain days are over. We can return to the joy of paying full list for awhile.

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valhallasound - Sun Feb 27, 2011 10:27 am

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Well, if full list is $50, hopefully things will be a little easier to buy.

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Nielzie - Sun Feb 27, 2011 10:35 am

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I'm very much looking forward to this. I'm a frequent user of ValhallaShimmer and ValhallaFreqEchoMkI and if this will be of the same ValhallaQuality then I'm sure it will be a winner

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A.M. Gold - Sun Feb 27, 2011 3:06 pm

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Good point---no expiration date on this deal (for the near future at least).

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Captain - Sun Feb 27, 2011 5:07 pm

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Yesss! I have been putting off purchasing a good algo reverb, no need to do that any more. ValhallaShimmer has quickly become one of my favorite plugins ever, so I'm sure this one will be very useful too.

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TheoM - Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:53 pm

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TBH, i never really liked shimmer, as i said.. but that's because i found it too hard to dial in the right sound, and every seemingly minor adjustment was too drastic sonically.

HOWEVER, to give you an example of the long reverb sound i like, it's the concert hall dark preset of shimmer, which shows it IS possible, but i couldn't get there from scratch without using the preset first. But i just wanted to say that the sound actually is very very VERY high quality and the tail is absolutely without any artefacts, grain, or metallicness and I am after all this rather impressed.

If the upcoming reverb is something that can still do that sound, but without all the wacked out uber special fx abilities, i.e. just concentrated on being a more general all round verb, ,then i am interested for sure... especially whilst i wait for altiverb and lexicon to be ported to 64 bit AU, which will probably not even be this year.


SO yeah, some audio demos... would rock

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ironflippy - Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:14 am

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Been looking for a high quality reverb to purchase without going into severe debt. I love shimmer, but a good regular verb is more than welcome! Ambience and Z-Room are working right now as free plugs, but I can never get enough reverb. Very very excited to hear the demo. Maybe some audio demos in the meantime, Sean? Eh, eh?

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valhallasound - Mon Feb 28, 2011 10:21 am

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Fair enough. ValhallaShimmer has controls that are much closer "to the metal," compared to ValhallaRoom. With Shimmer, if you want a 5 second decay, there are several different ways to get this, as the Diffusion, Feedback, and Size parameters all affect the decay time (and each one has a different effect on the sound, even with similar decay times). ValhallaRoom has a Decay slider, which allows you to dial in the exact decay time, regardless of Diffusion or Size settings.

In some ways, ValhallaShimmer is more of a delay/pitch/diffusion processor, that allows you to get semi-conventional reverb sounds in addition to a bunch of other spacey sounds - pitch shifted echos, diffuse slapbacks, the weird Gaussian enveloped reverb, and so on. The "flat" arrangement of the controls is an accurate reflection of what is going on inside the algorithm, and allows for maximum creativity. The user gets to make the decisions. With ValhallaRoom, I'm limiting the parameters to more "conventional" reverbs...for the most part (the Early section can get pretty out there). Room can still get long glistening reverbs, but it is more "polite" in its behavior than Shimmer.



Well, ValhallaRoom won't be able to exactly duplicate the ValhallaShimmer reverbs. The algorithms in Room are of a completely different topology than the Shimmer algorithms. The ValhallaRoom algorithms were designed to have a very sharp attack (which can be softened via the Early section) and an exponential decay with a precisely specified decay time. The ValhallaShimmer reverbs all have a much slower attack, and a decay time that can be very non-exponential.

In addition, the modulation in each algorithm is considerably different. For the Shimmer reverbs, by the time you actually hear the output, there has been so much modulation going on that the harmonics are smeared all over the place. Room has a lot of modulation, too, if you want it, but it happens in a different way, so it will have a different sound.

Having said that, ValhallaRoom can certainly get long, dark, washy reverbs, in addition to really small and short ambiances. If you are used to more "conventional" reverb time controls, it will be easier to get a specific decay time with ValhallaRoom than with ValhallaShimmer.

And, yes, ValhallaRoom will be AU64. I am fortunate enough that the SDK I use for my plugin framework has had the 64-bit porting issues worked out for Audio Units.

Sean Costello

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mandolarian - Mon Feb 28, 2011 11:53 pm

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Sean, I love it when you talk weird Gaussian. Even more than channeling Mr. Sheen.

Wouldn't all that informative typing be better spent typing: ValhallaRoom 1.0?

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Igro - Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:48 am

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This reverb I'm really waiting...

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valhallasound - Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:58 am

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OK: ValhallaRoom 1.0.0...is currently under construction. MWAHAHA!! Yeah, I sure showed me!

Progress report: I added a new slider, called Depth. Someone on GearSlutz didn't understand why I had separate gain controls for Early and Late reverb sections, instead of crossfading between the two. I wrote a lengthy reply about the issues involved in gain normalization.

After writing the post, I revisited my gain normalization code for the late reverb, found an obvious bug, and fixed it. Now the Late reverb has the same perceived gain over pretty much the entire decay range, which allows me to put in a slider that crossfades between Early and Late reverbs.

I call the new control Depth, because it creates the impression of increasing the perceived listener depth/distance from the source, and because Early/Late Mix wouldn't fit on the GUI. I'm leaving in the Early and Late Level controls, but adjusting the mins and maxes so that they act as "trim" controls, instead of being the primary way of controlling the Early/Late balance.

Today, I'm working on the preset code. ValhallaRoom will have a much better preset browsing system than Shimmer, that will be cross-platform. It needs some work, though. Not a ton, but a few days worth. The rest of the plugin/audio code seems pretty tight at this point.

Sean Costello

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echopark - Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 am

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So let us hear some audio examples !!

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valhallasound - Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:03 pm

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http://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-product-alert-software/585768-valhallaroom-2.html#post6391702

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mandolarian - Tue Mar 01, 2011 5:02 pm

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Sounds great, Sean! Except in a number of examples it sounds like the drummer couldn't wait for the rest of the band to show up for the demo, ate all the food, drank all the beer and left. Is that expected behavior within ValhallaRoom?

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valhallasound - Tue Mar 01, 2011 5:05 pm

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So, you mean it sounds like a drummer? RIMSHOT-CRASHHH! WINNING!

Thanks, folks, I'll be here all night. Try the chicken!

Hey, the drumming sounds good to me. Way better than my drumming skills, which sound like Ringo being played on a 45 with no spindle adapter on the turntable. And my thanks go out to Don Gunn for putting up the nicely recorded examples.

I've been playing around with some less subtle treatments of the same drum loop...

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mandolarian - Tue Mar 01, 2011 6:05 pm

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I didn't want to sound so blunt, but yes that's exactly it.
Guess you didn't hear the beer spilling in the 2nd bar? I like a lush liquid sound as much as any...

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ironflippy - Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:25 am

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Why are you only asking $50 for this? I'm beyond excited for the release!!!!!!

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:43 am

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Some reasons:

- Your average DAW has a ton of built in effects for a few hundred bucks. Why should a single high quality effect cost as much or more than your DAW?
- The economy sucks. At least for those of us in the bottom 90%.
- I like Boss pedals, which are cheap.
- I hate the notion of Veblen goods.
- I don't have to support a US Representative in Congress.
- There have been a lot of high quality reverb plugins released in the last few years.
- I want musicians to use this, in addition to studio owners and engineers. Much of the music I love has been recorded at home on modest rigs, and I would love to put high-end tools in the hands of such musicians.
- I want this to be the SM57 of reverb plugins. Low cost, damn near indestructible, versatile, super useful, everyone has one.
- Low overhead. Valhalla DSP is me, with some graphic design assistance from my wife (she helped a ton with the look & feel of Room). My office is my 4yo MacBook Pro.
- I have a LOT of algorithms in me. If I start charging $$$ for a given plugin, that makes things too precious for my tastes.
- Because you DESERVE a kick-ass reverb for $50.

Sean Costello

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mandolarian - Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:15 am

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Yes, I do! Yes, We CAN! WINNING!

Sean, as gifted as you are in DSP coding, you're really good at marketing copy. That was so motivating I want to sign up now for the Valhalla Gaussian Forces! If you'd added the phrase about visiting exotic locales, I'd join for life. What was the topic again?

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A.M. Gold - Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:41 am

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Another way of looking at it is the "economies of scale" principle, which is based on the idea that you can make money selling a few expensive things to a few people, or a lot of inexpensive things to a lot of people.

Some plug-in developers shoot for one target: studio engineers who can afford to pay hundreds of dollars for plug-ins (or hardware). Others shoot for more of the "general public", and hope to sell more plug-ins to a wider audience, so to speak.

I appreciate your choice, Sean, to shoot for the wider audience approach, and I hope your plug-ins get enough attention over time that you sell enough to make a decent return on your investment of time and effort.

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ironflippy - Wed Mar 02, 2011 6:55 am

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haha, fair enough!

I'm really glad I held off on buying a nice, all-purpose reverb.

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todd_r - Wed Mar 02, 2011 7:59 am

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BI-WINNING!

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jens - Wed Mar 02, 2011 9:21 am

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Count me in on the mass-craze!

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TFF - Wed Mar 02, 2011 10:21 am

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Stoked for this. Hurry up already!

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TheoM - Wed Mar 02, 2011 10:55 am

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I gotta admit impressed by the examples at the slutz. It;s totally eradicated the need for me to get the earreckon verb now (sorry ear reckon but this is better and cheaper). Shimmer still has it's uses the more i test the demo, but for that unique weird pitch shift thing it does, it sounds quite trippy. I think a combo bundle $79.95 is in order

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:02 am

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I was playing audio through both Shimmer and Room last night. They seem quite complementary to me. The Shimmer "Black Hole" preset, with the way the audio fades in and the deep chorusing, is something that Room just can't do. Similarly, the "Concert Hall" in Shimmer sounds like a 224 Concert Hall algorithm with the decay time cranked up, but doesn't sound much like a physical concert hall at all. Meanwhile, Room can easily get realistic physical concert hall sounds - decay around 1.9 to 2 seconds, longer decay time around 500 Hz, considerably high frequency damping, 15 to 30 milliseconds between the initial sound and the start of the early reflections cluster, and so on.

Quick summary: ValhallaRoom is more realistic, ValhallaShimmer is more psychedelic.

Sean

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TheoM - Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:40 am

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but room can do 5 - 8 second decay times too, right?

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:43 am

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ValhallaRoom can get decay times ranging from 0.1 seconds to 100 seconds. In addition, the size of the early energy can be set down to a few milliseconds. It isn't the specific decay times that can't be captured by Room versus Shimmer, but the other qualities: spatial spread, attack and decay shape, modulation, etc. ValhallaRoom can get very long washy chorusy wet spacey tails - they just sound different than the very long washy chorusy wet spacey tails that Shimmer will give you.

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TheoM - Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:51 am

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ok, got it.

i suppose it wouldn;t make sense if they DIDN'T sound different. From what i am hearing of the demos, the room is more my thing, and i can just imagine on those vocals the large chamber with a longer decay and a bit wetter for some hypnotic tarnce. If it maintains that quality of smoothness with longer decays, that's close to lexicon quality. What a bargain.

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:27 pm

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The LargeChamber algorithm was designed to have the initial high echo density and lack of color of the Lexicon Rich Chamber algorithms, while having far less dependence on the Size parameter for echo density than the Lexicon algorithm. At all settings of Size, the Large Chamber algorithm sounds dense to me. It doesn't have the "character" that the other modes have, as far as any sort of energy patterning - to me, it sounds like pure exponential decay. It kinda freaks me out. The algorithm topology was one of those things that I always thought "nah, that won't work" until I figured out a way to make it work. Very short decays sound like a natural extension of the short signal, while long decays are super smooth.

Even thought the Late energy of the LargeChamber has a very exponential decay, the attack and initial decay can be shaped by sending the Early section into the Late reverb. One of the tricks I figured out yesterday is to set the Early Size to around 100 msec, to create a slight "gated" reverb if listened to on its own, then send this to the Late reverb, and set the Depth slider (which is new, and controls the Early/Late mix) to 100% Late. This creates a "squashed" initial transient, similar to running the reverb through a slight amount of compression, or recording to a hot tape signal. By using the LargeRoom or LargeChamber, and setting the Decay setting to around 0.5 sec, I managed to get a drum sound that sounded fairly close to "Surfer Rosa" to my ears.

Sean Costello

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D.Wako - Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:27 pm

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Those examples do sound good.

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audiosabre - Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:33 pm

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Examples sound really good to me. The bright examples are scarily transparent. Eos, Shimmer and Room; I'd say that's a hat-trick of awesome reverb. Hard to beat in terms of flexibility

I have no hesitation supporting developers with Sean's attitude

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jensa - Wed Mar 02, 2011 4:01 pm

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Not only excellent at reverbs, impeccable taste in music too.

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metalifuxx - Wed Mar 02, 2011 4:15 pm

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I like creating a hybrid of this trick with two delays in series. I set the first to a short slap back setting with little feedback and short echo so it really catches the initial transient pluck and energy to give it that bounce, and have the wet/dry mixed to about 50/50, and then send this into a longer delay time with higher feedback and wet/dry mix lower and roll off the highs a little. You can get that Radiohead "Planet Telex" sound that sounds like an echo spring reverb ambient tape delay wash but the initial shorter slap back helps keep it present while it decays. Although I think the song is titled that because they used the Fender Tel Ray echo reverb unit, which uses an oil can/drum mechanism to create a hybrid of reverb and echo instead of a motorized tape unit.

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stk - Wed Mar 02, 2011 8:56 pm

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You, sir, win my custom before I've even demoed this thing

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barbecutie - Wed Mar 02, 2011 9:36 pm

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Listened to the demos. They sound great!

Looking forward to this release.

BBC

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:17 pm

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I just posted a new screenshot to the original post. Here it is again, to add flair to this post:



The fullsize image can be viewed at http://www.valhalladsp.com/images/VahallaRoomScreenshot.png

The changes since I first posted the screenshot:

- DEPTH control. I and replaced the Early Gain and Late Gain knobs with a single slider I call Depth. The Depth control crossfades between the Early reverb and Late Reverb. By tweaking this slider, you can simulate room microphones moving closer or farther away from the source.

- I had a hole in the GUI after making this change, so I put a new control into the Late section called Late Cross. This controls the spread of energy from one input channel to the other, similar to the Early Cross section. Unlike the Early Cross control, the Late Cross controls the spread of energy over time. By setting Late Cross to values <1.0, the energy from one input channel will spread to the other channel at a slower and slower rate as the reverb decays. At a setting of 0.0, the Late reverb consists of two parallel mono reverbs. In-between settings can be very useful for preserving the imaging of a stereo image, while still having a realistic spread of energy between the channels over time.

I've made some progress on the preset code tonight. More work tomorrow.

Sean Costello

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mandolarian - Thu Mar 03, 2011 12:14 am

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Looking great! Thanks for the update, Sean. But why wait until tomorrow? It's crunch time - surprised the management haven't got you on the death march. Oh, wait..you'd have to hire a staff. And management. Never mind.

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valhallasound - Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:35 am

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Interesting about the crunch time. It seems to be par for the course for most high-tech businesses in this area.

Yeah, it is a fairly "streamlined" organizational structure here at Valhalla HQ.

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el-bo (formerly ebow) - Thu Mar 03, 2011 1:20 pm

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the crunch ?? you know nothing of the crunch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufP1bXKBipg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RqWkZvjzLA&feature=related

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valhallasound - Fri Mar 04, 2011 12:23 pm

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See, why aren't I watching this show?

Oh, wait - I stay up way too late programming...

I gotta finish this up so I can catch up on my Adult Swim.

Anyway, here's something new:

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1" presetName="Default" mix="0.5" predelay="0.100000001" decay="0.0190190189" HighCut="0.530201316" earlyLateMix="0.5" lateSize="0.600000024" lateCross="1" lateModRate="0.0909090936" lateModDepth="0.5" RTBassMultiply="0.333333343" RTXover="0.0909090936" RTHighMultiply="0.444444478" RTHighXover="0.530201316" earlySize="0.00900900923" earlyCross="0.100000001" earlyModRate="0.0909090936" earlyModDepth="0.5" earlySend="1" diffusion="1" type="0"/>

Super boring? Maybe. The exciting thing to me is that it replicates the "Copy to Clipboard / Paste from Clipboard" functionality of the Madrona Labs' Aalto preset browser, which I love. Randy Jones of Madrona Labs and I have done a little code swap, so it isn't just plagiarism.

I'm working on the rest of the preset browser code today, in order to have cross-platform/host presets.

Sean Costello

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Nielzie - Fri Mar 04, 2011 12:58 pm

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Really? Clever! Why reinventing the wheel if one can share each others wheels

What kind of code did he get in the swap?

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valhallasound - Fri Mar 04, 2011 1:11 pm

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I'll leave that to Randy to address at some future point, if he cares to.

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ironflippy - Fri Mar 04, 2011 2:56 pm

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It makes me incredibly happy that two of my favorite, most respected developers are sharing with each other. =D

Brilliant little thing Randy made there. Removes the need for a patch-sharing utility entirely!

Update Shimmer with it after Room gets released?

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valhallasound - Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:05 pm

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We're not sharing a ton. Just little helpful things. But yeah, I have a huge amount of admiration for Aalto. It just sounds beautiful.



It also aids in patch sharing of text files under the hood.



I've certainly thought along such lines. I'd need to make sure that it doesn't crash existing projects, and figure out how it will interface with the prior preset mechanism.

Sean Costello

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mooter - Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:33 pm

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Only a Vatican Assassin could be Valhalla.

After hearing the slutz demos I'm hoping it's not *too* subtle, but I have faith in your judgement.

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valhallasound - Fri Mar 04, 2011 4:58 pm

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Well, when you turn the decay up to 100 seconds, and turn up the modulation depth, things get considerably less subtle.

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jonahs - Fri Mar 04, 2011 8:50 pm

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Cool about the preset format! Yay for human readability. I'm working on an intelligent randomizer for Aaalto... somewhat frustratingly slowly because I have a lot to learn to give it enough functionality to be useful, but I'm making progress. This is even more motivation to make it work! It won't be a problem to make it work for ValhallaRoom too though. I have a feeling if VahallaShimmer gets the same preset system it will be even more useful because it feels like there are many "hidden" sounds in it.

Anyway, ValhallaRoom sounds good. I'd like to hear it on some simple sinewaves, etc., but I can wait for the demo.

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el-bo (formerly ebow) - Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:36 am

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nothing like a bit of the ol' 'mighty boosh'

any chance of some audio demos with super long, ambient tails...i do own 'shimmer', but would also love some more options when it comes to huge ambient reverbs...currently i use spacemaster II (from reaktor) to augment my 'shimmer' sounds...would love to hear how this new plug compares....

when you have the time, of course

as for 'the boosh'...you can start here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo9NtEBLdg8

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 09, 2011 10:46 am

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Well, Shimmer will definitely be closer to Spacemaster II than either of those will be to ValhallaRoom. ValhallaShimmer and Spacemaster follow the same basic algorithm topology, but Shimmer greatly expands upon the complexity of things, and embraces the resulting artifacts. Plus, Shimmer and Spacemaster have different modulation schemes. The ValhallaRoom algorithms are far different from the Shimmer topologies.

ValhallaRoom's big tails can be more subtle than Shimmer. With Shimmer, turning down the modulation will often result in a more metallic decay, while Room can have much clearer decays without modulation. There are currently 4 reverb modes in ValhallaRoom, and each of them has a different modulation scheme, that becomes far more apparent when the decay time is cranked up:

- Large Room: "detuning" modulation, where the output is partly chorused, and the decay retains its sense of pitch without random pitch shifts.
- Medium Room (I might change the name of this one): "random" modulation.
- Bright Room: "random" modulation, but more of it. This algorithm gets the closest to the chorusing in ValhallaShimmer, but has far different attack and decay characteristics.
- Large Chamber: "detuning" modulation, but without the chorusing of the outputs. You will hear the modulation in the decay, but it is very diffuse.

As far as demo sounds, I'll see what I can do, but right now I am headed towards finalizing the release for OSX. By next week, I hope to have the plugin available for demo/sale, so you can try it out for yourself.

Sean Costello

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el-bo (formerly ebow) - Wed Mar 09, 2011 10:58 am

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gotcha

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mandolarian - Wed Mar 09, 2011 11:35 pm

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Sounds like you have your priorities straight, Sean. There was a little typo. Fixed it for you.

Since it's so tedious to write DSP code for a Roman Numeral based OS like, OSX, you might want to focus the first release on a more local Northwest glass apeture based OS. Just a thought. Coder Caveo!

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 09, 2011 11:54 pm

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Yeah, and we can thank that local purveyor of OSes for letting me go home early while interviewing for that audio gig back in 2009. If I had got that job, I wouldn't have had the time or resources to dedicate towards building my own plugin company! And the city of Seattle as a whole thanks them for contributing their huge bonuses to a select handful of people in the late 1990's and early 2000's, helping to drive the housing prices way up for us all.

Seriously, I could go on like that for a few pages. Get a few cups of coffee in me, and let the ranting BEGIN!

OSX is first because I develop my plugins in that framework. Once these are released, I will port the plugins to Windows. Honestly, it shouldn't take that long this time around - I worked out most of the bugs in the process with ValhallaShimmer.

Sean Costello

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mandolarian - Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:32 am

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Ummm...sorry about opening a caffeinated wound. But, since it's opened, I'll get the grinder going and you can fill up the leftover space between Sheen posts on the internet.

We're thrilled you got turned away from the evil empire, Redmond division. Can't imagine what would happened if you had been sucked into the campus vortex of arrogance. MS ShimmerSmith?

At least this time around we have ValhallaShimmer to fill in those excruciating minutes while waiting for the Winders version. Or do you think it might be up to an hour after the OSX release? Just need to plan our pacing and hand-wringing time.

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valhallasound - Thu Mar 10, 2011 10:26 am

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Turn the feedback gain up to 1.0, and Shimmer should still be ringing by the time I get ValhallaRoom out for Windows.



I'd say it will take closer to a week. I'll be pretty busy. The New Busy!

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/04/the_man_behind_microsofts_baff.php

I love how MS's has landed on that neon green color for their marketing. It reminds me of the state of the art plugins, circa 1999.

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mandolarian - Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:39 pm

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So, has the new busy brought a new productivity to the old release schedule?

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valhallasound - Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:48 pm

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Ironically enough, it's the opposite. I am not launching today, and it is 100% due to "the new busy." To be accurate, my wife is getting to wrap up a project for said company, which is keeping her so "the new busy" that I've had to focus energy on taking care of the kids and such. Apparently "the new busy" translates into 80 hour work weeks.

Anyway, I have taken advantage of the delayed launch to tighten up a few things. It shouldn't be long now - the wife's project wraps up at the end of the week, and we can then focus the energy on getting VRoom out the door. I'll keep you posted.

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TheoM - Mon Mar 14, 2011 4:22 pm

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Oh no!! oh well, there are more important things in life obviously, hopefully tomorrow!

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valhallasound - Tue Mar 15, 2011 7:38 pm

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Update: I have done some optimization work in the last few days. The modulation is now smoother and takes fewer cycles (even though it is doing more work). The installer has been sent out to the beta testers, and I am awaiting feedback.

I have some presets that I am happy with. I set myself the challenge of emulating some 480L and Bricasti short room and ambience presets, and got closer than I would have expected. The big long decays are sounding good as well.

The current plan is to launch for OSX on Monday. This gives the beta testers time to find any last bugs (and me time to fix them), get the installer tight, build the demo versions, and get the website revised.

While I wait for beta tester feedback, does anyone have any good dry sounds they would like to hear the reverb on?

Sean Costello

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TristezaOrange - Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:08 pm

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cool! just hurry up with the Win version too!

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kev2525 - Wed Mar 16, 2011 4:40 am

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I really liked the freq echo freeby you came out with Sean. Looking forward to checking this reverb out. It seems to have a lot of promise.

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el-bo (formerly ebow) - Wed Mar 16, 2011 4:49 am

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great plugs, great prices, great business ideals and prioritising osx.....the perfect developer

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mandolarian - Wed Mar 16, 2011 2:11 pm

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VROOM! VROOM!

I had some great dry sounds, but I left them out in the yard over night and they got soaked. Thrown them in the dryer - could be ready an hour or so.

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valhallasound - Wed Mar 16, 2011 8:42 pm

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I could respond to this, based on the rain here in Seattle, or everything being soaked in reverb because I am a reverb developer. The fact that I am typing this should tell you how seriously humor impaired right now.

Only one thing to do...JIM DANDY TO THE RESCUE!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n3NH8gSrMs

Someone asked me if VRoom (heh) can sound like this one gothy piano track they sent me, and the answer is "hell yeah." I was playing around with the Early section of VRoom the other night, running a single saw osc synth through it, and the modulation sounds very close to some string ensembles I have heard, but diffused in time. So you can control the chorusing in front of the reverb, or within the late reverb. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

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TheoM - Wed Mar 16, 2011 11:43 pm

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what is windows? screw them and give us some maclove first! hehe just kidding, but i AM looking forward to being in the mac minority for ONCE! even if just for a week or two

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valhallasound - Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:29 am

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Well, Macs may be in the minority for total computers out there, but as far as people doing audio on computers, it is about half-and-half, with maybe a very slight majority being Mac users. This is backed up by the usage patterns of my free plugin, ValhallaFreqEcho (which has large enough download numbers such that statistical anomalies are less likely), as well as discussions with other plugin developers in public and private.

For me, the Mac just happens to be the platform I develop on, do my initial audio testing on, and so forth. I do like the ability (with Soundflower) to pipe any audio source into VST/AU hosts. Xcode is not necessarily a better development environment than VisualStudio, but I am more used to Xcode's quirks at this point (except for how long builds take in Xcode as opposed to VisualStudio).

Sean Costello

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NAS - Thu Mar 17, 2011 5:34 pm

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Actually that is a total nonsense
What you mean to say is that, there tend to be slightly more mac users download yours and other peoples mac plugins than windows plugins, that has zero whatsoever to do with the numbers of people using macs for audio work
In fact it would have much more to do with less plugins being available on mac for one (Especially freebies) and also the fact that about 90+% of people making music on a PC have never visited a site to download a plugin beyond piratebay

I understand the point you are making but you did state it wrongly, now go do the windows build FFS

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valhallasound - Thu Mar 17, 2011 5:41 pm

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Are you starting to understand why I'm doing the Windows build second?

The total number of people that are using audio on either platform is something that would be impossible to prove. We could argue that the vast majority of people making audio on Windows machines are using pirated DAWs and plugins. Similarly, we could argue that there are 10s of millions of Mac users who are creating music solely within the tools that came with their Mac (i.e. GarageBand), or with the plugins that come with the DAWs they have purchased. Since none of us have the ability to prove or disprove these statements, I have no interest in engaging in such debates.

All I am interested in are users of my software that are accessing things via the official channels. In this area, OSX plugins are in the lead, with Windows being a significant enough minority to warrant attention. I'm not going to spend my time or money figuring out copy protection methods that end up penalizing the user - I'd rather spend that time creating new algorithms. However, as time is my scarcest resource, I need to allocate it with care. It makes more sense for a variety of reasons for me to release the Mac plugins as they are done, and then port to Windows.

(Note: as these projects approach completion, my caffeine blood level approaches near toxic proportions, and my crankiness tends to spike as well. I'll be more chipper in a week or two.)

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samsam - Thu Mar 17, 2011 6:16 pm

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Sean - if you can be bothered, any thoughts on this:

"With commercial plug-ins, it is very rare for the plug to be a true AU. Almost all commercial plugs use some sort of compatibility layer or wrapper to create the AU, and you are nearly always better off using the VST, given the choice between the two. " (Chris on Analog Industries blog).

This is not an attempt at trolling, it's just that the non backwards-compatible update to AD Eos AU has got me replacing it with the VST in all my tunes and has got me thinking about the bigger picture of VST v. AU (I use Live, so free choice as to which format I use).

If you can't be arsed to get into a public debate, no worries, just interested

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valhallasound - Thu Mar 17, 2011 6:33 pm

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I think that most commercial cross-platform plugins do use a wrapper layer. In my case, I use Juce. Unlike the Symbiosis wrapper that Chris is currently using (which is supposed to be quite nice from all that I have heard), the Juce plugins don't start life as a VST, or AU or RTAS. There is a specific Juce plugin format, that is then wrapped into the other plugin formats.

My plugins actually start life as a generic DSP format, which I then wrap into whatever format I need. Generally speaking, I start work with a GUI-less AU or VST, which is wrapped around my module-format, and I then port this to Juce when I am further along in the development phase.

So, in my Juce-based world, it isn't true that VSTs have an advantage over AU.

What is true is that the VST 2.4 specification is the lowest common denominator in the current audio scene. The Audio Unit specification, in theory, allows for many features that aren't possible in VST 2.4. However, I agree with Chris in that Audio Units are VERY poorly documented by Apple. So there isn't a lot of incentive to find out what the special AU features are and take advantage of them. Plus, Apple produces the sketchiest AU host out there, Logic (from a developer's perspective, as it turns up the majority of bugs), so it is debatable about how closely they follow their own standards.



In general, I think that Audio Damage's move to the Symbiosis framework is a good one. I know of other plugin developers that pay far less attention to backwards compatibility, so Chris' decision to make a change that breaks preset compatibility is something that obviously wasn't taken lightly.



Chris Randall and I give each other a hard time via Twitter, so this is fairly softball.

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mandolarian - Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:44 pm

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Ok. You have your Mactotal loyalty. We Winders folks understand that.

But, let's just say, we Winders folks, also appreciate that good dark-roast caffeine at near toxic levels isn't cheap. And let's say we would pay DOUBLE the Mac-rate to assist you in getting fully toxified if it would push up the Winders release. Would that help with your scariest resource allocation strategy?

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samsam - Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:40 pm

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Thanks for the reply Sean, interesting (for me) stuff.

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b-pole - Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:32 am

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TheoM - Sun Mar 20, 2011 7:03 am

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any news? still on target for monday? I am really excited to test this one.

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SuperFly76 - Sun Mar 20, 2011 7:19 am

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I'm looking forward to the windows release!

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