recommend me a reverb as good as valhalla

[bmanic]

I just demoed the Magix VariVerb again (I assume the core algorithms haven't changed since VariVerb original).. and I have to say that I am almost completely blown away, again!

I do remember liking it a lot in the past but the demo was so buggy that I simply didn't have the courage to invest in it.

Unfortunately I still get "buggy" vibes from this plugin. It also installs a TON of .dll files that are very peculiarly named, causing havoc in the Reaper plugin list. But man.. the sound quality and musicality of this reverb absolutely rivals anything and everything else! It's absolutely stunningly good! The only weak algorithm is the spring reverb which isn't convincing at all. But all the others are very nice. Especially the HQ algorithms. Stunningly good! I could not get them to sound bad, no matter how hard I tried.

If they could just make the damn install more intelligent (putting the necessary surplus .dll files in a separate folder, away from the VstPlugins folder!) and fix the obvious bugs it has (a lot of people have trouble running it at all!) then this one would be one of the greats.

Will be following the updates of this one very carefully.

Stunning reverb!

Cheers!
bManic

[AC222]

AC22 I don't use reason at all anymore I use logic on a Mac. I always did do that except I had a small break with reason. Was a mistake, and just a memory now.

The reason I am investigating windows hosts is for the first time in 5 years I'm questioning the Mac platform as are many really. It's about the direction of the OS and the hardware also. They seem to be disinterested in pro users.

This is another reason why I didn't buy any of the magic plugins. If for some reason I go into samp pro (whatever the flagship is) ill have them all anyway.

Plus they clearly state they do not allow resale of their individually available fx bundles, although they do allow resale of samplitude.

Ya, I've heard a lot of people saying how disappointed Mac is with development of desktop platforms and things of that nature.

Just be aware though that one of the things Magix did was change the packaging around to make the "Pro" version cheaper but include less so Vandal and Ammunition got axed from that but I think Variverb is included. The highest version of Samplitude before you go to Sequoia is Pro X and that includes everything from Vandal to Ammunition to the full Magix (formerly Yellow Tools) Independence sampler.

A lot of Magix users were pissed because what ended up happening was cheaper entry for new users for the Pro version but more expensive upgrades for existing users and losing some of the extras they had with the previous Pro version unless they upgraded to Pro X suite. So although I am a huge fan of Samplitude, those are some things to be aware of.

And thanks for adding more color BManic on the variverb. Always good to get more perspective.

If you have any other questions about Samplitude, don't be shy, Theo!

AC

[themossinator]

Its UAD only (i think??) but the EMT140 is something else

[valhallasound]

So, the #1 album on the Billboard charts this week is "saturated" with Valhalla DSP plugins. So I've got that goin' for me. Which is nice.

Sean Costello

Damn, there goes the $50 price point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVwh-H3uOFo

[Cimbasso]

My favorites are ValhallaVintageVerb and B2. The only reason I haven't bought B2 yet is because it uses way too much CPU. It sounds amazing. 2Caudio guys could learn a thing or two from Mr. Costello when it comes to CPU optimization without compromising sound quality.

[Echoes in the Attic]

My favorites are ValhallaVintageVerb and B2. The only reason I haven't bought B2 yet is because it uses way too much CPU. It sounds amazing.

Same here. Except I also have Aether. So that and the fact that I don't want to have too many reverbs is why I haven't bought B2, but it does sound excellent, and is very versatile. Though I barely remember what Aether sounds like I've been waiting so long for the 64bit. But VVV can really do some similar things with almost no CPU. The NOW mode with some of the algos are just crystal clear, which is something I often associate with 2caudio reverbs. ValhallaRoom on the other hand I'm finding less use for. I have a harder time getting it to sound how I want. I always find it a bit thick, which can be good for huge lush verbs, but I find I like to use VVV for that now too. Maybe it's my fault and I need to figure out the VRoom controls better or notch out some mids. I still think it's great but I find the sound I'm looking for much faster with VVV or B2 (demo). I'm very tempted to get B2 but I need to restrain myself until Aether is 64bit so I can re-familiarize myself with that.

Oh and the NI RC-24 and 48 are beauties too.

[Andrew Souter]

My favorites are ValhallaVintageVerb and B2. The only reason I haven't bought B2 yet is because it uses way too much CPU. It sounds amazing. 2Caudio guys could learn a thing or two from Mr. Costello when it comes to CPU optimization without compromising sound quality.

Same here. Except I also have Aether. So that and the fact that I don't want to have too many reverbs is why I haven't bought B2, but it does sound excellent, and is very versatile. Though I barely remember what Aether sounds like I've been waiting so long for the 64bit. But VVV can really do some similar things with almost no CPU. The NOW mode with some of the algos are just crystal clear, which is something I often associate with 2caudio reverbs. ValhallaRoom on the other hand I'm finding less use for. I have a harder time getting it to sound how I want. I always find it a bit thick, which can be good for huge lush verbs, but I find I like to use VVV for that now too. Maybe it's my fault and I need to figure out the VRoom controls better or notch out some mids. I still think it's great but I find the sound I'm looking for much faster with VVV or B2 (demo). I'm very tempted to get B2 but I need to restrain myself until Aether is 64bit so I can re-familiarize myself with that.

Oh and the NI RC-24 and 48 are beauties too.

A couple notes:

We consider B2 to be a modular spatial FX processor. Yes, it does amazing reverb as one of it's primary uses, but it also does many other things. Think of it as reverb, delay, ambience, chorus, spatial processing (M-S), distortion (attitude), and dynamics. All with two copies of each that can be fed into each other. The results can get incredibly diverse. We are doing two preset expansions for it currently. Den, known for his awesome Aether presets, is making one, and I am making one. I intend to engage some other people as well for more. B2 is a "spatial synthesizer" You can program it to be whatever you want it to be. IMHO, and I do have all current generation of competitive products, there is simply nothing else like it. I hope that does not sound arrogant--I have a lot of respect for everyone else's work, but I sincerely believe we have packed a TON of goodness into B2, and I have yet to see a single product that can cover all the ground that it does as well as it does.

Regarding technical audio quality issues such as SNR, artifacts, etc. we are also still pretty much unique. To hear for yourself pass high frequency (or mid for that matter) into your verb. Crank Mod Depth and Mod Rate. Make Time Large, and Size Small to make matters worse. You will hear what occurs. Once you know what to listen for, you are likely to be able to spot such things on normal musical signals as well. Maybe you like retro dirt/noise/artifacts/vibe. That is a valid creative decision. But if you want perfect fidelity unfortunately it takes much more complicated math.

Regarding CPU usage, B2 is a modular beast. It can get very hungry. It is true. We don't say otherwise. But B2 is modular. The highest settings compared to the lowest settings are more than 100 times as CPU intensive . ONE HUNDRED!! (prob more like 150 actually!) The lowest settings are below compeitors. (they are not sufficent for high quality reverb presets--they are however very well suited for delay FX). My partner Denis is an expert in optimization. He codes all important parts of our algs in assembly/SSE. We take optimization very seriously. However if our algs by design have 50x the number of filters as some other products and run at 2x or 4x OS as compared to 1/2x OS etc. etc. of course they will use more CPU power. You can only cheat the laws of math/physics so much... Put simply our algs are based on very modern ideas, they attempt to get close to what might happen in a real/analog space (even for abstract spaces that don't really exist). An M7 has been said to loosely require a full core of today's CPUs resources. We aspire towards this level of perfection. It simply requires significant CPU resources to achieve. Later this summer we are looking at doing another round of optimizations to all of our algs. These optimizations will require a recent CPU however as we intend to use a new instruction set called AVX.

Aether is about done.

Then a non-reverb product that we have been holding onto forever now that I am REALLY excited about...

[PatchAdamz]

My favorites are ValhallaVintageVerb and B2. The only reason I haven't bought B2 yet is because it uses way too much CPU. It sounds amazing. 2Caudio guys could learn a thing or two from Mr. Costello when it comes to CPU optimization without compromising sound quality.

B2 is THE closest I have heard to hardware.

It does use some CPU but it is the reverb of the near future.

When used correctly, it is one very impressive verb.

[PatchAdamz]

I just demoed the Magix VariVerb again (I assume the core algorithms haven't changed since VariVerb original).. and I have to say that I am almost completely blown away, again!

Unfortunately I still get "buggy" vibes from this plugin.
bManic

I have to agree, it does sound great.
Better then I remember from demoing the previous version.

I am surprised its not mentioned more often.

[valhallasound]

VVV can really do some similar things with almost no CPU. The NOW mode with some of the algos are just crystal clear, which is something I often associate with 2caudio reverbs.

The ValhallaVintageVerb algorithms are largely based on Lexicon algorithms from the 1970s and 1980s. These algorithms are very efficient, because they HAD to be efficient back in the 1970s and 1980s. There weren't many cycles to work with, the multiplier had poor precision, there wasn't that much RAM, and so on. David Griesinger and the rest of the Lexicon crew ended up developing algorithm topologies that got the most "bang for the buck" given the limitations.

The VVV NOW mode uses delay interpolation that sounds "clear" without being particularly high CPU. The techniques are fairly well known in the industry, but I use a few tricks to reduce the noise. The rest of the artifacts in the 1970s and 1980s modes are actually added on to the base algorithms, so the "default" state of the VeeThree algorithms is fairly clear. I use filter designs in VeeThree that don't require high precision math to sound clean, and have an "analog" frequency response at all cutoff settings. Future modes might include filters with a more "digital" frequency response, as this might have been part of the sound of the older hardware reverbs (i.e. strange warping as the filter cutoff approaches Nyquist or DC).

In general, the "clean" versus "dirty" aspects of my plugins is a conscious choice. One of the things I loved about the older reverb algorithm designs is how they would tune their algorithms around the limitations they had. For example, the older algorithms would use noisy linear interpolation, but in locations where the high frequency loss actually BENEFITED the overall sound by taming some metallic resonances.

I look at these various signal processing artifacts as tools in the toolbox, to be combined as needed to get the desired sound. ValhallaRoom and ValhallaVintageVerb are plugins where I use both clean and dirty DSP, often within the same algorithm. When it comes right down to it, this stuff isn't lab equipment, and we use our ears to judge the results, not spectrograms. My approach to DSP is very non-teleological.

ValhallaRoom on the other hand I'm finding less use for. I have a harder time getting it to sound how I want. I always find it a bit thick, which can be good for huge lush verbs, but I find I like to use VVV for that now too. Maybe it's my fault and I need to figure out the VRoom controls better or notch out some mids.

I've been thinking about the differences between VRoom and VintageVerb lately. The VRoom algorithms are more complicated than VintageVerb, and use a variety of "modern" topologies. The "thick" sound of VRoom, versus the "clear" sound of VintageVerb, probably has more to do with some fundamental differences of the reverb topologies, versus any aesthetic choices I made during the design process. In the next several months, I want to reflect on why these topologies have fundamental sonic differences, from the perspective of psychoacoutics as well as DSP theory. Hopefully this will lead to some cool extensions of the various topologies. I've been programming reverbs since 1999, and I'm still learning stuff every day.

Oh and the NI RC-24 and 48 are beauties too.

I love the control layout of those plugins. Especially the RC24. Super easy to use. Minimalism is an aesthetic that I can get behind. It takes a fair amount of work to come up with a small yet powerful set of parameters - this was one of my big goals with ValhallaVintageVerb.

Sean Costello

[Michael Carnes]

NIce explanation, Sean!

[ObsoleteAcc99]

My favorites are ValhallaVintageVerb and B2. The only reason I haven't bought B2 yet is because it uses way too much CPU. It sounds amazing. 2Caudio guys could learn a thing or two from Mr. Costello when it comes to CPU optimization without compromising sound quality.

B2 is THE closest I have heard to hardware.

It does use some CPU but it is the reverb of the near future.

When used correctly, it is one very impressive verb.

You recon it's even better than the exponential? I find that hard to believe

[ObsoleteAcc99]

I just demoed the Magix VariVerb again (I assume the core algorithms haven't changed since VariVerb original).. and I have to say that I am almost completely blown away, again!

Unfortunately I still get "buggy" vibes from this plugin.
bManic

I have to agree, it does sound great.
Better then I remember from demoing the previous version.

I am surprised its not mentioned more often.

Well, FWIW, i mentioned it many times over the years, lusting after it, for it's natural ness, but i was on mac, and until now could not use it, but i always used to throw in a bitch about how many windows customers said it was a nightmare to use stability wise, and i kept on giving the dev a hard time about fixing it. The mac version besides the demonstration start up screen, seems bug free on AU at least.

The problem is for alot of us, we have spent tons of money on other verbs over the years whilst variverb was in stasis.

It's fantastic though, no question.

With the 2 for 2 deal currently on, it is likely i will buy the ammunition bundle and then choose variverb as my freebie. (or vandal, need to demo more)

I am a bit of an addict to transient designers and the am pulse ADDS attack better than any single TD plugin i have ever heard in my life, including spl hardware! It's *incredible* how tight and punchy it is and doesn't make things uber clicky like spl does.

For all other TD tasks, my current tools are just as good and maybe a tad better, but the am pulse is worth it to add the attack. That whole bundle is insanely good, TBH...

[valhallasound]

The problem is for alot of us, we have spent tons of money on other verbs over the years whilst variverb was in stasis.

It's fantastic though, no question.

Doesn't the Variverb designer work for U-He nowadays? I gotta keep track of the competition...

Sean Costello

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Sascha Evermeister, certainly does He is a genius, and i don't mean just reverb. his other suff is even more impressive.