Which Valhalla reverb is best suited for Ambient music?

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justin3am wrote:I'll throw Audio Damage's Eos into the ring as well. The algorithms for that plug-in were also developed by Sean and it is fantastic for big ambient washes.
Woah, I had no idea - From looking at the GUI is this sort of an early version of Valhalla Plate ?

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Last edited by Obsolete317542 on Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Eclectus wrote: ...can be really dreamy, creamy, silky and soft as satin.
Sounds like you'er talking about my girlfriend's panties! :hyper:

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For "classic" ambient, Eno style : Shimmer without any doubt.

For more "luxurious" and wild style : Ubermod. Can do a lot of other things too. By far, my preferred one... :party:

For more subtle and not so obvious/crazy soundscapes : Vintage Verb.
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Neon Breath wrote:But...But... While we’re there, if you really want to dive into the quintessence of the reverb for ambient and such atmospheric stuff, Zynaptiq Adaptiverb is the way to go. It’s totally something else with no equal. Same goes for the wallet and the GPU though, be prepare to break both while all the Valhalla reverbs are way easier on the GPU and your bank account. The ultimate combo is the use of both, which is something I started to experiment lately. Crazy & unique atmospheres.
This is on my list of must haves, I regret passing on it this past Christmas when they had a sale.

At any rate, as long as we're talking about reverb in general, I don't think that you can have just one.

Some of my favorites:

CloudSeed: This is free, it is stable for me, it's open source.

https://github.com/ValdemarOrn/CloudSeed

Eventide Blackhole: I use this a lot, I think that it's a must have.

Eventide Ultrareverb: This is a really flexible reverb with built in compression and EQ. I'm actually surprised at how much I use it, but, the multiple EQs in different parts of the reverb seem to make quite a bit of difference in shaping subtle reverb tones.

Ircam Verb3: Expensive but super subtle and smooth. I can't get this kind of sound out of anything else that I have. If you want great spaces but you don't want it to sound like it's lost in reverb, this is a great tool for that.

Reverberate 2: My favorite IR reverb by far.

Reaktor SpaceMaster 2: Yes it's dated, but, it's Reaktor. Really I use my own modifications of this about as much as I use the original. It was fairly easy to create a variant of this that does the shimmer effect. Reaktor is an essential tool for ambient IMNSHO, YMMV!

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+1000 on Zynaptiq Adaptiverb. Beyond a doubt.
If not, then Eventide Blackhole.
If not, then Valhalla Übermod.

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ghettosynth wrote: Reaktor SpaceMaster 2: Yes it's dated, but, it's Reaktor. Really I use my own modifications of this about as much as I use the original. It was fairly easy to create a variant of this that does the shimmer effect. Reaktor is an essential tool for ambient IMNSHO, YMMV!

If you have Reaktor, don't forget Boscomac's Stellar. It's free for Reaktor and a great alternative to Shimmer.

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All of the Valhalla reverbs can get into the "unrealistically huge" reverb length, so theoretically any of them are good for ambient music. Every one of the plugins would have been tested with analog synths and guitars feeding the inputs, and turning these into drones of sound.

A few of my own impressions on the Valhalla plugins, in chronological release order:

- ValhallaShimmer: Pretty much built from the ground up for ambient work. Not good for "realistic" reverbs, and never intended to make real reverbs. Just big clouds of sound, pitch shifted ambiences, that sort of thing. Shimmer has the unique characteristic of sounding really good when cascading multiple stereo instances - the sound gets lusher and longer, instead of more colored and metallic.

- ValhallaRoom: Ambient, realistic, subtle, bombastic, what have you. Different sound than Shimmer.

- ValhallaÜberMod: Can do ambient reverbs, as well as sparse multitap delays, diffuse delays, and sounds that blur the space between delays and reverb. Nice if you want some chunkier textures in your ambiences.

- ValhallaVintageVerb: Yep. Does ambient. It has several takes on the classic "Concert Hall" reverb, that was used in tons of "old school" 70s/80s ambient music. Lots of modulation on tap.

- ValhallaPlate: It can do ambient. The longer decays were designed to sound like a physical plate reverb, with unnaturally long decays. Which is a weird concept, in that the physics of plates don't actually ALLOW super long decays. So I had to imagine what this would sound like. The result is a reverb where the mid range decays away at a long rate, the low frequencies decay away at a HUGE rate, and the high frequencies gracefully duck out of the way fairly quickly.

If I had to pick 2 of the plugins for dedicated ambient purposes, I'd pick ValhallaShimmer and ValhallaÜberMod. However, all of the plugins will allow you to make massive decaying sounds.

Sean Costello

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My main area of work is in the old-school, long-form ambient. I have found I use Valhalla plugs in almost every single piece.

If I ever had to replace the Valhalla offerings over again, I'd start with VVV and UberMod.

VVV: you'll have a useful, (adjustably) colorful reverb with a wide variety of algorithms. This over getting VRoom first for it's color (both sound-wise and GUI-hehe).

UberMod: I use a lot of delay in my work and this one is really flexible and can be used as a chorus, flanger, reverse reverb, tape delay emu, and so-on. It's awesome.

Not that Shimmer is just a one-trick pony, but I found using Shimmer more subtly is best as it is sort of a scene-stealer.

Of course there is the free Freqecho, and I think you still get SpaceModulator once you become a customer.
ariston wrote:One of ambient's most awful cliches: drown it in reverb. It's easy to do, glosses over poor playing, and makes any noise sound good. Come to think of it, reverb is to ambient as mayonnaise is to food.

Seriously: doesn't it depend on the type of ambient that you're envisioning? For some things, Room is better. For others, Vintage. For that instant Enofication, Shimmer. And some forms of ambient use no reverb at all (gasp!).
Reverb is certainly one of the key effects found in most all ambient styles, much like distortion would be in metal. Both can be overdone and cover a bit for loose craftsmanship (I will admit to using reverb's glowing goodness to shine up my own lack of musicianship), but are arguably integral to each the genre.

I'd agree they type of ambient would also dictate which plugs would be the most useful.

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hey man do you want IR files of valhall room
IR specs
1)length-10sec
2)no additional low pass or high pass on the reverbs(total raw IR with all the algorithm)
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Apratim wrote:hey man do you want IR files of valhall room
IR specs
1)length-10sec
2)no additional low pass or high pass on the reverbs(total raw IR with all the algorithm)
Nah, I'm good.

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Fleer wrote:+1000 on Zynaptiq Adaptiverb. Beyond a doubt.
If not, then Eventide Blackhole.
If not, then Valhalla Übermod.
I cant get the demo to work of Adaptiverb. It doesn't show in Ableton so I cant judge how good it is yet but it seems in some ways to be limited for ambience music.
For example you cant take out the dry signal completely which means you cant get a total wash effect for drones (this is what Ive seen on youtube anyway).
It's really expensive and I dont see how it differs from any diffusion reverb other than it claims to be not as muddy....well if you're concerned about mud there are ways you can fix this with cheaper reverbs like resampling or ducking for example. I dont understand also why there's a key tuner in it, everything you play is gonna be in the same key anyway. But having said that I haven't tried it yet.

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Yup - at least Shimmer and UberMod if you can't get all of 'em.

FFS I am so still in love with UberMod. I think it's up there near the top of my little list of favorite things to do to sound...

I too tried Adaptiverb. Sounds f**king great. Sounds... just f**king fantastic. That's the one "pro" Adaptiverb has going for it.

The cons:
Latency makes it unusable (I prefer to play in parts in real time, and I don't have a weak machine either).
It's stupid expensive.

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