ValhallaRoom 1.5.1 Released. New Electric Blue GUI

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[ironflippy]

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?

[valhallasound]

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.

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.

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.

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

[mandolarian]

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?

[Igro]

This reverb I'm really waiting...

[valhallasound]

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?

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

[echopark]

The rest of the plugin/audio code seems pretty tight at this point.

So let us hear some audio examples !!

[valhallasound]

The rest of the plugin/audio code seems pretty tight at this point.

So let us hear some audio examples !!

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-prod ... ost6391702

[mandolarian]

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?

[valhallasound]

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.

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...

[mandolarian]

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...

[ironflippy]

The rest of the plugin/audio code seems pretty tight at this point.

So let us hear some audio examples !!

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-prod ... ost6391702

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

[valhallasound]

Why are you only asking $50 for this?

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

[mandolarian]

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?

[A.M. Gold]

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.