ValhallaRoom 1.5.1 Released. New Electric Blue GUI

[kmonkey]

It looks INCREDIBLE.

I am really big fan of Alien movies (well the old ones). I just watched first one and have plan to watch few of them before movie is in cinema. I just hope they won't make it bad. Yes trailers looks promising but i learned that you can't judge movie by trailer. Then again...it's Ridley Scott..

Waiting...

[Kontrast13]

Ahhh! ValhallaNext with Blade Runner names... just what type of monster will this be? ;P

[valhallasound]

Ahhh! ValhallaNext with Blade Runner names... just what type of monster will this be? ;P

I wouldn't read too much into the names. I had about 6 different "next" algorithms when I was working on the 1.1.0 update, and they all had the LV-426 name on the GUI, with the internal names reflecting the actual architecture used.

Plus, I don't know if "Deckard" and "Pris" have the same romance as "Nostromo" and "Narcissus."

Sean Costello

[Kontrast13]

My imagination got carried away when I heard the two terms put together together... sleek, cyberpunk, synthetic with crazy modulation.

Albeit the specific names may not be as pretty, a mode simply called 'Blade Runner' would still be pretty smooth

Gotta say though, ValhallaNext is a strangely cool name. It makes me feel like there's going to be something entirely specific and unique to it. Maybe it's just me though, haha

[lionscub68]

[valhallasound]

Heh.

See, that's why "ValhallaNext" is the internal nickname of whatever I am working on for the next plugin, as opposed to, y'know, a REAL name.

During my sophomore year of college, my roommate got one of the very first NeXT cubes. He was a "campus rep" for NeXT. This didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time, but it turns out that he was a VERY early employee of Steve Jobs at NeXT computers, and had some interesting stories about working with Jobs.

Anyway, the NeXT was a thing of beauty in 1989. Plus, it had built-in digital audio, and a blazingly fast 25 MHz Motorola DSP. Which I quickly pushed to the point of choking during my early computer music experiments on that machine.

Sean Costello

[antithesist]

I wanted one of those so bad, though I suppose I'm glad now that I couldn't afford it at the time. I continued plodding along with a dual floppy Mac SE (no hard drive/not SE30) that a friend got for me at the developer price of a mere $1700 a couple years prior. I ran Turbosynth, Softsynth, Sound Designer, M, Jam Factory, Music Mouse and even Soundhack 0.1. The MIDI pooped in and out of actual little tan Apple ADB interface. I used to leave it rendering for days on a UPS, all often for some integer hundreds of milliseconds of sound. Good times... not! Exciting though, even in retrospect. I'm trying to think of something on-topic to tie that into, but I'm at a loss. Oh, Turbosynth has a diffusion module and I made something that was supposed to be like a reverb only it wasn't. How's that? I'll probably need a hall pass to go with that (ugh, get it? sorry).

[valhallasound]

I wanted one of those so bad, though I suppose I'm glad now that I couldn't afford it at the time. I continued plodding along with a dual floppy Mac SE (no hard drive/not SE30) that a friend got for me at the developer price of a mere $1700 a couple years prior. I ran Turbosynth, Softsynth, Sound Designer, M, Jam Factory, Music Mouse and even Soundhack 0.1. The MIDI pooped in and out of actual little tan Apple ADB interface. I used to leave it rendering for days on a UPS, all often for some integer hundreds of milliseconds of sound. Good times... not! Exciting though, even in retrospect. I'm trying to think of something on-topic to tie that into, but I'm at a loss. Oh, Turbosynth has a diffusion module and I made something that was supposed to like a reverb only it wasn't. How's that?

That's good enough for me. I really wanted an SE/30 back then, but couldn't afford one.

If anyone has an SE/30 with a Digidesign Audiomedia card, you could run the Reverb program from Bill Gardner:

http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~billg/projects.html

The algorithms published by Gardner make me think that he had been peeking into some "classic" reverbs at a previous job. A few of the algorithms look like they share some DNA with at least one 1970's reverb box.

For that matter, the RMX16 I was looking at last week seems to share some similarities with the Lexicon 224. And Keith Barr talked about coming up with his reverb topologies by getting his hands on a 224, and playing with the controls until he got an idea of how it worked. And the Constant Density Plate in the original 224 shares the initial echo pattern with the EMT250, even though they use somewhat different algorithms. It looks like the tradition of reverb developers peeking into other developer's boxes dates back to the late 1970's - i.e. the dawn of commercial digital reverbs.

I'll probably need a hall pass too (ugh, get it, sorry).

I'm trying to make an allpass / hall pass joke, but I am failing to come up with anything remotely funny.

Sean Costello

[@midnight]

Let me tell you about my mother.

[valhallasound]

For those of us watching at home, this rare glimpse behind the DSP developer strategy curtain, confirms our worst fears: development and release of our beloved plugins is at the mercy of Hollywood's development and release schedule. In the future, I will be watching each episode of ET for nuanced messages and secret DSP implications.

What, are you implying that I just wasted an hour looking up that cobra alien thing from the latest Prometheus preview? HOW DARE YOU, SIR!

Honestly, I'm not really a big film buff anymore. I used to be into actual cinema, like Tarkovsky and Herzog and that sort of stuff, but I've seen all those movies. Nowadays, the household is saturated with My Little Pony ephemera (for my daughters - I'm Pony+, but not exactly a "brony"). But Ridley Scott science fiction films grab my attention. Especially since this is only the 3rd one ever.

Meanwhile, I am currently working on experiments with a new modulation scheme, that is best explained in space terms. I'm not sure what to name it yet. I should probably wait until I've tested it, and can tell whether it is good, bad, or induces vertigo and nausea within 20 seconds. I'm not joking about the latter.

Sean Costello

[ESPECTRO]

Keep up the fantastic work. Loving V-Room - gonna pick up Ubermod next!

[lionscub68]

Sean -
I'll give you a dollar or two, if you update Shimmer with more presets and a similar GUI the the rest of the Valhalla series.

[valhallasound]

Sean -
I'll give you a dollar or two, if you update Shimmer with more presets and a similar GUI the the rest of the Valhalla series.

TWO DOLLARS??? For several weeks of work? WHERE DO I SIGN UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Anyway, something along these lines is definitely on the 2012 calendar for Valhalla DSP.

I don't think I will change the look of Shimmer per se, as I like the visuals of it, and they actually kind of match with the sound of the algorithm. Shimmer is minimal, like the later plugins, and uses Futura, which is becoming the Valhalla DSP look. Nothing against Univers, Akzidenz Grotesk, or even the humble Arial I used in FreqEcho, as these Helvetica-ish fonts are classics in the design field, but Futura is a bit more distinctive. So I would probably change the fonts in ValhallaFreqEcho to bring it into line with the rest of the products, before I made any major changes to the Shimmer appearance.

I do plan on adding resizing to the Shimmer GUI, and putting the cross-platform preset mechanism in there. I will probably do this after the next plugin comes out. At some point, I need to update all the plugins with the AAX format, and I'd rather roll all the Shimmer changes into the next *necessary* release.

Sean Costello

[metalifuxx]

I will probably do this after the next plugin comes out.

Sean Costello

Please do a delay plugin similiar to the ease of use of Soundtoys Echoboy, it doesn't even have to include the crystal pitch reverse thing (although it would be cool if it did too, in a simple to understand way). I know Ubermod is basically a modulated tweaker's delay, but when using the demo, it's a little difficult to dial in a delay that reacted the way I was expecting. Keep the basic delay controls, but offer the different style/tweak templates kind of like soundtoys/ubermod does. The Strymon Timeline pedal comes to mind as well, although I have never used one, it looks like it's relatively easy to dial in a good high quality delay sound really quickly.

Any future considerations on say Valhalla DSPedals? Seems there are a few pedal companies/guys in the Portland area that are melding analog and dsp combined stomp box pedals.

[hibidy]

Let me tell you about my mother.

haha!