Valhalla Room vs Vintage Verb

[kritikon]

I'll add that I came at it from a more hw background. Was used to fairly decent units and multiFX but with the odd dedicated reverb. VV ended up feeling like replacing my old Lexicon. Similar sound style, similar feel to the choices it gives. Yeah you can get specific emus in sw but for fx that feels to me more like obsessionalism. It feels like VV gives me a Lexicon box inside my laptop. Alongside VDelay I'm not sure I would even use a Lexicon unit again given the choice...actually I did that. Still got one but the hw route for fx just seems redundant now. It's in the rack on the desk unused...may as well take it out and put in storage.

[Bombadil]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I want a verb that can place real instruments, like guitars, vocals, percussion, into good-sounding spaces. That would seem to point to VRoom?

[jens]

Personally I would recommend using Palace instead. I think this is the pinnacle of Sean's work so far and also one of THE pinnacles of digital reverb in general. It's based on/ inspired by the Yardstick, but vastly more versatile and also potentionally better sounding in my opinion.

In fact I use almost nothing else than Palace and Sonsig at the moment.

[Ploki]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I want a verb that can place real instruments, like guitars, vocals, percussion, into good-sounding spaces. That would seem to point to VRoom?

I’d say so yes

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Personally I would recommend using Palace instead. I think this is the pinnacle of Sean's work so far and also one of THE pinnacles of digital reverb in general. It's based on/ inspired by the Yardstick, but vastly more versatile and also potentionally better sounding in my opinion.

In fact I use almost nothing else than Palace and Sonsig at the moment.

Agree. That Palace algorithm in VVV is really nice. It can do great small rooms and massive halls.

[FrettedSynth]

For acoustic instruments "clean guitar, piano etc" Room is really nice. Not that Vintage is bad at them, just different. Have both and would not part with either. Personal opinion.

[DMG68]

I use Room more, like way more, but that’s just me. Have to check out the newer algos in VVV more though. Download and demo to see what works for you.

[_leras]

Room only covers you for clean/modern spaces.

So you're basically 12 years late with that post.

Ya, but he's right though.

Room is generally a cleaner, slightly harder edged room recreation. Good for snares and perhaps drum kits, or other things where you want a smaller room type reverb.

Vintage has some smoother more ethereal spaces, getting to that Lexicon type sounds. It's definitely more flexible as it has a wider range of algorithms. Maybe better where you want larger spaces and longer reverbs.

[El°HYM]

Room has Decay up to 100 seconds.

[Danno]

Ya, I actually use Room for medium-big reverbs. EOS for massive spaces. For ambient/room spaces, I think I have a small room setting in RC24 (NI)

This is my Cubase template session that I've had going for 3 years now.. maybe I should switch it up and try using Room for smaller spaces.

[skarvika]

I like Room more for putting thick lush reverbs on synths. I went for NI Raum in the end though, but you really can't go wrong with VR either.

[bagpipe200]

Did you get all the info from the Valhalla website? I had a look on there at Vintage Verb but it doesn't have the level of detail you have here.

From the blurb on the Valhalla site:

"Dark Room: A departure from the high fidelity path taken by the original 4 reverb modes in ValhallaRoom. It is deliberately low-fi, with noisy interpolation, no high frequencies above 11kHz..."

Yes, and besides the three "Dark"-modes there's also:

- Two new reverb modes: Nostromo and Narcissus

- Both reverb modes are "dark," and have the features/quirks of older reverbs (i.e. no high frequency content above 11 kHz, sparser initial echo density, somewhat noisier modulation)
- Nostromo is designed for HUGE, expansive spaces.
- Narcissus is "smaller," but still sounds big. It is also the lightest on the CPU of all the ValhallaRoom algorithms.


A summary of the two new reverb modes, Nostromo and Narcissus: For starters, they are both dark. In some ways, they are closest to Dark Room, in that they have similar filtering, use random modulation (as opposed to detuning modulation), deliberately noisy delay line interpolation, and a sparser early echo density, that can be transformed into a properly dense reverb with a wide spatial image by setting Early Send to 1.0 and Early Size to >100 msec.

The big difference between Nostromo/Narcissus and Dark Room is how the echo density builds over time. Dark Room starts off pretty sparse, but then builds rapidly. Nostromo and Narcissus have a slower build at a similar setting of Late Size. The slower build also results in lower CPU, but I did it more for the sonic results than CPU usage.

Nostromo is the biggest of all the reverbs in ValhallaRoom, in term of resonance density, as well as the perceived distance of the walls from each other. Dark Chamber and Dark Space have similar resonance density, but a much higher initial echo density, which implies walls that are closer together - think a shoebox-shaped space, or a large room with lots of clutter in it. Nostromo has a very low initial echo density, that builds slowly over time. At high settings of Late Size, you can clearly hear discrete echoes. When I originally built ValhallaRoom, I wanted to avoid these echoes at all cost - but after I got my PCM70 and played with high Definition settings in the Concert Hall algorithm, I realized how a sparse echo density can work spacey wonders with the right input source.

Narcissus doesn't sound nearly as big. That's because it is essentially 1/2 of Nostromo, with the delays 1/2 as long. So the echo density builds quicker, and the modulation is more dramatic. It still sounds BIG for a reverb, but small compared to Nostromo. Narcissus is also the lowest CPU mode in ValhallaRoom, by a long shot. For anyone who wished that ValhallaRoom used less CPU, well, here's the reverb mode to try.

To my surprise, the reduction in complexity for Narcissus resulted in a reverb mode that still sounds great, especially with larger Late Size settings and a fair amount of modulation. The algorithm isn't based on any Lexicon stuff, but it is the closest to the classic Concert Hall algorithm as I will get with this plugin. Very different under the hood, but a similar sense of spaciousness and washiness.

As the names would suggest, Nostromo and Narcissus are both focused on producing the sound of space. Not a physical space, just deep space. Interstellar space. "That's not our system" space.

[...]
Narcissus is an interesting algorithm, in that it is closest in complexity and architecture to the VintageVerb algorithms - i.e. fairly simple, and low on CPU. I might create a variant of it for VintageVerb, as varying the Late Diffusion would allow for a number of interesting sounds, and the early reflections/energy section would be much different than the architecture used in VRoom.




New reverb mode: Sulaco

Dark, somewhat sparser than other reverb modes, with lush modulation
Wide range of control over Late Size, to dial in tight rooms, huge spaces, and all sorts of things in between
Tighter stereo image than other VRoom modes, with Late Cross controlling the initial spread of energy between channels.




- 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, and the LowXover control being used to adjust the crossover freq of the low cut/boost.


The overall sound of the LV-426 mode is like a cross between Nostromo and Narcissus, but with a much higher initial echo density than either of those modes, and a more diffuse randomized modulation. I have gotten some cool "digital" plates, lush halls, and huge spaces out of the mode, while using the Bass Mult/Xover settings to keep the low end from becoming too obtrusive.[...]
Right now, it is my current favorite of all the Dark modes. The Alien modes (Nostromo, Narcissus, Sulaco, and LV-426) probably could have been a new plugin, as they have taken the original "room" focus of the plugin into some darker and spacier places.
I feel that the Large Room, Large Chamber and Dark Chamber modes are the best representatives of the "room" side of VahallaRoom, and the rest of the modes are good at bright and spacey (Bright Room, LV-426) or dark and deep (Dark Room, Dark Space).




- New reverb mode: Dense Room

Dense Room in ValhallaRoom is technically a "Dark" algorithm, in that it is downsampled. So there is a 11 khz to 12 kHz brickwall filter there. However, everything else about the algorithm is bright: it uses bright delay interpolation, and the High Cut filter is only -6 dB / oct (the other algorithms use a -12 dB / oct filter for High Cut). The shallower slope of the High Cut filter allows you to have a heavier hand when making use of it. Bringing the High Cut into the 2 kHz to 4 kHz range will not create an outrageously dull sound with Dense Room, and it might create a more realistic room sound.

[jens]

Did you get all the info from the Valhalla website? I had a look on there at Vintage Verb but it doesn't have the level of detail you have here.

No, I went through the V-Room thread over at Gearspace to collect these infos:

https://gearspace.com/board/product-ale ... aroom.html

[PieBerger]

Did you get all the info from the Valhalla website? I had a look on there at Vintage Verb but it doesn't have the level of detail you have here.

The detail is there on the Valhalla site. Go to Plugins tab, choose ValhallaRoom/*VintageVerb etc., then scroll down past the picture of the UI and in the Modes section, you can click on each of the named headers, to reveal a more detailed description in the textbox directly underneath. The "Other Features" section below, operates in the same way.

*Edit1

Edit2: I'm happy this topic came up, since it encouraged me to use Room on some drum channels in my current track and I forgot just how good it is. Dark Room is perfect for snares, providing depth and power, without being overly harsh/fizzy. It also reminded me that I need to look into why third-party presets aren't working properly; the top level folder is showing but it's greyed out and I can't access the actual presets!

[Bombadil]

I'll probably get both, but not right away. Again, thanks for your perspectives. Highly appreciated.
Birthday's coming, and something a tad expensive is supposed to arrive sometime in May. But I can spend 50 bucks right now.