Thoughts on Valhalla Delay vs EchoBoy?

[whowasthursday]

I thought this was a pretty thorough comparison

I'm leaning towards the Valhalla since it's cheaper and I don't use rhythmic delays that much. But both sound awesome

[fcamp]

I would recommend you to try them for yourself in your mixes. In isolation, I prefer Valhalla, in the mix, always Echoboy.

[Niowiad]

Valhalla does more stuff (e.g. pitch-shifting, frequency-shifting, reverse-delay, phaser) with less editing capabilities. With a nice big GUI, few key parameters, and zero latency.

EchoBoy does less stuff (except the rhythm-echo, which VDelay doesn't have), with an older, smaller and little harder to read GUI, but it provides more advanced sound shaping controls (e.g. frequency dependent decay + EQ) and timing customization (accented repeats, shuffle/swing, rush/drag). It also adds a little latency.

Having both, I usually see VDelay more as a composition/sound-design stompbox-like effect because of the UX immediacy, the "weird" delay modes, and the zero-latency; and EchoBoy I now see it more as a mixing delay due to the more advanced sound shaping tools.
Of course they both can be used for anything anywhere.

Sound quality is subjective, both sound good to me.

[martiu]

buy both now

[Gam456]

Honestly I'm not using so much Soundtoy or other generalist tools anymore, there is way better out there. I rather to have a specific delay but with it's own character like my last one
AudioThing Mantis a fantatic BBD delay.

[andymcbain]

Both are great. Demo them in a project and see which you vibe with the most

[audiouser720]

Valhalla does more stuff (e.g. pitch-shifting, frequency-shifting, reverse-delay, phaser) with less editing capabilities. With a nice big GUI, few key parameters, and zero latency.

EchoBoy does less stuff (except the rhythm-echo, which VDelay doesn't have), with an older, smaller and little harder to read GUI, but it provides more advanced sound shaping controls (e.g. frequency dependent decay + EQ) and timing customization (accented repeats, shuffle/swing, rush/drag). It also adds a little latency.

Having both, I usually see VDelay more as a composition/sound-design stompbox-like effect because of the UX immediacy, the "weird" delay modes, and the zero-latency; and EchoBoy I now see it more as a mixing delay due to the more advanced sound shaping tools.
Of course they both can be used for anything anywhere.

Sound quality is subjective, both sound good to me.

Why does zero latency matters btw? If you have a synth track and put either VDelay or Echoboy as an insert, latency will not have any affect on how the delay behaves on the sound. It only matters if you do automation and PDC is f**ked in your DAW, or am I missing something?

[egbert101]

One uses iLok and one doesn't. So pretty clear which is better.

[perpetual3]

Both are good.

[Robmobius]

But I prefer the sound of EB. Yet I use Valhalla more.

[audiouser720]

One uses iLok and one doesn't. So pretty clear which is better.

Exactly, agreed. Ilok wins

[Niowiad]

Valhalla does more stuff (e.g. pitch-shifting, frequency-shifting, reverse-delay, phaser) with less editing capabilities. With a nice big GUI, few key parameters, and zero latency.

EchoBoy does less stuff (except the rhythm-echo, which VDelay doesn't have), with an older, smaller and little harder to read GUI, but it provides more advanced sound shaping controls (e.g. frequency dependent decay + EQ) and timing customization (accented repeats, shuffle/swing, rush/drag). It also adds a little latency.

Having both, I usually see VDelay more as a composition/sound-design stompbox-like effect because of the UX immediacy, the "weird" delay modes, and the zero-latency; and EchoBoy I now see it more as a mixing delay due to the more advanced sound shaping tools.
Of course they both can be used for anything anywhere.

Sound quality is subjective, both sound good to me.

Why does zero latency matters btw? If you have a synth track and put either VDelay or Echoboy as an insert, latency will not have any affect on how the delay behaves on the sound. It only matters if you do automation and PDC is f**ked in your DAW, or am I missing something?

I'm on REAPER, I don't really know about other DAWs
It sure doesn't matter during playback of already recorded audio/midi tracks because at that point PDC kicks in and aligns everything, but it does matter whenever the playing/tracking is being done in real time and the delay between what's being played to metronome and what's being heard becomes noticeable.

If I have an fx-chain on a recording track, and each insert comes with its latency, those all add up up to some total extra latency rounded-up to multiples of the DAW's buffer size.
I'm saying "extra" because that latency is getting added to the time the DAW is already taking to get the sound in/out (which for me is currently about 13ms for a buffer size of 128spls).

If I were to disregard the induced latency of insert effects, I could easily end up with 256/384/512 samples of latency, which correspond to 6/9/12ms on my configuration, in addition to the previously mentioned 13ms.
And I obviously try to keep the total latency as low as possible while playing/tracking, by favoring zero-latency (or very low latency) plugins whenever possible, especially on plugins which are not so strongly nonlinear.

32 samples of latency for EchoBoy is not too high, but depending on the case, it could make the difference between rounding up to the next buffer size multiple or not.
So, it depends...

[audiouser720]

I don’t want to be the first one who ignores the original question and suggests anything else other than Vdelay and Echoboy. I wait until someone else starts that traditionally and then I will advise what’s better than both of these plugins

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

ValhallaDelay is amazing. Echoboy is very good too.

[Big DAW Audio]

Big fan of echoboy it can accomplish whatever you need it to do