ValhallaShimmer

[valhallasound]

[…] ValhallaRoom and ValhallaVintageVerb only interpolate some of the delays in the structure, to save CPU. If every delay was interpolated, the same slurping sounds could be achieved as in ÜberMod and Shimmer, but the CPU would be at least 2X as high as the current CPU consumption. Probably more.

Sean Costello

I would absolutely *love* to see a "no compromises, make things sound as good as possible" hq interpolation mode in Vee3 (and although I don't have VRoom - yet - I guess the same goes for that). Since Vee3's CPU consumption per instance is pretty low as it is (almost negligible even on my 'old' C2D MBP), I would be more than happy to sacrifice at least 16x as much CPU slurping for improved audio slurping. Probably more.

Here's why I won't be doing this anytime soon:

- The interpolation wouldn't improve the sound of VintageVerb in its static state, just in the transition between states. VintageVerb uses high quality or low quality interpolation, depending on the Color mode. In NOW mode, the interpolation used has a flat frequency response with low noise.

- Not everyone likes the tape echo slewing sound for transitions. Some people would prefer an instant transition without any artifacts whatsoever. This is hard to do without causing clicks, but I have some thoughts about eliminating these in the future.

- In order to get a slewed reverb, the architecture needs to allow this from the get go. This isn't about a particular topology, so much as the programming style used - but certain topologies lend themselves to particular programming styles. An algorithm like Shimmer works great with heavy slewing, as it is made up of discrete chunks of processing, each of which can be individually slewed. VintageVerb doesn't work this way, and I would have to recreate every algorithm from scratch in order to properly slew the sounds.

- CPU consumption is still very important for a lot of users. Putting a high CPU option in VintageVerb incurs the risk that people would turn that on by default. If I was going to add higher CPU options to VintageVerb, I'd rather do it in such a way as to improve the base sound of an algorithm, rather than trying to obtain a particular effect during Size transitions.

Sean Costello

[Sampleconstruct]

Experiment:

Solo Oboe (VSL extended) processed with 6 instances of Shimmer, each one tuned differently, send automation to the 6 Busses per note. Used Shimmer intervals: minor third/fourth/fifth/minor sixth/major sixth/octave - the first five run in dual transpose mode so they transpose up and down, the octave only transposes downwards (single reverse). The oboe was also send to a B2 reverb for general reverb.

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/o ... mmer-etude

Very interesting...



I assume you'd need to make an elaborate automation work if you intend to respect a given scale/tonality with a relative accuracy...

....even more difficult with simultaneous up and down transposition of "non-static" intervals !



A little gem, didactically talking...

It's not that complex in this example, took about 30 minutes to set up the automation, experimenting with the intervals took longer though, not everything thought out in theory (actually during a Shimmer dream last night) sounded so good so I simplified things a bit.

[valhallasound]

Experiment:

Solo Oboe (VSL extended) processed with 6 instances of Shimmer, each one tuned differently, send automation to the 6 Busses per note. Used Shimmer intervals: minor third/fourth/fifth/minor sixth/major sixth/octave - the first five run in dual transpose mode so they transpose up and down, the octave only transposes downwards (single reverse). The oboe was also send to a B2 reverb for general reverb.

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/o ... mmer-etude

Glorious.

I remember several years ago when you posted an example of several tuned Shimmer instances on automated sends (IIRC, this predated SoundCloud). I was reasonably happy with Shimmer as an "instaEno" processor, but your compositional use of the plugin blew me away. Same thing this morning.

Sean Costello

Thank's Sean, yeah that was with french horns - I think it's still on the cloud somewhere, I have to search for it. Shimmer sounds so orchestral that it's great to use for this sort of thing with just solo instruments.

It makes me happy that you use the word "orchestral." This was a big goal of mine with Shimmer. I remember using the term "Wagnerian" when discussing the Shimmer work in progress with my wife.

A lot of the "orchestral" sound has to do with the pitch shifter in Shimmer. The other day, I experimented in Live with using a "higher quality" pitch shifter in the feedback loop of Shimmer, using a 3rd party pitch shifting plugin in conjunction with Shimmer and some send/return routing. The pitch shifter on its own sounded far smoother than the pitch shifter I use in Shimmer, but the resulting shimmering reverb was a lot more boring than Shimmer's built in pitch shifting. I think that my pitch shifting randomization technique has a lot to do with creating this "orchestral" sound, as the noisy artifacts end up producing a "rosin" sound above a few kHz.

Sean Costello

[Sampleconstruct]

I found the other example with the french horns, also automating several Shimmers with different intervals:

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/dark-interlude

[Sampleconstruct]

Experiment:

Solo Oboe (VSL extended) processed with 6 instances of Shimmer, each one tuned differently, send automation to the 6 Busses per note. Used Shimmer intervals: minor third/fourth/fifth/minor sixth/major sixth/octave - the first five run in dual transpose mode so they transpose up and down, the octave only transposes downwards (single reverse). The oboe was also send to a B2 reverb for general reverb.

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/o ... mmer-etude

Glorious.

I remember several years ago when you posted an example of several tuned Shimmer instances on automated sends (IIRC, this predated SoundCloud). I was reasonably happy with Shimmer as an "instaEno" processor, but your compositional use of the plugin blew me away. Same thing this morning.

Sean Costello

Thank's Sean, yeah that was with french horns - I think it's still on the cloud somewhere, I have to search for it. Shimmer sounds so orchestral that it's great to use for this sort of thing with just solo instruments.

It makes me happy that you use the word "orchestral." This was a big goal of mine with Shimmer. I remember using the term "Wagnerian" when discussing the Shimmer work in progress with my wife.

A lot of the "orchestral" sound has to do with the pitch shifter in Shimmer. The other day, I experimented in Live with using a "higher quality" pitch shifter in the feedback loop of Shimmer, using a 3rd party pitch shifting plugin in conjunction with Shimmer and some send/return routing. The pitch shifter on its own sounded far smoother than the pitch shifter I use in Shimmer, but the resulting shimmering reverb was a lot more boring than Shimmer's built in pitch shifting. I think that my pitch shifting randomization technique has a lot to do with creating this "orchestral" sound, as the noisy artifacts end up producing a "rosin" sound above a few kHz.

Sean Costello

Well one of the aspects that makes an orchestra sound like an orchestra is the intentional and often non-intenional detuning which occurs when 70+ musicians try to play in tune, over-melodyned orchestral sounds (especially string sections) will never work.

[metalifuxx]

I often describe it to people as making audio sound "choral/choir like", or like deep space if the pitch fx are not enabled.

I remember you mentioned Matisyahu's sound engineer used it on their "Live at Stubbs vol. II" in post production.

[futile]

Hi Sean, congratulations for such good sounding plugins.

I was recently watching this synth jam video where he uses Strymon Timeline, on minute 14 he runs the Vermona Mono Lancet through the Ice delay and I was blown away by the effect he creates around the bassline.



I was wondering if the way to recreate this effect would be by running Shimmer through ÜberMod. If you don't mind, could you advice us on how would you do it?


Thank you in advance.

Recreating the Strymon Timeline sounds would be tricky in Shimmer. ValhallaShimmer is a diffusion based reverb with a pitch shifter in the feedback, while the Timeline Ice Delay is a pitch shifter with some diffusion added. The difference is the size of the pitch shifter slices, versus the diffusion size:

Shimmer: BIG diffusion, with short/randomized pitch shifter slices
Timeline Ice: Short diffusion, big pitch shifter slices

The closest approximation would be using the MediumStereo mode in Shimmer, with lower Diffusion settings. But this will still have the sound of a bigger diffusion section.

With ÜberMod, I have the ability to dial in the diffusion size, but I don't have the splicing pitch shifter in there - just some "glitch shifting" that occurs when abusing the chorusing waveforms.

Sean Costello

Thank you Sean, I now have a better understanding on what to look for when trying to recreate de sound. I managed to get quite close by using one of Sampleconstruct's patches for ÜberMod ( thanks Simon ) called Octave Shifter.

On a different but not unrelated matter, since I started to use the plugins I have been missing something like a dedicated MIDI controller. For a live performance situation would be incredible to be able to tweak the plugins with a knob per function dedicated device.
On the other hand there is this sound designer called Antonio Blanca who also specializes in creating custom templates for the Lemur app for the iPad. He has created some of the most futuristic looking templates for the people at Twisted Tools. Being that your plugins have such a simple, spaced and well thought of design I think if he was to create a template for Lemur would be a fairly easy job to do and this way we would be able to touch them literally.

If you have Reaktor on your machines go to the download section and get Dron-e. Absolutely Beautilful. You should definitely grab everything from that section.

http://www.antonioblanca.com/

Here's also 2 videos showcasing his designs for Lemur:






Thank you.

[SODDI]

That is one pretty-sounding plug-in.

[valhallasound]

It's been a few months since I've talked about ValhallaShimmer. I feel like Shimmer is one of those plugins that "just works." Stable, minimal, nice sound, does a few things really well.

So...TIME TO BREAK STUFF!!!

Just kidding. Kinda.

I'm working on the AAX port of ValhallaShimmer tonight. So far, it is running nicely in PT10 and PT11. I've also built a 64-bit OSX VST, which is running in Ableton 9.1 (64-bit, of course). My goal for tonight is to build the remaining 3 OSX plugin formats (AU 32 bit, AU 64 bit, RTAS), and then throw together an actual installer, that places the DAW format presets in the proper folders.

I hope to have an OSX beta available tomorrow. I'll announce it here, and all ValhallaShimmer customers are welcome to request a beta at that time.

I'll probably release the OSX installer as soon as it has been reasonably tested, and release the Windows AAX version once I port all the other plugins to Windows AAX. Windows RTAS has traditionally been the least popular plugin format, so I figure this can wait for another week or so. I'm not adding any new algorithms or features to this build, so it isn't like the Windows VST/RTAS users will be missing out on anything terribly exciting.

Sean Costello

[michael2]

It's been a few months since I've talked about ValhallaShimmer. I feel like Shimmer is one of those plugins that "just works." Stable, minimal, nice sound, does a few things really well.

So...TIME TO BREAK STUFF!!!

Just kidding. Kinda.

I'm working on the AAX port of ValhallaShimmer tonight. So far, it is running nicely in PT10 and PT11. I've also built a 64-bit OSX VST, which is running in Ableton 9.1 (64-bit, of course). My goal for tonight is to build the remaining 3 OSX plugin formats (AU 32 bit, AU 64 bit, RTAS), and then throw together an actual installer, that places the DAW format presets in the proper folders.

I hope to have an OSX beta available tomorrow. I'll announce it here, and all ValhallaShimmer customers are welcome to request a beta at that time.

I'll probably release the OSX installer as soon as it has been reasonably tested, and release the Windows AAX version once I port all the other plugins to Windows AAX. Windows RTAS has traditionally been the least popular plugin format, so I figure this can wait for another week or so. I'm not adding any new algorithms or features to this build, so it isn't like the Windows VST/RTAS users will be missing out on anything terribly exciting.

Sean Costello

cool. i'll look out for this thread.

[Sampleconstruct]

So...TIME TO BREAK STUFF!!!

LOL

[valhallasound]

So...TIME TO BREAK STUFF!!!

LOL

I wish it was a joke. I have broken VintageVerb since the 1.0.2b63 release. Or the Juce update broke VintageVerb. I get to spend tomorrow figuring out what broke. HOOORAY AND ALL THE HAPPY ELVES DID JIG AND DANCE MERRILY UNTIL THE MORN.

The good news is that Shimmer seems to work well as an AAX plugin. I'm finishing up the installer tonight, or maybe early tomorrow.

Sean Costello

[Sampleconstruct]

So...TIME TO BREAK STUFF!!!

LOL

I wish it was a joke. I have broken VintageVerb since the 1.0.2b63 release. Or the Juce update broke VintageVerb. I get to spend tomorrow figuring out what broke. HOOORAY AND ALL THE HAPPY ELVES DID JIG AND DANCE MERRILY UNTIL THE MORN.

The good news is that Shimmer seems to work well as an AAX plugin. I'm finishing up the installer tonight, or maybe early tomorrow.

Sean Costello

That sucks, fix it then, hurry up.

[valhallasound]

So...TIME TO BREAK STUFF!!!

LOL

I wish it was a joke. I have broken VintageVerb since the 1.0.2b63 release. Or the Juce update broke VintageVerb. I get to spend tomorrow figuring out what broke. HOOORAY AND ALL THE HAPPY ELVES DID JIG AND DANCE MERRILY UNTIL THE MORN.

The good news is that Shimmer seems to work well as an AAX plugin. I'm finishing up the installer tonight, or maybe early tomorrow.

Sean Costello

That sucks, fix it then, hurry up.

Fortunately, it's only broken for me. I haven't sent out the broken version to anyone else.

[A.M. Gold]

Damn...hint, hint: I'd love that Win VVV beta for Christmas...

But don't knock yourself out. Enjoy your holidays, don't stare at a computer screen.