KVR Audio

Captain · Post by **Captain** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 10:22 pm

Just a little "thank you". VR has quickly become the reverb I seem to use the most in any type of project. Well, really the only times I don't use it is when I need some specific IR stuff. So, thanks! Can't wait to see what you'll come up with next...

Sequent · Post by **Sequent** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 10:28 pm

A big thank you over here! Excellent update, Sean!!!

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:23 am

Sampleconstruct wrote:Testing the new Dark Room algo in ValhallaRoom with a patch from my new Alchemy Bank - nice one Sean!

Thanks for posting the example!

Architeuthis · Post by **Architeuthis** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 3:33 pm

Hmm, got a 404 error after using the contact form on the valhalladsp website... just want to make sure you got my e-mail, I'm waiting for the 1.0.6 update. I do have the 1.0.2 e-mail, so it's strange that the next one didn't get to me.

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 4:13 pm

Architeuthis wrote:Hmm, got a 404 error after using the contact form on the valhalladsp website... just want to make sure you got my e-mail, I'm waiting for the 1.0.6 update. I do have the 1.0.2 e-mail, so it's strange that the next one didn't get to me.

Email got. 1.0.6 update links sent, and you've been added to the master VRoom list.

Sean Costello

Integratron · Post by **Integratron** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 8:24 pm

Hey Sean - I'm curious as to what types of source input you might consider to be the best to audition and test your products? I keep thinking of a whip crack, the smack of a pair of 2x4s; I guess it should be a sound that is very familiar, complex, with short duration, fast attack and rapid decay.

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 8:56 pm

Integratron wrote:Hey Sean - I'm curious as to what types of source input you might consider to be the best to audition and test your products? I keep thinking of a whip crack, the smack of a pair of 2x4s; I guess it should be a sound that is very familiar, complex, with short duration, fast attack and rapid decay.

I would test it with the sort of audio tracks you plan on using with the plugin. Test signals can give you an idea of how a reverb responds to sharp transients, or how much noise a sine wave produces, but won't let you know how a reverb sits in the mix.

Having said that, a very dry snare sample tends to bring out the flaws in many reverbs, so I would try that. A single sample click is a classic way of hearing the exact early echo pattern. Whip cracks are a bit tricky, due to the "chirped" frequency response - you want something where all the frequencies are lined up in time, like an impulse, to be able to hear the dispersion characteristics of the reverb.

For my development, I tend to use a snare roll I found on some reverb comparing website, as it has some VERY sharp transients. I also rely on a few dry acoustic tracks:

- "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake. Male voice + relatively quick fingerpicking, all in a very dry recording situation. The stereo miking used will create weird effects when summed to mono, so this is a useful track for seeing how a reverb combines left and right channels.
- "Horn" by Nick Drake. Sustained guitar notes. Useful for hearing long held pitches.
- "Tom's Diner (A Capella)" by Suzanne Vega. Very dry female vocal.

There are also some good dry tracks on an LCD Soundsystem album I have used in the past. Now that I think about it, there are probably some good Bon Scott era AC/DC tracks that are really dry. But putting reverb on these would turn them into mid-80's sounding AC/DC, and that would be a form of sacrilege. There are plenty of situations where the best reverb to use is "none," and I feel that AC/DC is a perfect case in point.

Sean Costello

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Fri Jun 24, 2011 12:41 am

I just had spent like a half hour noodling around on piano with an instance of Valhalla Room, creating a few presets along the way and trying out the new algorithm. Really, each time I load it up I'm just amazed at how good this reverb sounds. It may very well be one of the absolute best plugin reverbs at any price.

You know how you have those bands who you'd buy an album from without ever needing to hear a track, just cause you trust it would be good? There's a few plugin companies who get that same kind of response from me, and Valhalla is one of them. I don't know what Sean's next plugin will be, but I can tell you now that I'll certainly be buying it.

Integratron · Post by **Integratron** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:09 am

Thanks for your insight Sean. Dry tracks that may (or may not) sound better with reverb. A snare or roll on a snare - of course!

I think I'll pull out my Charlie Parker stuff for testing. Some of these early bop recordings had some bizarro, perhaps experimental, reverb and some, none at all.

Bronto Scorpio · Post by **Bronto Scorpio** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:21 am

Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:I don't know what Sean's next plugin will be, but I can tell you now that I'll certainly be buying it.

+1

Cheers
Dennis

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:24 pm

A new review of ValhallaRoom has just been posted to the Motion Pictures Editors Guild website:

https://www.editorsguild.com/magazine.cfm?ArticleID=997

A few good quotes from there:

The reverb marketplace has many fine competitors both in software and hardware, and so many of them sound really great. But I have not heard anything short of upper-tier plug-ins like Avid's Revibe perform such excellent sounding room

If this plug-in is piped into an upmixer, it would hold its own against anything out there regardless of price.

The reviewer also has some nice things to say about ValhallaShimmer:

Its focus is more about surreal reverbs and spaces, and it has a good deal of fun capabilities that can get you creating David Lynch-ian soundscapes in quite literally seconds.

Sean Costello

xoxos · Post by **xoxos** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 3:21 am

your name keeps popping up :p i just saw it in a doctoral thesis by a tim s.

mandolarian · Post by **mandolarian** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:09 am

valhallasound wrote:A new review of ValhallaRoom has just been posted to the Motion Pictures Editors Guild website:

https://www.editorsguild.com/magazine.cfm?ArticleID=997

Well done, Sean! Please remember the little diffusion of KVR when you're reverberating down the red carpet to accept the award. And the accolades. And your big check from Hollywood.

DaveGamble · Post by **DaveGamble** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:41 pm

Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:It may very well be one of the absolute best reverbs at any price.

FTFY

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:39 pm

xoxos wrote:your name keeps popping up :p i just saw it in a doctoral thesis by a tim s.

That would be Tim Stilson. I worked with Tim (as well as Scott Van Duyne, David Jaffe, and other smart folks) at Staccato Systems from 1999 until 2001, when we were bought out by Analog Devices. The company continued as the ARTC division of Analog Devices, until the division was cut at the end of 2006. Tim and David Jaffe went on to work at Universal Audio - Tim had worked on some early SynthBuilder stuff with William Putnam when they were both PhD students at CCRMA.

There wasn't much I contributed to Tim's thesis, other than generally supporting him to go back and finish it up. I think I also pointed out how the TDFII filter form could be used for a transposed allpass lattice with better numerical performance. Tim is an AMAZINGLY smart guy, and I hope that UA is using his brain power to its fullest capacity.

Sean Costello

ValhallaRoom 1.5.1 Released. New Electric Blue GUI