Only given a handful of comments over the years and thousands of videos I've watched. This was -exactly- what I want when I see a review of a product. This was pro. Thank you for this.
This is my go to reverb. Interestingly enough, all the cons you listed are actually pros for me. I do have reverbs like FabFilter Pro-R which has all those parametric controls that you list, but I hardly ever use it, simply because I just prefer the sound of Valhalla. For further shaping, I usually insert an EQ before and after the reverb (I tend to do this with other plugins on the send FX bus as well). I feel like NOT having those things built in, allows me to use the right tools for what I want to do, tonal shaping, compression, ducking, maybe even distortion, pitch shifters etc. So yeah, the simplicity in itself is a forte as you don’t get bogged down with constant tinkering, get the stuff done and move on. That’s my take. Love their ethos and I have all their plugins.
I was going to say like...if you're ALWAYS putting it on a send, why not just put a stock reverb after it??? Or if you want to get really 80s do an SSL or something after it.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do more videos in this series!!! I love this series!! it is so informational and it really helps people get a better understanding!! I am such a huge fan of this series and I am so glad something like this exists. I love that you cover plugins that beginner engineers like me want. Decap, Q-3 and stuff! This is a great review of the program and also an overview and use of the plugins. I love it so much!!
I use this plugin all the time. The fact that a $50 plugin completely out performed my $300 guitar pedal really opened my eyes to the quality of this current generation of DSP. Ableton Live 11's new convolution reverb is also a stellar stock effect. Between the two it's all I need (except maybe a real spring reverb).
I’m curious too. $300 for a standard verb pedal is a little ridiculous. The damn thing must be shooting fireworks out of the output jack for it to be that pricy
You're right about the BassFreq and BassMult, Freq is a crossover point and Mult is a multiplier on the set decay time. those are important because, in general, in real rooms your bass frequencies will linger on for longer than everything else (higher frequencies lose energy quicker, etc... a bunch of physics reasons for that).
this is the very parameter i could fight my life for understanding what it does in translation. i still don't really get it but this comment helps a little. for years ive just defaulted setting them around 8 oclock and the mult at 0.5x because i imagined what this did was reduce mud that the reverb was adding to the mix. i suppose this confirms that i was in the ballpark
@@rome-sound yup, you definitely got the right idea. Using it like you're doing, you solve the issue of having bass reverb muddying up the mix without cutting it out completely (like you'd do with a pre-EQ on a send, or using the inbuilt EQ), what often sounds unnatural. It just fades out of the way faster. Another way to use it (on vocals, especially) is to make vocals feel "fuller" without having a distinct reverb. At a high-ish Freq (1k-ish), I crank the Mult to 2-3x, then decrease the decay time until it feels "right" (about .3 to .4s). What that does is having a short enough decay for the "readable" parts of the reverb that they don't register a reverberation, while the warm bass fills up and makes it bigger. Then just add a touch of it because it's easy to overdo and get boomy-ness.
@@EversonBernardes man this inspired me just by the imagination of what this enables.... just opened up the daw and doing some live experimenting haha thanks man!!!
You explain things really well. Wish you were working in logic pro. Most people when explaining some form of reverb they use some screechy horrible female voice blasting and they expect us to be able to hear differences. Your use of a single drum head was just perfect. Kudos to you.
Love Valhalla products. Their shimmer is divine and so versatile and easy to get great results without getting that cheesy over the top shimmer sound. Even their free Supermassive is wonderful. Great video and review
I can see why this is so popular. It sounds great, has lots of different algorithms and extensive controls in a simple interface, and isn't expensive. I like convolution reverbs myself, as they're even simpler to use with just a few parameters once you find an IR you like, but not really an experimental tool like the VintageVerb. Thanks for the demo.
Ever since I got this one it has been my "go to" reverb. I have "better" sounding reverbs. But this so simple and easy to use when you "just need a reverb". I have never treated it as a "vintage sound" and I mostly use the 'now' mode for more control. And it's cheap
You are right about the bass freq and bass multiple. The power of the old verbs from Lexicon is that you can control the length of the decay for bass, mid and high frequencies. This can create spaces close to the real thing,but also spaces you would never hear in the real world. I actually won’t buy reverb without those parameters now.
Valhalla makes some of the sweetest plugins. Great sound and super light on the cpu. I have their delay. Vintage and plate reverbs. I also have their amazing free plugin reverb/Delay which is what led me to buy a bunch of their products. I have other reverbs i also use depending on the sound im looking for but these have become go to verbs and delays for me. I actually hadn’t realized there wasn’t any documentation since i rarely RTFM any more and just stumble my way through the features. It would be nice to have for a deeper dive which I occasionally do if i cant figure something out. I also tend to find presets i like and tweak to get the reverb i want. I don’t t often build one from scratch.
Thank you 🙏🏾. I’m from the days when a home studio was going to cost you starting at $65.000 for 24 tracks. We would apply reverbs on busses and call it a day. Today it’s used more artistically creative and your instruction makes easier to figure out how it was done.
To the developers defense I would say most of the downsides you listed can be solved while using the verb on return track and I would say with all these additional features the plugin would get too clustered, I kinda like the way it is now ,it's clean and it stands out. Just my opinion. I really like your voice btw
This is my most used reverb. Whenever I put this reverb on a track, the first thing I always do is turn the DIFF knobs up almost all the way, and the MOD knobs all the way down.
Valhalla Vintage Verb is on all my radio singles. I purchased others, but Valhalla always does the trick. So fast do dial in the right reverb. I agree though on the missing EQ (for example a bell would be great to dip some offending frequencies) and missing ducking possibility. Many modern mixing engineers put Verbs in the insert and not only 3 sends for everything like in the old console times. So ducking would be great, not having to create a send with sidechain compression every time. The rest is just fabolous, and honestly documentation of the plugin is not really necessary, as most parameters we know and are self explainable.
I feel like a Valhalla Vintage Pro after Watching this video completely.......... Thank You so much brother....... HAPPY 2023 HAVE A WONDERFUL YEAR AHEAD
Uad EMT 250. That's my favorite off all time and the Eventide SP 2016. Those reverbs on a vocal its massive. I have the Valhalla but using it on instruments. 🙃😉
I actually came here to mention ducking and then you pull it out last minute. I am not sure ducking in a reverb plugin (like Denise Audio Perfect Room) is a good thing, because then you will be tempted to not bus it and duck it for real. Thanks for the great content.
Appreciate hearing the con list 1. I never bpm sync reverb. Nearly useless feature. Hardly even do it with delays. 2. With all my favorite reverbs, there is no included EQ This & others (UAD, etc). Unless you’re using Pro R for all your reverb. I prefer them not touch EQ if they are gonna put a bad stock eq & clog GUI. 3. I didn’t need a manual for this guy. Tool tips were enough. 4. I agree that the addition of ducking. Even used in subtle ways, adds useful movement. But pre delay & automation are my first defense against reverb muddiness. Ducking is the frosting on top & I wish it had it. (The delay does!) Thanks for the vid!
@@ManchesterMusic hahaha think so? I feel like I tried it once and it was a little boring. I’ve gotten to a point where I can guess the starting ms values I want for most content. My fav is Val delay cuz it’ll go to the quarter or whatever value and I can nudge it ahead or behind the beat. Usually where I like it :)
Very good review. I did a shootout for myself for 9 algorithmic reverbs. My second winner was valhalla classic verb. My first winner was verberate 2 from acon digital.
Thank you! Great video. I watched a few other videos before this one trying to understand everything about this plug-in, but the other videos are not nearly as informative. I appreciate you being so thorough!
Very informative…I appreciate the no frills approach…I am one that is interested in graduating from stock and have seen this one pop up on “top ten” lists. Thank you for your insightful review!
#1 I couldn't get Vintageverb to sound good and I REALLY TRIED. The "now" setting is supposed to give you that modern clean clear open shimmering vibe that I love to hear on ballads, (Valhalla shimmer is great) but the VINTAGEVerb still just didn't work for me. #2 I tried every reverb under the sun after upgrading my studio and DAW but it wasn't until I heard the Valhalla PLATE that I was STUNNED! Vintageverb has plates but they're not even the same animal! It's amaaaaazing! #3 While I love my UAD Lexicon 480L & 224, they were expensive even on a massive sale with coupons and I wouldn't have purchased them if I'd tried the plate first. I actually use Valhalla plate most because the UAD version eats lots of DSP power and Valhalla plate just works and it's easy on your CPU power...but I usually blend them together to get a more diverse vibe and that's cool. But I'm weird like that. My point her is If you love the vintage verb....AWESOME! But if you haven't tried their plateverb....do it! You'll love it!
Wow, really??? I absolutely love plate reverbs! I should check that one out. I think Bruno Mars uses a plate reverb in his song "It Will Rain," and it's so amazing. It just makes his ballad vocal that much better, as if he's singing in an alley in the rain. 🙂
Thank you for this series! I really enjoy this long format. Love how you take the time to dissect everything. Looking forward seeing more. :) I would love to see your take on EchoBoy in the future. Cheers!
I gradually lost interest in music because of the dark feeling of Ableton's stock Reverb. I only realised that was the problem when I slapped a Valhalla Reverb on the Master track. It instantly sounded bright, fresh, awake, and sparkly. It was an astonishing difference.
You know. Every youtuber at the end of their video says "Smash the Like Button and Subscribe, it really helps me out! a lot, I'd really appreciate it!" and I almost NEVER do it. But at the end of this very informative video you were just like, "thank you and....have a.. great life" as if you never expect to have your viewer to ever come back. That made me laugh enough to actually click the like button and Subscribe. Excellent channel.
It is a very good plugin but its vintage nature is right there in the name- so I find that hard to be a complaint. I think the main drawback against it is actually the price!: I got waves H verb for less than $30 during one of their sales. And that Reverb really is a fantastic, next level plug-in with all the GUI feedback you would ever want and more features you could ever want.
Good points. Sean Costello has done more in depth stuff on the Valhalla blog. It's not documentation, but it is there. You do realise that it's one guy doing the coding and his wife doing the gui graphics.
Did a quick google search and found this: valhalladsp.com/2011/05/18/valhallaroom-the-late-controls/ Bass Mult: adjusts the decay time for the low frequencies, relative to the mid frequency decay time set by the DECAY slider. Examples: A Bass Mult setting of 0.5X, and a DECAY setting of 2 seconds, will result in a low frequency decay time of 1 second. A Bass Mult setting of 2.0X, and a DECAY setting of 2.0 seconds, will result in a low frequency decay time of 4 seconds. From a physical perspective, Bass Mult settings >1.0X are useful for emulating halls and other large spaces, while Bass Mult settings
I've been pretty much only using this and several of the other Valhalla products for delay and reverb. VintageVerb and Shimmer, Valhalla delay, Valhalla room, and Supermassive. Back in the 80s I used Alesis MIDIverbs II and III and grew to love these colorful verbs.
So you’d recommend room then? I’m considering buying it but I was unsure about it from the free trial… Edit:also a big Shimmer fan - I use it on strings sooo much!
@@zoemoskal9700 I've used Room a fair amount, but I don't find it as elegant or useful as VintageVerb or Shimmer. I don't like its interface as much and it hasn't really wowed me. It's still worth the price, I think, but it's not as essential to my work as VintageVerb, Shimmer, Supermassive, or Delay.
Great video. With respect to the cons, I agree about the documentation and the need for more controls and fine calibration. I also agree that the plugin is nevertheless quite attractive, and there is something to be said for people being able to use their ears.
Great review ..I was at a zero interest level at first sight of interface and initially put off by the vintage nature of sound ..I actually still have PTSD , lol, from the seventies, playing in bands and using bad reverb units. I think Pink Floyd and the amazing Nektar had all the good ones . You have however shown this plugin has its own ,authentic character. I loved the work with the band pass filters and the brilliant exposition involving the organ . The thing is none my reverbs can do as well as what this plugin achieves in 70’s mode. It therefore will have applications for many folks and almost certainly for many performers. I agree the lack of manual is a massive oversight, for me , unless it’s Jack zip simple to operate I will not purchase any app or library which isn’t shipped with a full manual. 🙏🙏🏿👏👍🎩🦄🎶
BassFreq sets the frequency, where below of it, the decay time is multiplied with the BassMult value. Piece of cake :) You can control the decay time seperately for the "low" frequencies. Since it goes up very high, the word Bass is misleading. Give it a try, by setting BassFreq to max, Decay time to max = 70s, and the BassMult = max ;) Or set BassFreq very low while feeding something with low end into Valhalla, BassMult = max and a playaround with the Decay. Have fun listening to the low end trail :D
Thus is mygo to reverb. I love the sound, the straightforward GUI and low CPU cost. Really enjoyed your video and learnt some extra tips. I get the cons you point and I now also use Baby Audio Spaced Out for some specific purposes but generally I'm happy with Valhalla. It suits my sound and music.
Fantastic deep dive: I like your precise and analytic approach. Would love to hear your take on the popular topic of Parallel Compression especially regarding routing and buses.
@Oliseh Azuya yeh I can get behind that. Personally I think the inbuilt EQ is just quicker and does more or less the same thing in the end. But makes sense!
Great review, this came up when I was investigating Valhalla Room. Vintage Verb has been a favourite for years now. The Bass Freq and Multiplier I remembered from one of my Lexicon manuals lol.
Also, the bass mult is the coolest part of this plug and works just like you said. You set a crossover point, everything below that point decays at teh exponent you set with the mult knob, so you can make low freq decay shorter or longer than the master decay time. it works great and is worth playing with.
I got this plug in recently and I currently use it quite often, however I also still use my DAWs stock reverb (RV700) as default and sent reverb effect but I really like the sound and design and probably going to use it way more in the future. Also 50$ is a steal
Thanks for such an informative video. About the cons part, I can understand your point about all the missing functions such as parametric EQ, sidechain,...but I think since we are using parallel processing, we can add EQ and a sidechains plugin to the send channel before the reverb which can fill in the missing function of this plugin.
Nice review Geoff. Really like Valhalla DSP. I recently bought the Valhalla Ubermod and Delay and both are really brilliant creative plugins. I also have shimmer and room plugins. Thanks, was wondering whether to pick this up as I have a few similar reverb from Lexicon and Eventide. Cheers
Thank you for this video. It is succinct and helpful. I do use VVV and really love it. I guess I come from that era ...ie the 70's, so maybe there is a sense of comfort in that somehow. I also have Valhalla Room and I use both but I particularly like VVV. It just seems to work. The free stuff from Valahalla is pretty interesting too. They are a good company with the right attitude.
It's no surprise people doubt a $50 plugin.. if you sell a $100,000 diamond for $50, people might pass it up because "eh. it's probably not very good" But you put Valhalla up against Eventide and other brands, they do VERY well.
The lack of eq point isn't really a major issue. Just put the plugin on a send channel and insert whatever fave eq you want, either before or after the Vintageverb
Enjoyed the depth of the review... I can tell you love reverbs. This plugin sounds fantastic. It's sometimes a little harsh on the high end but can be tamed (usually). I think any more parameters would be overwhelm. I also EQ separately anyway. But I agree with you it's a shame that it doesn't have tempo sync - my biggest wish! I'll also add that I'd love to see you do a video that focuses on more practical application of the delay (on vox and other things), as well as shorter length times... The long decays are amazing to hear the quality but something most wouldn't use often in a mix. Thanks!
How does this compare against the Eventide Black hold Reverb plugin? I have Valhalla Vintage verb and use it a lot but I feel like I'm missing something with it...so I'm trying to find something that will fill out what Vintage Verb doesn't do.....Blackhole is on sale for $30 right now and normally is $200.
I wish you could gray out the EQ knobs the way you can gray out the mix knob. When I'm flipping between different modes and presets, it gets annoying to have to high pass and low pass my EQ every time.
With predelay you primarily choose how far away the listener receives an audio source. No predelay means far away and the more predelay the closer the source seems to be positioned in front the listener. Usually you don't (except for special effects) need to calculate the predelay as it's used for letting transients through or not without being affected by the wet effect. Rythmical effects are better dialed in by ear anyway to make them less static imo. If everything is synced to the host, it's getting robotic very fast. The bass options simply are there to prolong or reduce the length of the amount of bass in the reverb tail. In a real room the bass frequencies usually have a longer tail until they fade out as their wave - cycles are much longer than the ones of higher frequencies. The bass modifiers give you the option to get a good tonal balance between high and low frequencies in the dampening section. As usually when the tone is dampened, the higher frequencies are affected much stronger and the bass multiplier helps here in balancing. It's a great feature. I'd like to be able to switch the EQ pre or post. It's great to have seperate ER and LR control as that is a huge part in shaping depth perception and positioning the reflection into a space you create for a mix. As the VVV is a real character reverb and I don't like to use such noise based reverbs when needing long trails, it's just perfect for doing dry reverb stuff with reverb times around 100ms (in this case a bit longer), as the tonal shaping qualities here are just excellent to add body and weight to a source or change the tonal balance. A real great one and imo there's are good reasons why so many people love this plugin. Cheers
i check lot of reverb plugins.but this plugins more presence,shimmer ,brighter than other reverb plugins.this plugins really close to vintage reverb modules sound.
I like the Stevie Wonder song jammin , the reverb is two delays the first is hard right then the second is hard left, its such a great vocal sound on that track, really vibrant and exciting. not sure if this has the ability to do that. maybe if you have it as an aux and pan it right, then record again with longer slap back pan left, or use a ping pong delay.
Very good review, thank you. Just what I was looking for. I am looking for a good reverb but couldn't decide so far. They all have their pros and cons, but personally I like GUIs like Fabfilter R more than this, where I can see what is happening. But then again it eats up more CPU if you have it on many tracks I guess. Also I'm not a fan of graphical reproductions of Hardware gear in software. Yeah it looks nice, but as long as I cant touch it with your hands, I dont need photorealistic "knobs" on the screen (just saying in general, not the valhalla verbs). Subscribed btw! 👍🏻
I own this - I think it’s so lovely! I sounds great on my vocals and essentially almost everything I put it on. But I 100% agree about the ducking thing!! Really ducking annoying right?! 😅 it’s such a basic feature and they do have it in delay like you said. I wish they’d put it in here! Quick Q… have you tried Valhalla room? What’s your opinion on it? I’m debating whether or not to get it to add to my growing reverb collection as im such a fan of this one and shimmer too. But I wasn’t sure about it on the trial.. anyway would love to know your thoughts on it! Great video btw. You have z very calming presence and reviewing style!
My biggest gripe with this plug is that there's not output volume and it's so quiet...so I need to either compress afterward or use a trim plug after it. What's everyone else's experience in that regard? Cheers
I have a suggestion for people looking for a nice algoritmic reverb at a VERY low price, that is Phoenixverb from Exponential Audio (I'm not sponsored, I'm noone, who the hell would ever sponsor me?😂). I bought mine in offer at Plugin Boutique at 8.03£, that I guess is around 10€, and this thing sound great for me. It has such a huge amount of controls and preset that my feeling is that you can do almost anything I want with it, with a great sound quality. Maybe you could be interested in doing a review on it but first of all I suggest you try it, for me it has an AMAZING quality/price rate that makes me feel I can save my 50 bucks and have more fun. Am I wrong?
@@ManchesterMusic True, and at 8£ is even more incredible 🤩 Anyway I like Valhalla, only... THEY NEVER MAKE AN OFFER! You go on their site, it's 50 bucks, end of story. I understand they don't need to make offers because they sell anyway, and they're definitely not expensive for the quality, still...
@@ManchesterMusic Alright, Sweet! Well, I was on the fence for buying the plugin. Thanks to your review anyway I just purchased it and downloaded directly from Valhalladsp site. 😎
Concerning the lack of documentation: Couldn´t we look at documentations of the original hardware to get an idea of what these knobs might do? They seem to be really protective of this info. Probably because their stuff can´t be reverse engineered easily this way. Anyways if you like REALLY want to know what these knobs do, you should take a look at documentations of the most popular reverbs used in the 70s and 80s
@@ManchesterMusic definately! I feel like they don't really want us know certain stuff in order to protect their product from being reverse engineered. But thats just my conspiracy brain acting up ;)
Man this Reverb sounds Elite to me... The Pros definitely outweigh the Cons. As far as tempo calculations & all that, is it really that serious any way? I try to go by Feeling more than anything when Mixing
Thanks, I have a question please, what do you think is the better way to add reverb/delay to mono guitar track? add them to effect channel or create a stereo track with reverb and send the guitar to this channel ?
YOU'RE A PRE-DELAYIST! - you discriminate against reverb pluings that do not automatically calculate pre-delay times.... Lol... Great video Man! Reallly enjoyed it!
Only given a handful of comments over the years and thousands of videos I've watched. This was -exactly- what I want when I see a review of a product. This was pro. Thank you for this.
Wow. Grateful you took the time dude. Thanks!
This is my go to reverb.
Interestingly enough, all the cons you listed are actually pros for me. I do have reverbs like FabFilter Pro-R which has all those parametric controls that you list, but I hardly ever use it, simply because I just prefer the sound of Valhalla.
For further shaping, I usually insert an EQ before and after the reverb (I tend to do this with other plugins on the send FX bus as well). I feel like NOT having those things built in, allows me to use the right tools for what I want to do, tonal shaping, compression, ducking, maybe even distortion, pitch shifters etc. So yeah, the simplicity in itself is a forte as you don’t get bogged down with constant tinkering, get the stuff done and move on.
That’s my take.
Love their ethos and I have all their plugins.
I was going to say like...if you're ALWAYS putting it on a send, why not just put a stock reverb after it??? Or if you want to get really 80s do an SSL or something after it.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do more videos in this series!!! I love this series!! it is so informational and it really helps people get a better understanding!! I am such a huge fan of this series and I am so glad something like this exists. I love that you cover plugins that beginner engineers like me want. Decap, Q-3 and stuff! This is a great review of the program and also an overview and use of the plugins. I love it so much!!
Thanks dude. If there’s any other plugins you want me to include next lmk.
@@ManchesterMusic I would appreciate it if you did one on Ozone 9 Advanced or Standard!
@@ManchesterMusic Echoboy would be great one I think. There are so many styles of delay included in it so there's a lot of stuff to learn.
I use this plugin all the time. The fact that a $50 plugin completely out performed my $300 guitar pedal really opened my eyes to the quality of this current generation of DSP. Ableton Live 11's new convolution reverb is also a stellar stock effect. Between the two it's all I need (except maybe a real spring reverb).
What's the guitar pedal if I may ask?
I’m curious too. $300 for a standard verb pedal is a little ridiculous. The damn thing must be shooting fireworks out of the output jack for it to be that pricy
@Synthpopolis Correct, indulge me
@@keatodiet I have the UAFX Golden Reverberator and the Strymon Big Sky - two great reverb pedals, both above $300 .
@@keatodiet research?
Make a brand new instance, save as "Default", and boom - Default User preset. Should be there out of the box, but still, easy enough to fix.
You're right about the BassFreq and BassMult, Freq is a crossover point and Mult is a multiplier on the set decay time. those are important because, in general, in real rooms your bass frequencies will linger on for longer than everything else (higher frequencies lose energy quicker, etc... a bunch of physics reasons for that).
this is the very parameter i could fight my life for understanding what it does in translation. i still don't really get it but this comment helps a little. for years ive just defaulted setting them around 8 oclock and the mult at 0.5x because i imagined what this did was reduce mud that the reverb was adding to the mix. i suppose this confirms that i was in the ballpark
@@rome-sound yup, you definitely got the right idea. Using it like you're doing, you solve the issue of having bass reverb muddying up the mix without cutting it out completely (like you'd do with a pre-EQ on a send, or using the inbuilt EQ), what often sounds unnatural. It just fades out of the way faster.
Another way to use it (on vocals, especially) is to make vocals feel "fuller" without having a distinct reverb. At a high-ish Freq (1k-ish), I crank the Mult to 2-3x, then decrease the decay time until it feels "right" (about .3 to .4s). What that does is having a short enough decay for the "readable" parts of the reverb that they don't register a reverberation, while the warm bass fills up and makes it bigger.
Then just add a touch of it because it's easy to overdo and get boomy-ness.
@@EversonBernardes man this inspired me just by the imagination of what this enables.... just opened up the daw and doing some live experimenting haha thanks man!!!
You explain things really well. Wish you were working in logic pro. Most people when explaining some form of reverb they use some screechy horrible female voice blasting and they expect us to be able to hear differences. Your use of a single drum head was just perfect. Kudos to you.
Love Valhalla products. Their shimmer is divine and so versatile and easy to get great results without getting that cheesy over the top shimmer sound. Even their free Supermassive is wonderful. Great video and review
I can see why this is so popular. It sounds great, has lots of different algorithms and extensive controls in a simple interface, and isn't expensive. I like convolution reverbs myself, as they're even simpler to use with just a few parameters once you find an IR you like, but not really an experimental tool like the VintageVerb. Thanks for the demo.
Not only did this video introduce me to a very cool plugin, it improved my skills as a producer. Thank you so much for making this video!
Ever since I got this one it has been my "go to" reverb. I have "better" sounding reverbs. But this so simple and easy to use when you "just need a reverb". I have never treated it as a "vintage sound" and I mostly use the 'now' mode for more control. And it's cheap
Meanwhile on National Geographic: hedgehog states opinion on reverb plug-in :D
You are right about the bass freq and bass multiple. The power of the old verbs from Lexicon is that you can control the length of the decay for bass, mid and high frequencies. This can create spaces close to the real thing,but also spaces you would never hear in the real world. I actually won’t buy reverb without those parameters now.
Valhalla makes some of the sweetest plugins. Great sound and super light on the cpu. I have their delay. Vintage and plate reverbs. I also have their amazing free plugin reverb/Delay which is what led me to buy a bunch of their products. I have other reverbs i also use depending on the sound im looking for but these have become go to verbs and delays for me. I actually hadn’t realized there wasn’t any documentation since i rarely RTFM any more and just stumble my way through the features. It would be nice to have for a deeper dive which I occasionally do if i cant figure something out. I also tend to find presets i like and tweak to get the reverb i want. I don’t t often build one from scratch.
Thank you 🙏🏾. I’m from the days when a home studio was going to cost you starting at $65.000 for 24 tracks. We would apply reverbs on busses and call it a day. Today it’s used more artistically creative and your instruction makes easier to figure out how it was done.
To the developers defense I would say most of the downsides you listed can be solved while using the verb on return track and I would say with all these additional features the plugin would get too clustered, I kinda like the way it is now ,it's clean and it stands out. Just my opinion.
I really like your voice btw
I REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVEEEEE how you breakdown plugins like this and go very in-depth in such little time!
Amazing work man!!
Thank you so much David!
This is my most used reverb. Whenever I put this reverb on a track, the first thing I always do is turn the DIFF knobs up almost all the way, and the MOD knobs all the way down.
Do you find this helps with some of the harsness?
Interesting. Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to try that one.
man.. valhalla is the truth!!! no bells, no whistles, just plain GOOD f-n plugin. also, geoff.. i can relate to the allergy *struggle* lol
Valhalla Vintage Verb is on all my radio singles. I purchased others, but Valhalla always does the trick. So fast do dial in the right reverb. I agree though on the missing EQ (for example a bell would be great to dip some offending frequencies) and missing ducking possibility. Many modern mixing engineers put Verbs in the insert and not only 3 sends for everything like in the old console times. So ducking would be great, not having to create a send with sidechain compression every time. The rest is just fabolous, and honestly documentation of the plugin is not really necessary, as most parameters we know and are self explainable.
I feel like a Valhalla Vintage Pro after Watching this video completely.......... Thank You so much brother....... HAPPY 2023 HAVE A WONDERFUL YEAR AHEAD
Uad EMT 250. That's my favorite off all time and the Eventide SP 2016. Those reverbs on a vocal its massive. I have the Valhalla but using it on instruments. 🙃😉
I actually came here to mention ducking and then you pull it out last minute. I am not sure ducking in a reverb plugin (like Denise Audio Perfect Room) is a good thing, because then you will be tempted to not bus it and duck it for real. Thanks for the great content.
Appreciate hearing the con list
1. I never bpm sync reverb. Nearly useless feature. Hardly even do it with delays.
2. With all my favorite reverbs, there is no included EQ This & others (UAD, etc). Unless you’re using Pro R for all your reverb. I prefer them not touch EQ if they are gonna put a bad stock eq & clog GUI.
3. I didn’t need a manual for this guy. Tool tips were enough.
4. I agree that the addition of ducking. Even used in subtle ways, adds useful movement. But pre delay & automation are my first defense against reverb muddiness. Ducking is the frosting on top & I wish it had it. (The delay does!)
Thanks for the vid!
As to number 1. Dude you are completely missing out.
@@ManchesterMusic hahaha think so? I feel like I tried it once and it was a little boring. I’ve gotten to a point where I can guess the starting ms values I want for most content. My fav is Val delay cuz it’ll go to the quarter or whatever value and I can nudge it ahead or behind the beat. Usually where I like it :)
I’m watching on my phone because I’m on the toilet.
Literally same🙂↕️✋
I'm on the shit pot at work.
June 12, 2024
Yup
Same
Hello brothers
7:40 "it will decay eventually" made me think of a big mac! ;) Great tutorial.
Very good review. I did a shootout for myself for 9 algorithmic reverbs. My second winner was valhalla classic verb. My first winner was verberate 2 from acon digital.
Thank you! Great video. I watched a few other videos before this one trying to understand everything about this plug-in, but the other videos are not nearly as informative. I appreciate you being so thorough!
Excellent instructor, great engineer, thank you for making me smarter.
Very informative…I appreciate the no frills approach…I am one that is interested in graduating from stock and have seen this one pop up on “top ten” lists. Thank you for your insightful review!
#1 I couldn't get Vintageverb to sound good and I REALLY TRIED. The "now" setting is supposed to give you that modern clean clear open shimmering vibe that I love to hear on ballads, (Valhalla shimmer is great) but the VINTAGEVerb still just didn't work for me.
#2 I tried every reverb under the sun after upgrading my studio and DAW but it wasn't until I heard the Valhalla PLATE that I was STUNNED! Vintageverb has plates but they're not even the same animal! It's amaaaaazing!
#3 While I love my UAD Lexicon 480L & 224, they were expensive even on a massive sale with coupons and I wouldn't have purchased them if I'd tried the plate first. I actually use Valhalla plate most because the UAD version eats lots of DSP power and Valhalla plate just works and it's easy on your CPU power...but I usually blend them together to get a more diverse vibe and that's cool. But I'm weird like that. My point her is If you love the vintage verb....AWESOME! But if you haven't tried their plateverb....do it! You'll love it!
Wow, really??? I absolutely love plate reverbs! I should check that one out. I think Bruno Mars uses a plate reverb in his song "It Will Rain," and it's so amazing. It just makes his ballad vocal that much better, as if he's singing in an alley in the rain. 🙂
Thank you for this series! I really enjoy this long format. Love how you take the time to dissect everything. Looking forward seeing more. :)
I would love to see your take on EchoBoy in the future.
Cheers!
More to come!
I finally just bought it! Great review!
excellent demo, thanks a lot! (also, I am a technical writer, so each time you say there's no documentation I feel it on a personal level :D)
Thank you so much for covering this reverb - as someone unsure of what I'm getting into by getting this, I greatly appreciate the thorough run down!
Glad it was helpful!
Sub'd in the first 90 seconds. Love your style. No bullshit, in-depth explanation. Thank you so much!
I gradually lost interest in music because of the dark feeling of Ableton's stock Reverb. I only realised that was the problem when I slapped a Valhalla Reverb on the Master track. It instantly sounded bright, fresh, awake, and sparkly. It was an astonishing difference.
You know. Every youtuber at the end of their video says "Smash the Like Button and Subscribe, it really helps me out! a lot, I'd really appreciate it!" and I almost NEVER do it. But at the end of this very informative video you were just like, "thank you and....have a.. great life" as if you never expect to have your viewer to ever come back. That made me laugh enough to actually click the like button and Subscribe. Excellent channel.
lol. Thanks dude.
It is a very good plugin but its vintage nature is right there in the name- so I find that hard to be a complaint. I think the main drawback against it is actually the price!: I got waves H verb for less than $30 during one of their sales. And that Reverb really is a fantastic, next level plug-in with all the GUI feedback you would ever want and more features you could ever want.
Also, all the major daws include an IR Reverb and/or a very usable algorithmic Reverb
Good points. Sean Costello has done more in depth stuff on the Valhalla blog. It's not documentation, but it is there. You do realise that it's one guy doing the coding and his wife doing the gui graphics.
I knew the team was small but that’s a cozy set up they have over there. Neato
Did a quick google search and found this:
valhalladsp.com/2011/05/18/valhallaroom-the-late-controls/
Bass Mult: adjusts the decay time for the low frequencies, relative to the mid frequency decay time set by the DECAY slider. Examples:
A Bass Mult setting of 0.5X, and a DECAY setting of 2 seconds, will result in a low frequency decay time of 1 second.
A Bass Mult setting of 2.0X, and a DECAY setting of 2.0 seconds, will result in a low frequency decay time of 4 seconds.
From a physical perspective, Bass Mult settings >1.0X are useful for emulating halls and other large spaces, while Bass Mult settings
Appreciate the detailed review.
Also what does your chair do? sure looks like it has a red LED
We love it!!! The best.
I've been pretty much only using this and several of the other Valhalla products for delay and reverb. VintageVerb and Shimmer, Valhalla delay, Valhalla room, and Supermassive. Back in the 80s I used Alesis MIDIverbs II and III and grew to love these colorful verbs.
Which one would you prefer for drums🤔??
So you’d recommend room then? I’m considering buying it but I was unsure about it from the free trial…
Edit:also a big Shimmer fan - I use it on strings sooo much!
@@zoemoskal9700 I've used Room a fair amount, but I don't find it as elegant or useful as VintageVerb or Shimmer. I don't like its interface as much and it hasn't really wowed me. It's still worth the price, I think, but it's not as essential to my work as VintageVerb, Shimmer, Supermassive, or Delay.
Great video. With respect to the cons, I agree about the documentation and the need for more controls and fine calibration. I also agree that the plugin is nevertheless quite attractive, and there is something to be said for people being able to use their ears.
Great review ..I was at a zero interest level at first sight of interface and initially put off by the vintage nature of sound ..I actually still have PTSD , lol, from the seventies, playing in bands and using bad reverb units. I think Pink Floyd and the amazing Nektar had all the good ones . You have however shown this plugin has its own ,authentic character. I loved the work with the band pass filters and the brilliant exposition involving the organ . The thing is none my reverbs can do as well as what this plugin achieves in 70’s mode. It therefore will have applications for many folks and almost certainly for many performers. I agree the lack of manual is a massive oversight, for me , unless it’s Jack zip simple to operate I will not purchase any app or library which isn’t shipped with a full manual. 🙏🙏🏿👏👍🎩🦄🎶
This is exactly what we want. Subscribed
BassFreq sets the frequency, where below of it, the decay time is multiplied with the BassMult value. Piece of cake :)
You can control the decay time seperately for the "low" frequencies. Since it goes up very high, the word Bass is misleading. Give it a try, by setting BassFreq to max, Decay time to max = 70s, and the BassMult = max ;)
Or set BassFreq very low while feeding something with low end into Valhalla, BassMult = max and a playaround with the Decay. Have fun listening to the low end trail :D
Thus is mygo to reverb. I love the sound, the straightforward GUI and low CPU cost. Really enjoyed your video and learnt some extra tips. I get the cons you point and I now also use Baby Audio Spaced Out for some specific purposes but generally I'm happy with Valhalla. It suits my sound and music.
Fantastic deep dive: I like your precise and analytic approach. Would love to hear your take on the popular topic of Parallel Compression especially regarding routing and buses.
Great suggestion!
I use this and Seventh Heaven all the time. Prefer Seven for plate and room and Valhalla for Hall & Chambers. Only thing Im missing is a predelay sync
Can't wait to dive in to this vid. I usually end up just using pro-r with a pro q-3 in front of it to filter the reverb.
Pro r has an eq in it though doesn't it. What is the pro q for if you don't mind me asking?
@Oliseh Azuya yeh I can get behind that. Personally I think the inbuilt EQ is just quicker and does more or less the same thing in the end. But makes sense!
@@cianbrady1557 I use dynamic eq as a sidechain to make vocals duck the reverb. I do the same thing with delay
@Oliseh Azuya I use it for ducking vocals. I make a buss for all vocals and feed that into my reverb return with dynamic eq
Great review, this came up when I was investigating Valhalla Room. Vintage Verb has been a favourite for years now. The Bass Freq and Multiplier I remembered from one of my Lexicon manuals lol.
great great great. love it love it love it. more more more
Great video! Came here expecting a review & ended up getting a thorough lesson on reverb! Thank you, Im subscribing now 😎👍
I lean hard on this and also the Valhalla Room and Delay plugs. Fantastic if not perfect plugins.
Also, the bass mult is the coolest part of this plug and works just like you said. You set a crossover point, everything below that point decays at teh exponent you set with the mult knob, so you can make low freq decay shorter or longer than the master decay time. it works great and is worth playing with.
I got this plug in recently and I currently use it quite often, however I also still use my DAWs stock reverb (RV700) as default and sent reverb effect but I really like the sound and design and probably going to use it way more in the future. Also 50$ is a steal
Bro, you really know your stuff. Salute for the vid
thanks for the spinal tap reference
Thanks for such an informative video.
About the cons part, I can understand your point about all the missing functions such as parametric EQ, sidechain,...but I think since we are using parallel processing, we can add EQ and a sidechains plugin to the send channel before the reverb which can fill in the missing function of this plugin.
Nice review Geoff. Really like Valhalla DSP. I recently bought the Valhalla Ubermod and Delay and both are really brilliant creative plugins. I also have shimmer and room plugins. Thanks, was wondering whether to pick this up as I have a few similar reverb from Lexicon and Eventide. Cheers
Excellent tutorial.
Thank you for this video. It is succinct and helpful. I do use VVV and really love it. I guess I come from that era ...ie the 70's, so maybe there is a sense of comfort in that somehow. I also have Valhalla Room and I use both but I particularly like VVV. It just seems to work. The free stuff from Valahalla is pretty interesting too. They are a good company with the right attitude.
It's no surprise people doubt a $50 plugin.. if you sell a $100,000 diamond for $50, people might pass it up because "eh. it's probably not very good"
But you put Valhalla up against Eventide and other brands, they do VERY well.
The lack of eq point isn't really a major issue. Just put the plugin on a send channel and insert whatever fave eq you want, either before or after the Vintageverb
Yes this was mentioned in the video
He wow! You have inherited Bob Ross his voice! It's a Nice video too :-)
This was great. Cheers mate
Chorused reverb is sick on this thing
I am in love with this thing ❤ ❤ ❤
This is a great channel.
Gave you a 👍 just for saying “aughties” @21:26 Thanks for the fantastic demo! 😎
Happy I earned it ;)
Enjoyed the depth of the review... I can tell you love reverbs. This plugin sounds fantastic. It's sometimes a little harsh on the high end but can be tamed (usually). I think any more parameters would be overwhelm. I also EQ separately anyway. But I agree with you it's a shame that it doesn't have tempo sync - my biggest wish! I'll also add that I'd love to see you do a video that focuses on more practical application of the delay (on vox and other things), as well as shorter length times... The long decays are amazing to hear the quality but something most wouldn't use often in a mix. Thanks!
That’s a great idea Todd. And thanks for the kind words!
@@ManchesterMusic Love you work... we want to hear you do more on this plug!
How does this compare against the Eventide Black hold Reverb plugin? I have Valhalla Vintage verb and use it a lot but I feel like I'm missing something with it...so I'm trying to find something that will fill out what Vintage Verb doesn't do.....Blackhole is on sale for $30 right now and normally is $200.
Yes! It is a crossover! :)
I wish you could gray out the EQ knobs the way you can gray out the mix knob. When I'm flipping between different modes and presets, it gets annoying to have to high pass and low pass my EQ every time.
Just put an EQ before or after the verb instead of using the filters inside of it.
Amazing video! Thank you!!
1970's lets go!!! 😅❤🎉
With predelay you primarily choose how far away the listener receives an audio source. No predelay means far away and the more predelay the closer the source seems to be positioned in front the listener. Usually you don't (except for special effects) need to calculate the predelay as it's used for letting transients through or not without being affected by the wet effect. Rythmical effects are better dialed in by ear anyway to make them less static imo. If everything is synced to the host, it's getting robotic very fast.
The bass options simply are there to prolong or reduce the length of the amount of bass in the reverb tail. In a real room the bass frequencies usually have a longer tail until they fade out as their wave - cycles are much longer than the ones of higher frequencies. The bass modifiers give you the option to get a good tonal balance between high and low frequencies in the dampening section. As usually when the tone is dampened, the higher frequencies are affected much stronger and the bass multiplier helps here in balancing. It's a great feature.
I'd like to be able to switch the EQ pre or post.
It's great to have seperate ER and LR control as that is a huge part in shaping depth perception and positioning the reflection into a space you create for a mix.
As the VVV is a real character reverb and I don't like to use such noise based reverbs when needing long trails, it's just perfect for doing dry reverb stuff with reverb times around 100ms (in this case a bit longer), as the tonal shaping qualities here are just excellent to add body and weight to a source or change the tonal balance. A real great one and imo there's are good reasons why so many people love this plugin. Cheers
I couldn't hear a difference between any of them. I do have high frequency hearing damage, but dang... thought i'd hear some difference.
Damn I struggle with the same damage. Sucks
i check lot of reverb plugins.but this plugins more presence,shimmer ,brighter than other reverb plugins.this plugins really close to vintage reverb modules sound.
What are your favorite Reverbs Geoff? The Sennheiser HD650's are my favorite headphones too!
I am gonna buy first reverb plugin. I am in between Valhalla Room and this one. Which one should i buy? I will use it for mainly vocals and guitars.
Good video. Thank you
thank you for the info.
I like the Stevie Wonder song jammin , the reverb is two delays the first is hard right then the second is hard left, its such a great vocal sound on that track, really vibrant and exciting. not sure if this has the ability to do that. maybe if you have it as an aux and pan it right, then record again with longer slap back pan left, or use a ping pong delay.
Very good review, thank you. Just what I was looking for. I am looking for a good reverb but couldn't decide so far. They all have their pros and cons, but personally I like GUIs like Fabfilter R more than this, where I can see what is happening. But then again it eats up more CPU if you have it on many tracks I guess. Also I'm not a fan of graphical reproductions of Hardware gear in software. Yeah it looks nice, but as long as I cant touch it with your hands, I dont need photorealistic "knobs" on the screen (just saying in general, not the valhalla verbs). Subscribed btw! 👍🏻
I own this - I think it’s so lovely! I sounds great on my vocals and essentially almost everything I put it on. But I 100% agree about the ducking thing!! Really ducking annoying right?! 😅 it’s such a basic feature and they do have it in delay like you said. I wish they’d put it in here! Quick Q… have you tried Valhalla room? What’s your opinion on it? I’m debating whether or not to get it to add to my growing reverb collection as im such a fan of this one and shimmer too. But I wasn’t sure about it on the trial.. anyway would love to know your thoughts on it! Great video btw. You have z very calming presence and reviewing style!
Hey dude. I haven’t tried Valhalla Room yet but now I’m curious. Thanks for the kind words :).
love your style
My biggest gripe with this plug is that there's not output volume and it's so quiet...so I need to either compress afterward or use a trim plug after it. What's everyone else's experience in that regard? Cheers
Good call. A trim would be helpful
I have a suggestion for people looking for a nice algoritmic reverb at a VERY low price, that is Phoenixverb from Exponential Audio (I'm not sponsored, I'm noone, who the hell would ever sponsor me?😂).
I bought mine in offer at Plugin Boutique at 8.03£, that I guess is around 10€, and this thing sound great for me. It has such a huge amount of controls and preset that my feeling is that you can do almost anything I want with it, with a great sound quality.
Maybe you could be interested in doing a review on it but first of all I suggest you try it, for me it has an AMAZING quality/price rate that makes me feel I can save my 50 bucks and have more fun. Am I wrong?
All of Expos stuff is incredible
@@ManchesterMusic True, and at 8£ is even more incredible 🤩
Anyway I like Valhalla, only... THEY NEVER MAKE AN OFFER! You go on their site, it's 50 bucks, end of story.
I understand they don't need to make offers because they sell anyway, and they're definitely not expensive for the quality, still...
Everyone? Could be - it's all about convenience. But cheap, and sounds great.
Thanks for the informative video. I learned a lot.
Great content.
Now this is a review! Thank you. Do you have an affiliate link for the Valhalla plugin?
Nope but there’s an affiliate link for anything on Sweetwater.
@@ManchesterMusic Alright, Sweet! Well, I was on the fence for buying the plugin. Thanks to your review anyway I just purchased it and downloaded directly from Valhalladsp site. 😎
Hey, great in depth demo, thank you! I was wondering if you have a view on the Exponential Audio Reverbs? I think they're absolutely awesome.
Which one 80s hardware reverb would u choose?
Concerning the lack of documentation: Couldn´t we look at documentations of the original hardware to get an idea of what these knobs might do? They seem to be really protective of this info. Probably because their stuff can´t be reverse engineered easily this way. Anyways if you like REALLY want to know what these knobs do, you should take a look at documentations of the most popular reverbs used in the 70s and 80s
This seems like a lot to ask of the customer.
@@ManchesterMusic definately! I feel like they don't really want us know certain stuff in order to protect their product from being reverse engineered. But thats just my conspiracy brain acting up ;)
Man this Reverb sounds Elite to me... The Pros definitely outweigh the Cons. As far as tempo calculations & all that, is it really that serious any way? I try to go
by Feeling more than anything when Mixing
What's your favourite in the box reverb? Nice vid.
Thanks, I have a question please, what do you think is the better way to add reverb/delay to mono guitar track? add them to effect channel or create a stereo track with reverb and send the guitar to this channel ?
I personally like creating stereo reverbs Auxs and sending mono signals to them. But do whatever sounds best to your ears and serves the song.
YOU'RE A PRE-DELAYIST! - you discriminate against reverb pluings that do not automatically calculate pre-delay times.... Lol... Great video Man! Reallly enjoyed it!