lol … it was in one of my early patch contest videos:
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Yes, I like a lot both of them (especially DissonantVerb) but those terrible bursts often spoil my pleasure, alas… Really no way to exterminate it, Antonio?
I’ve lost a couple of days, and I’m pretty good at finding bugs (it’s my real life job) but this is very elusive: never find a configuration to reproduce it
I see, it’s really very disappointing to not be able to find such bugs. Anyway, most of the time I don’t hear those bursts and in many of my patches they (verbs) work OK, but sometimes they (bursts :)) cause so much nervous irritation that I immediately change them for ehmm… Plateau usually 
Building a shimmer yourself would be more interesting, but if you’re in love with specifically Valhalla Shimmer, just buy the host module and Shimmer itself.
you can get pretty close with clouds (audible instruments texture synthesizer): pitch all the way up, small size, large density and texture, large spread, lots of reverb, feedback at about 0.4, and wet/dry to taste.
example patch: 28 shimmer.vcv (8.9 KB)
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Just whipped this up on my laptop and thought it sounded pretty darn good. Here’s a link to a “Strip” patch that is my take on a ShimmerVerb.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4leoyk54otvwfq8/Verb%20-%20ShimmerVerb.vcvss?dl=0
What you’ll need:
- MSC Hack Mixers
- Valley Plateau
- NYSTHI STKPitchshifter
- Stoermelder’s Strip (optional - in case you just want to use the above preset versus setting this up manually)
How to set it up:
- Load those three plugins, route the Mixer main outputs to your interface
- Set the volume of channel 1 to 0.5, the volume of Aux Channel 1 to 0.5, and the send level for Aux Channel 1 to 0.5
- Setup Plateau as a send/return on Aux1 (100% wet)
- Send ANOTHER set of outputs from Plateau into the Input of STKPitchshifter - Set the Pitchshifting to 4% (100% wet)
- Send the stereo output of STKPitchshifter to Input Channel 2 on the Mixer - volume at 0
- Set Channel 2 to “Pre-Fader”
- Begin increasing the Aux 1 send level on Input Channel 1 to add reverb - you will not hear pitch shifted Shimmer yet
- Use the Aux 1 send on Input Channel 2 to add the amount of Pitchshifted Shimmer effect you want
This setup allows you to create a feedback loop within Plateau where the output is going into a pitchshifter, and that output is being returned and sent back into Plateau again via the pre-fader send on Channel 2, creating the Shimmer effect.
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Just adding to the above: 2% sounds good in STK Pitchshifter, and adding a filter after the filter (but before returning to the mixer) also sounds good for taming some of the artificial high frequencies. Fun to experiment with this!
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I so wish this thing would just do an octave or semitones. Is doing a round percentage number accomplishing this you think? I’ve tried this module for a shimmer before and never sounded quite right to me. I’ll have to try the settings you mentioned above. The best I’ve heard so far in Rack is Clouds set to one octave higher with feedback & reverb turned up.
I agree, the best i’ve seen is using clouds, i don’t know if you have checked the musical pals project we did with Ablaut and Rsmus7, Ablaut used this technique on our pad, and it really gives a nice Shimmer effect
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yeah, i expanded it from the technique i mentioned above by adding another clouds module in time-stretcher mode. i’m really happy with the result.
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It definitely turned out really nice you guys, I need to play with this Pitch shifter time stretcher mode a bit more in Clouds
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Why is it that there is no dedicated shimmer module for VCV?
Texture Generator and the clone Supercell are the default “shimmer “ modules in VCV. They don’t act like guitar pedal shimmers, because they can do far more and really require the end user to get expressive with the module. If you need something more familiar, pay for Host and access any VST ( like Valhalla Shimmer) directly from your rack. Host opens many possibilities so it’s a no brainer for creative patching even if you do not use it for shimmer.
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@thisguy I’m not sure why nobody has coded a dedicated module, I’m guessing you need to create a decent reverb algorithm first which isn’t easy. Also, you can just stick Clouds in a feedback loop with Plateau and it sounds easily good enough to make coding your own a pointless exercise (unless you want the challenge of learning reverb DSP!). Here’s my take from a few years ago, just use this if you need a shimmer. I also have Host FX and the Valhalla one, I honestly think this compares quite well.
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Also I totally agree with @cubistguitar, get Host and you can try using Supermassive for reverb and a better pitch shifter, and also other effects in the feedback loop. I have various versions of shimmer in Standalone rack, Cardinal and Pro, and I think the best one was using both Supermassive and Plateau in series with a free Kilohearts pitch shift. It’s also a lot of fun to try other VST plugins with feedback, Digitalis is another favourite of mine for this.
I’m sure you are probably right, I haven’t tried the solution you suggest, but the original point is still valid. Supermassive is not available on all the platforms that Rack supports so this solution is not universal - sure, we can use wrappers to still use these VSTs in other platforms but it is jumping through hoops and doesn’t always work well.
Sure but Clouds makes a really good shimmer and is "universal " so there is that. The only “problem” is that you have to dial it in yourself, and it obviously can be more than a shimmer so you may wonder off… To respond to the original inquiry maybe nobody thought it was necessary because we have pitch shifters, we have reverbs, we have Clouds… And a lot of people like to patch their effects, at least a little bit. I don’t know, I don’t code, but if I did I would definitely focus on things we can’t already do easily and in various ways.
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Yep, Plateau + Clouds does the job so there isn’t a huge need for it. I used it on my last space ambient patch and thought it sounded just as good as dedicated plugins.
I think one of the things we’re missing (for me personally at least) would be a really good native pitch shifting module. The pitch shift in Clouds doesn’t sound great, particularly on acoustic instruments although it works absolutely fine in a shimmer.
If everyone relies on Host, then developers might stop making new dedicated modules for VCV. I can use the clouds plateau preset though for now. Thanks
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