Thank you so much for sending the patch! I copied your Airwindows presets into my test template to compare to the We Are Stardust (W.A.S.) at its default settings.
In these tests, Galactic3 actually sounds pretty good, although, despite being at max, the decay is slightly shorter than with W.A.S. And to my ears, it sounds slightly more percussive and granular, not as etheric as W.A.S.
With kCosmos, I lowered the Regen knob from 1.0 to 0.75, as the decay was a bit too long. While it again is a really nice, spacious reverb, I think the created harmonics are not as smooth and the preset does overall not sound as full, is ‘darker in mood’ and more mysterious than W.A.S.
So, both Airwindows presets, despite not exactly matching W.A.S., are still pretty usable. Thank you again for the recommendation!
I agree that it’s really easy to complain about reverbs, and your point of feedback ringing is also well taken. In the end, I think you can never have too many options for reverb to find the one that fits best.
I’m a little surprised that there is much less talk about convolution reverb, as it can significantly expand the number of options. I suppose it just is one step too removed to always have to keep track of a sample with your reverb module. And in VCV Rack, Convolver is only available with the Pro version.
About Valhalla Super Massive and comparing it to other Delay/Reverbs
Valhalla Super Massive is indeed (still) pretty unique in the Delay/Reverb domain. And especially great for, well, super massive reverbs. Hard to compare with other Delay/Reverb modules due to the many different Modes (algorithms) that Super Massive offers, while also offering control over the various parameters of these various modes/algorithms.
About the various Modes/Algorithms
Adding to the amount of modes/algorithms, each individual modes/algorithm is somewhat unusual/experimental/unique in its design/configuration. All algorithms were designed with maximum clarity in mind (e.g. no or minimal filters in the feedback loops), making them very suitable for (very) long tails.
On the Valhalla site the Supper Massive story starts with:
The Surprise of Valhalla Supermassive
Right before everything shut down in March 2020, I traveled up to Victoria, British Columbia, to give a few lectures at the University of Victoria (so much fun – I want to return someday!). As part of these lectures, I created a few example reverbs in Max4Live to show the class. One of them had a bunch of allpass delays in series, with the spacing controlled by a Warp control. As soon as the shutdown happened, I started working on a new plugin called ValhallaSupermassive, which allowed me to play with various feedback delay configurations.
It turns out that ValhallaSupermassive was a MUCH better home for the Matrix style ideas than ValhallaDelay would have been! I was able to try the basic “4 delays in parallel with warped delay lengths and variable scattering matrix” in the Supermassive Lyra mode, but was able to expand this to larger numbers of delays in parallel. I extended this to all sorts of series/parallel/nested combinations that allowed me to try out all sorts of Michael Gerzon-influenced structures that didn’t have a home in a “standard” reverb.
An overview of the various modes:
So, it’s more useful an meaningful to compare an individual Super Massive Mode/Algorithm to some other Delay/Reverb module/plugin and/or algorithm then to compare it a a whole…
Maybe because we take it for granted by now…but ValleyPlateau offers a huge range of delay/reverb options.
It offers wide-range controls to balance Pre Delay, Size, Decay, Diffusion and Modulation (using an internal LFO). It als offers Input HP/LP filters and Reverb HP/LP filters and individual Dry/Wet Level controls (VCA’s). And all of this is CV controllable too.
It can go from subtle rooms to MASSIVE reverbs.
Still my go-to Reverb in VCV Rack, ever since it was introduced.
And I need to play more with Plateau, never considered it for long deep verb since it is at heart a plate reverb, right? Will spend more time with this, thanks!
One oddball that might also be worth experimenting with for some folks is a paid VST that I acquired just because it was in an on-sale Arturia bundle: Rev Intensity. More of a colorful effect, but it can do straightforward reverbs and has a “Freeze” button. There’s nothing longer than that.
It’s very tricky indeed aka FreqEcho was one of first things I tried to rebuild when I started with VCV.
I used FreqEcho in a live setting situation to manipulate the sound from my instrument. Needles to say I did not really succeed to rebuild it in VCV. But I also haven’t looked at that patch for quite some time, feels like a year at least. Now I’m actually curious if I would come up with new ideas after learning more about VCV and modular synthesis …
But I also need to revisit SuperMassive again as a reverb.
@kwurqx Within VCV I mostly use Plateau right now as well. That’s also a very flexible reverb for sure. You can also do Karplus-Strong synthesis with it which I found out by accident and which is now the basis in one of my sfx patches.
with stoermelder8FACE mk2, BogaudioOFFSET and a lot of patience in tuning it over two octaves…
