I like to use big, long tail reverbs in my music meditation recordings, especially vocal recordings, and Shimmer did not disappoint. Valhalla Shimmer is the first plug-in that intrigued me out of the four available. The reverb settings are displayed in the screenshots provided. I also include an audio example of me playing flute through a setting in each reverb. In this article, I briefly cover the unique aspects of each. The four Reverbs include Plate, Room, Shimmer and Vintage, and all have wonderfully different textures depending on your needs. The Valhalla reverbs have been released for a few years, but if you somehow missed the opportunity to try and buy these fantastic plugs, here’s a gentle reminder to go explore. And, just from a few introductory minutes on each plug-in, I saw this to be true. His work is ‘grounded in a deep appreciation and analysis of analog and digital techniques of the past, and extending these foundations into new directions of awesome.’ His goal was to create powerful tools with simple interfaces that could be accessible to all producing musicians. You’ll have to look no further than his Manifesto on the website to learn how passionate he is about digital signal processing algorithms for audio. In the search for a perfect reverb I came across Valhalla DSP, founded by algorithmic wizard Sean Costello.
