Review: Valhalla VintageVerb

One of my friends had an off-the-cuff statement that has stuck with me: “When I die, bury me in reverb…”. I may understand where he is coming from - especially since I found a beautiful-sounding, simple-to-edit reverb that I literally use in every patch and Live project. That reverb is Valhalla VintageVerb, and it represents the best $50 I’ve ever spent in my musical life.

What makes it so special? Well, first of all, the reverb algorithm is spectacular, avoiding most of the plastic/hollow sound of similar algo-verbs. Secondly, its interface makes it easy to zero in upon (and change) the most important controls - especially with the huge Decay control, which can change the reverb decay time from .20 seconds to a whopping 70 seconds. Round this out with some tweaky options for damping, modulation and EQ and you have a fully-spec’d reverb that can be turned into almost any classic reverb sound with ease.

And in the end, it’s the sound that counts. I find the Valhalla VintageVerb to be - hands down - the best sounding reverb, either hardware or software, that I’ve ever experienced. Given that it is a simple VST effect, it couldn’t be much easier to include within my favorite patches.