How big is it? The latest from developer Sean Costello has networks of delays up to two seconds – as in, each delay – for lush shorter reverberation all the way to epic stretches of minutes at a time.
I was all set to say this was worth the money, not knowing the price. It’s free, which is insane but – go buy some of the other great Valhalla stuff with the money you save, obviously.
It’s a tempo-synced delay. It’s a network of delays for short, lush, even plate-like models. It also can extend into reverbs so big that… they could practically just be a finished ambient piece.
Valhalla is one of the more essential plug-in developers, creator of a number of legendary delays, reverbs, and the like. But Supermassive is special even by those standards.
There are actually multiple models built-in, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to describe this as a combination of effects in one. It’s unique enough that you might want to take time to learn it as an instrument.
Full specs:
- Tempo synced delays, up to 2 seconds
- Multiphase delay modulation
- DENSITY control, that allows you to dial in pointillistic echoes, lush reverbs, echo clusters, and all sorts of sounds in between.
- Eight unique delay/reverb MODES, named after celestial objects:
- Gemini: Fast attack, shorter decay, high echo density.
- Hydra: Fast-ish attack, shorter decay, low to high echo density (depending on the DENSITY control setting)
- Centaurus: Medium attack, longer decay, medium to high echo density (depending on the DENSITY control setting)
- Sagittarius: Slow attack, longer decay, high echo density
- Great Annihilator: Medium attack, very long decay, medium to high echo density (depending on the DENSITY control setting)
- Andromeda: Slowest attack, very long decay, very high echo density
- Lyra: Fast attack, shorter decay, low echo density
- Capricorn: Fast attack, shorter decay, medium echo density
- Cross-platform preset browser
Here are some examples:
Jeremy Wentworth gets some total madness out of it – here it is running inside VCV Rack modular (free inside free!):
It’s just gorgeous stuff. It’s rich enough in fact that I approach this differently from other reverbs – I’d really want to play and compose with it, not just use it as a color on something finished.
I’ve been working with the gold master build since the weekend. I even used it on two tracks from the EP I just released of Moog sounds – one with a very light sound that acts almost like a chorus, and gives the recording a guitar-ish quality, the LunarLander1969 and Gemini model, which is short and dense. (Yeah, okay, I know the LEM went up on Apollo, not Gemini; I’m sure Sean knows, too.) It’s a subtle effect on the opening track (I even add a plate reverb after it).
Where you can hear the plug-in more clearly is on the last track, where I bring it in and out:
But I essentially have to use this preset regularly, because it’s named after one of my all-time favorite songs / all-time favorite movies. John Carpenter for the win. I have a feeling some flat mates and families feel a bit like this crew now. Let’s have some music in here.