It doesn't sound like a real space to me, it has a "sound", I can hear it in the mix as Valhalla Room reverb. It's true what people say: Buy both, as they compliment each other.Well, I've had VRoom since early 2013. I have VVV as well, but that can also sound bad on a lot of stuff, if you don't dial it in. But rest assured, VRoom will put a very big smile on your face after only spending a few hours with it. The 'Vintage' comes from the old Lexicon reverb units from the 70/80s. Room provides a rather 'shiny' reverb which is better suited for big Synth sound walls, while Vintage Verb is more sorta lush and colored sounding.
I don't even know how to use reverb that well. It seems that it better fits the Hip Hop and Trap Style / Vibe, while Valhalla Room is more towards Techno. So maybe simulating drums or guitar that exists in wtf amount of space won't sound good. It's true what people say: Buy both, as they compliment each other. But there are some other ones which can add personality, color, and even alter the sound of the source quite a. But rest assured, VRoom will put a very big smile on your face after only spending a few hours with it. Reverb plugins are more commonly used to give your tracks and mixes a sense of space. It functions as a VST Plugin, an Audio Units Plugin, a VST 3 Plugin and an AAX Plugin. I don't even know how to use reverb that well. ValhallaRoom by Valhalla DSP is a Virtual Effect Audio Plugin for macOS and Windows. I get no discount from Valhalla for recommending their products. Then again, I only tackled it by persevering and seeing 'what does this knob/slider do?'. I took a very long time to get into Room, thinking pretty much the same as you. and then 'dial' in the space or room simulation you want. The whole concept of Valhalla Room and 'making it useful' as you so put it, is to pick certain instruments, be they vocals, guitar, strings, drums etc. The high praise for it in this forum is something I struggle to understand.Valhalla Room is a space simulator. I have no idea how to make Valhalla Room useful. This is all conjecture - there are a few people on this list (Michael Carnes, Casey) that would know more of the history first hand.Vintage Verb is nice. ValhallaVintageVerb is a postmodern reverb plugin, inspired by the classic hardware digital reverbs of the 1970s and 1980s. One of the beta testers did some measurements in Cubase running in XP on his Core2Duo 2.4 GHz machine, and reports the following CPU numbers: Large Room 9. These algorithms were too wild to be included in Valhalla DSP’s other plugins. ValhallaSupermassive is based on a set of reverb and delay algorithms that intentionally sound artificial and otherwordly.
I also recall hearing that Barry Blesser (designer of the EMT250) worked on the PCM80, and that the Concert Hall algorithm in the PCM bundle was based on Blesser's diagram, so it might be that the PCM80 Concert Hall is Blesser's take on the original 224 algorithm. The latest ValhallaRoom build (1.0.8, still in beta testing) has 9 reverb modes, with pretty big variations of CPU usage. Valhalla DSP has released ValhallaSupermassive, a freeware delay effect in VST, AAX, and AU plugin formats for digital audio workstations on PC and Mac. IIRC, there is a Concert Hall algorithm in there, that sounds similar to the PCM70 Concert Hall, but without hearing the unit it is hard to tell. I'm not sure what is going on in the PCM80, as I haven't messed with one or seen the code. The Concert Hall in the PCM70 is pretty close to the 224 algorithm, just with some changes related to adding a Size control, and with sonic changes associated with different sampling rate & convertors. The controls are intuitive and the GUI is minimalistic as always with Valhalla plugins. Its sound is just incredible even after testing it against other reverbs quite frequently (yes, I do it once a year at least. It seems like David Griesinger made a breakthrough while developing the Rich Chamber and Rich Plate for the 224XL, and used this type of algorithm for most of the future Lexicons. ValhallaRoom by Valhalla DSP is my most favorite reverb. UA nailed it IMHO.The PCM60/70 used very different algorithms than the 224. Surf guitar tends to have a lot of spring reverb. King Tubby tracks feature spring reverb very high in the mix, often processed by a swept highpass filter. The 224 has a specific sound, different from a PCM 60, 70 or 80 for example. Spring reverb was heavily used in dub music - not dubstep, but the original 1970s dub music.