Creative Effect of the Year

ValhallaDelay $50

Web valhalladsp.com Format Mac/PC

Our Mixing and Mastering Effect of the Year award category (opposite page) covers more subtle effects and outboard, those concerned with tweaking and compressing. More outlandish effects can be mustered from the winning and runner up plugins within this Creative category of effects.

With that in mind, it’s a delay that steals the show, and from a company who are used to plaudits: ValhallaDSP. They specialise in reverbs – and also plugins that all cost 50 bucks apiece – so ValhallaDelay is an obvious extension of their core philosophy.

It has seven modes that deliver a huge range of effects within the delay genre. You start out with Tape Mode, which is inspired by the classic Roland RE-201 and RE-301 Space Echo; HiFi

Mode delivers cleaner-sounding tape type delays while BBD specialises in more intense, darker bucket brigade delays; Digital is based on Lexicon-type delay boxes; Pitch lets you shift the delays up or down by up to two octaves; RevPitch does the same but backwards; and finally Ghost is a more extreme and ‘analogue’ version of Pitch.

That pretty much covers any type of delay we can think of, and all from a plugin that sets you back almost silly money. Understandably, we were profuse in our compliments: “ValhallaDelay is not only up there with the best- sounding delay plugins we’ve ever heard, but also stands as one of the most comprehensive and versatile, thanks to the rich variety of sonic flavours brought by the Modes, Styles, Diffusion control and various ‘aging’ processes.”

And we concluded: “It should come as no surprise that Valhalla are every bit as good at delay effects as they are reverb. Utterly unmissable.” Very much a worthy and creative winner, then.

271 » 10/10