Valhalla Supermassive Review
Let’s take a look at a wonderful free delay reverb from Valhalla, the Valhalla Supermassive!
Valhalla are known for their amazing delay, reverb, shimmer and many more great plugins. And Supermassive is one of their few free plugins, with the quality staying on the premium end.
But there is a catch, as Valhalla Supermassive presets are themed around celestial objects – and the results aren’t far off! The presets include Gemini, Hydra, Centaurus, Sagittarius, Andromeda, Lyra, Capricorn and Great Annihilator.
And that is a powerful sounding list. But what do these do? Well, Hydra, for example, is a decently fast attack reverb with shorter decay and low to high echo density, which you can control.
The Valhalla Supermassive reverb includes 8 presets in total, all of which are meant to inspire and bring some fun. The name says it all – Supermassive.
And that really is the point, of creating wonderful, massive space-odyssey like spaces with massive delays and reverb. Valhalla Supermassive plugin is made from the heart, it seems, from a company that has a history with great and wonderful products.
And like mentioned before, the quality is just a high as their paid products, for example, the plugin also allows for tempo synced delay, that goes as much as up to 2 seconds.
It offers delay modulation in multiphase, density control, which allows you to tap in pointillistic echoes, amazing lush revers, echo clusters and much much more and a cross-platform preset browser, which is a very similar list to their premium products.
And that is not to downplay their pay to use plugins but to highlight the quality of their free to use products. This Valhalla Supermassive delay is just as much of a reverb.
Once you boot up the Supermassive you will see a very similar GUI if you have used other Valhalla Room products. On the left-hand side, you will find the mix and width knobs, which like the rest of the knobs are very accurate and deep.
The two biggest knobs around the centre are the delay and warp dials, as it is a delay, with reverb like capabilities. The warp is an amazing feature, allowing you to create wonderful and eerie warping sounds.
Moving towards the right-hand side, you’ll see the feedback and density knobs, two modulation knobs for rate and depth and two EQ knobs for high and low frequencies.
Once again, this Valhalla supermassive vst is not meant to be your goto reverb or delay, but more so a creative tool to explore different sounds and spaces, create something ambient.
And let us be real, the Valhalla Supermassive price can’t be beaten. Because it’s free.
Different use cases will lead to very interesting results because if you use it for a melody, it sounds somewhat like an arpeggiator, which might lead to fantasy-like effects, but if you drop this reverb vst onto a snare, you are now able to create powerful snare hits, rolls and transitions.
Utilising the delay and warp while recording or by modulating it, you are able to achieve some really interesting stuff. It opens many doors for creative, glitchy feeling raisers, down filters and anything you can think of and because it is free, it’s a tool worth trying.
For a different example, if you plug your guitar in and pass it through the Supermassive in a similar fashion as a pad, you get a very nice, distant and spacey reverb, that turns every chord into a droning, amazing sound, filling the space wonderfully.
Overall, it is a great expressive tool, that you might find to be a great delay/reverb or just a nice tool to play around with and design some nice sounds.
If you have a melody you have given up on, try putting the Supermassive on top of it and playing around, you might be surprised by what this little thing can do.
