Valhalla ÜberMod

I finally got around to buying ValhallaDSP's ÜberMod plugin. 

I wasn't really sure I'd have an application for it, since I'm not into the whole sound-mangling thing. Plus I already had plenty of delays, choruses and reverbs. But after demoing it I was convinced.

As the name suggests, this plugin is capable of extreme modulation. Extreme to the extent that the resulting output can become completely unrecognizable. Now for me personally, weird for weirdness's sake is almost never a goal, and I'd have no use for ÜberMod if that's all it did. Fortunately, it also does subtle things just as competently.

The first thing I tried it on was one of my typically drab and boring vocals. I applied two instances of ÜberMod to the vox bus and automated their respective mix parameters so that I could morph between them. The subtle "DiffChorus" preset worked well for the verses, which I also added a little Drive to. The more obvious Diffuse8TopEnsemble preset was nice on the chorus, and I added a lot of Drive to that one.

Then I moved on to a lead guitar track whose only effect had been Sonitus Delay. Substituting ÜberMod for the Sonitus, I cycled through the presets under the "Echoes" category. All were way too much, as they default to a 50% mix and 60-70% feedback - a bit wet for most things, certainly for a melodic guitar lead. But dialed back, they were all very nice. Again, turning up the Drive control added texture. Every one of the Echoes presets could be made to sound good on the lead, but I settled on the Random8TapDiffuseEcho preset with some added Drive (I'm really getting to like that Drive feature!).

Next up was a sax solo that didn't really need anything but some reverb, but by now I was convinced ÜberMod could do wonders on anything.  Well, maybe. On the sax I was able to make it sound absolutely NOT like a saxophone, cool but not what the song needed. I could make it sound like TWO saxophones, but again not what was needed.  In the end, I decided the original reverb was best.

I admit that after just one day I'm far from being an expert on ÜberMod, but at this point I gotta say that for instant gratification it's one of the more fun purchases I've made.

Timeless boggled my brain. The modulation options are so deep you need to attend a training course to figure them all out. 

And I could not think of a single time when I'd thought to myself "gee, I wish I could use an envelope to modulate a high-pass filter on the third echo". So I ended up passing on Timeless, at least until I become as rich as yorolpal and bapu and start collecting plugins like some people collect snow globes. 
 
ÜberMod is a different animal. It's not nearly as sophisticated as Timeless for crafting unique delay patterns and cross-modulations, but that's a plus in my book. I really don't want to spend half an hour tweaking an effect. I just want to come up with something that fits the mix, easily and quickly. ÜberMod's controls are easy to understand and mostly do exactly what their labels imply they'll do. I like ValhallaRoom for the same reasons.


I am still a big fan of FabFilter. Pro-Q is all I use these days for equalization. Pro-C is at the top of my short list for compressors. Pro-L gets used about 50% of the time on the master bus (Ozone for the other 50%). I still haven't figured out how to use Pro-L on the drum bus, though.

bitflipper


Timeless boggled my brain. The modulation options are so deep you need to attend a training course to figure them all out. 

And I could not think of a single time when I'd thought to myself "gee, I wish I could use an envelope to modulate a high-pass filter on the third echo". So I ended up passing on Timeless, at least until I become as rich as yorolpal and bapu and start collecting plugins like some people collect snow globes  lava lamps.

 

I own Timeless and Volcano which came in the Creative Bundle.  That bundle also contains the Twin 2 synth, the only thing from FF about which I'm not totally wowed.  But now the Creative Bundle also contains Saturn, which is massively cool.  My point?  The last few years, FF has had a holiday sale of 25% off all bundles.  You might want to think about start saving now and pick up the three amazing effects plug-ins for at least a little bit of a discount.  Expensive?  Yes.  Worth it?  I guess it depends on how well stocked you are already, but it's defintely top drawer stuff (not that you don't know that already).

I've just been experimenting with automating UM - and opening up a whole new world of possibilities. What's fun is to ramp up to some extreme modulation or feedback just at the tail end of a phrase, making the reverb tail go nuts as it fades away. 

I think the pitch modulation options could be very cool applied just to reverb tails, kind of like a whammy bar for your vocal. I'll have to try that...

Ditto!

These are indeed front line plugins. I have all three, Room, Ubermod, Shimmer.
 
There may be some overlap and ability to create effects in one with the other.
 
Ubermod likely gets the widest range of possibilities, delays to reverbs.
 
I had originally listened to the online demos of Shimmer on an acoustic and thought that it was confusing the effect by adding a synth or strings in the background of the mix. Then demoed the demo and realized that there was no synth. Octave up and octave down reverb sampling did the real thing.
 
Quality for price is about as good as it gets. Decent demo versions of all three available. $150 was a no brainer.
 
http://www.valhalladsp.com/
 
Pick up the free echo unit.
 
John