New Software Review: ShimmerVerb by Eventide
Eventide furthers the H9 Plugin Series with ShimmerVerb—can this unique reverb secure a spot in your mix template?
Adding to their consistently growing line of H9 Series Plugins, Eventide has bequeathed unto us yet another algorithm ported from their popular H9 Harmonizer platform: ShimmerVerb.
Touting that this may or may not be what instruments sound like in heaven, Eventide has implemented reverb, pitch shifting, feedback, and some basic EQ into the design of ShimmerVerb, creating a reverb tool they purport as “glossy and gratifying”.
With Eventide’s tremendous reputation of excellence and wide usage of products by top-tier musicians and studio folk worldwide, it’s expected ShimmerVerb will shine.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Features
ShimmerVerb shares the same general aesthetic and user-friendly GUI as the other offerings in the H9 Plugin Series. There are a total of ten knobs that make up the main controls for the plugin: Mix, Decay and Size for the reverb, rotary knobs for Pitch A and B, Delay, controls for a three-band crossover network labeled Low, Mid, and High, and a Feedback control.
On either side of the plugin you will see large vertical sliders for input and output level, with corresponding 10-segment meters above each indicating signal level before and after the algorithm. There are controls for tempo, a large horizontal display for Eventide’s handy Ribbon, and three switches across the bottom, labeled Active, Hotswitch, and Freeze—more on all of these later.
As expected, the Mix knob is your wet/dry control. The reverb Decay and Size knobs operate in an arbitrary, unit-less range of 0-100. The controls for Pitch A and B operate in cents, where 1 cent equals 1/100th of a semitone. The values on these knobs will only move in amounts that reflect pleasant musical intervals, such as perfect fourths, perfect fifths, one octave, one octave + perfect fifth, and 2 octaves. Being confined to these non-abrasive intervals probably has something to do with the overall pleasant and smooth quality of reverb that ShimmerVerb is said to produce.
The Delay is located post-reverb, and pre-pitch shift in the signal chain. Here, you can adjust the delay time in milliseconds, or have it be note-based, depending on your settings in the Tempo section.
The three-band crossover network, which helps you tailor the frequency spectrum, is a crucial addition as I am always filtering and EQing my time-based effects like reverb and delay. Here, the Low, Mid, and High controls enable you to tweak your balance, post-reverb and pitch shifter.
ShimmerVerb’s feedback control, at face value, is not exactly what it seems. Pulled directly from the manual, Eventide notes that the Feedback knob “Controls the amount of pitch shifted signal in the reverb tail, feeding back the pitch shifted reverb output into the reverb input, from 0 to 100. Beyond 100 are two performance modes. Pitch Kill locks out the pitch shifters, but feeds the reverb, allowing you to freeze the ShimmerVerb pitch climb at opportune times. Freeze locks out the pitch shifters and freezes the reverb [set to infinite], allowing for dry soloing on top of the frozen reverb.”
This also explains the function of the Freeze button, found in the lower right-hand corner of the GUI.
The Tempo section has three modes: Off (delay functions in milliseconds), Sync (delay is note-based, synced to your DAW), and Manual (delay is also note-based, but but according to a tempo you specify).
The Hotswitch button, found on the bottom of the plugin, enables you to alternate effortlessly between two different sounds. The Active button, found just to the left of the Hotswitch, is a simple on/off switch. Like all controls found on ShimmerVerb, the three switches on the bottom of the plugin can be controlled via MIDI CC.
The last thing to note with ShimmerVerb is a very powerful feature seen across the entirety of the Eventide H9 Plugin Series: the Ribbon. Simply put, this enables you to set a range between which any combination of any of the controls can function, and seamlessly morph between them, by dragging horizontally (or automating!), the Ribbon. Such methods of tweakery within a plugin resemble the way you can adjust more than one knob at a time on a piece of hardware in real life.
So does ShimmerVerb actually sound like it’s built into the intercom system at the pearly gates?
In Use
Yes. Let me tell you why.
As the ShimmerVerb user manual specifically notes that guitars, keys, and vocals as sources on which ShimmerVerb excels, this was where I directed most of my focus as I put the plugin through its paces.
Guitar, off the bat, with the factory default setting, sounded awesome. If I were to have to choose a single adjective, I would describe the sound as angelic. With the pitch values set to 1204 and 1193 cents, respectively, there is just something to the higher octaves being blurred and obscured by the reverb that creates a sort of magic. And the lovely chorus effect created by the slight variance in pitch values does a beautiful thing to the stereo image.
But do we get the opposite of heavenly when we implement negative pitch values? I took it to keys to find out.
The first thing I reached for when starting to work with negative pitch values was the crossover network—specifically the low band. What I expected when I tweaked the mix to fully wet was to have to start hacking away at the lows, but it is hard to get this plugin to sound bad! Instead, I just got the impression of traveling further and further down a hallway, and away from the keyboard sound being treated here with ShimmerVerb.
This plugin transports you to a very ethereal space, and although I felt as I was traveling almost scarily further and further away from the keyboard in this context, there was still something soothing about the experience, due to ShimmerVerb’s silky aesthetic.
When moving onto vocals I was very curious to see if this was the kind of plugin that can earn a spot, long term, on my mix template. Would it be too weird? Would it sound like there were tiny, pitch shifted clones of the vocalist singing along miles away? (For the record, I would prefer that not be the case).
The resultant sound was pleasant! The vibe here reminded me of guitar pedals that emulate synths, supplying a subtle, and again, “obscured”, bed of pleasant high frequency information without blurring the source signal too much. It was almost as if the vocal signal was processed through a synth, going fully wet through a reverb. The quality of the effect ShimmerVerb produced in this context was rich, complex, and fully enveloped the vocal, but without being too, too weird.
This would not be my first or main reverb choice on vocals, however I can surely see myself blending this in for effect on a section where the vocal needs to be sent to a different, more elegant and graceful space. A cool effect for sure!
To Be Critical
It’s hard to find anything to fault with ShimmerVerb. I suppose the sound it creates can ultimately be conjured from outside the use of this actual plugin by lining up a reverb, micro shift, delay, and EQ in series. But to me, the less plugins the better, always.
With ShimmerVerb, Eventide supplies us with a one-stop shop for an effect that can certainly find use on plenty of the melodic and lead-type tracks in your production, as well as some of your more pad-like support tracks that can benefit from a little space and texture.
Summing it Up
There seems to be no indication that Eventide will slow down carrying their algorithms over to the H9 Plugin Series. Having reviewed a handful of other offerings in the series, I am confident ShimmerVerb will certainly find use in my future productions.
ShimmerVerb is available for Mac and Windows in AAX, VST2, and VST3 formats, priced at $99, as well as a standalone iOS app for $14.99. You can request a free demo from Eventide here; if you’re in the market for a reverb with a very pleasant twist, I strongly suggest you take ShimmerVerb for a spin.
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