A COLLABORATIVE POST BY IAN HOWARD
ASSISTANT EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST
Valhalla Freq Echo is a free plugin for both Mac and Windows made by Valhalla DSP. This plugin allows you to add delay emulation as well target specific frequencies to modulate. Here's a rundown of what the plugin can do!
Like most reverb/delay plugins, Valhalla Freq Echo comes with Mix, Delay and Feedback adjustments. These allow you to add and adjust the delay time, tempo and how wet/dry the delay will be. The Low and High cut settings act as low and high cut eq filters to further change the sound.
The unique part of this plugin comes in with the Shift adjustment. This setting allows you to target a specific pitch to shift and alter. This is a tough setting to explain so I will give some examples.
I took a simple water drop sound effect which is a good example for adding delay and for this plugin.
Like any other delay plugin I added a bit of Delay, Feedback, High cut and adjusted the wet/dry balance until I found a good balance I liked.
After I got the delay settings dialed in, I started messing with the Shift function and come up with a lot of cool and wacky sounds.
One thing to keep in mind is that there is a setting to switch to Stereo or Mono within the plugin. Playing in stereo mode does alter/add delay panning. Some other cool sounds that are good examples to mess with are explosions, gunshots or anything that is impactful that has a short tail. This is a fun plugin worth playing around with and even better, ITS FREE!