Spiral2
TL;DW: Spiral with controls including Presence.
I will need to take a week to sort of meditate and settle my mind, but it was important to me to still be giving stuff to my fans and patrons etc. so I was looking around for something fairly easy to do. For instance, take Spiral and give it the ‘Density/Drive’ treatment, including things like pre and post gain and a highpass and a dry/wet. Busywork but nothing particularly innovative.
I think Dad would have been proud that I stumbled across something that was kind of innovative anyhow. Now I have Spiral2. It has those controls (that people really wanted: and if you set them to unity/neutral, they bypass so you can have EXACTLY the same as Spiral itself, if you like) but something else happened…
It occurred to me, if I was blending between dry signal and the sin() function saturated signal using the signal itself as the blend factor, I was just using a sample. Well, I also knew how to store a sample, and then the next time it’d be ‘lastSample’. And what would happen if I blended between dry and the saturated one… using the PREVIOUS sample?
With low frequency stuff, pretty much nothing. But what if there was high frequency stuff? What’d happen then?
Turns out, it’s a little like ‘Pyewacket’, my compressor that compresses into a ‘negative Density’ effect that lets peaks through. With that, the front of the wave is unusually pure and punchy, and there’s better articulation of sounds. With Spiral2, it lets onset transients through, especially if they’re happening suddenly out of existing silence (and bear in mind it can be only one sample of silence for it to work). It’s not a super obvious effect… but if you use Spiral to chop off peaks, and add this new effect (which I could only call Presence) then you can get quite the opposite effect: at full Presence, it sounds like everything’s being distorted but the meters show how onset transients are still getting through.
If you set it halfway, it becomes very close to peaking at exactly 0 dB. If you set it to 0 you get the original Spiral (note that it still has the ‘continuing around the sin() curve’ effect so if you over-slam it, it’ll choke and go quieter).
So, I wanted to do something nice for my peeps since everybody has been so kind and supportive. Turns out my muse thought that was the sweetest intention ever, and really came through for me. Enjoy Spiral2: you’ll find that Presence is quite a striking effect. I think in extreme cases it’s TOO much air, but that’s why it’s on a slider, which is really just a crossfader between the two ‘circuits’, normal and with the one sample delay on the ‘sense’ circuit.
See ya soon, and I hope you like Spiral2. If you would have dropped $50 on this without a moment’s hesitation once you hear what it can do by trying it, please do that using the Patreon. I’m looking to keep expanding and be more ambitious, if that’s OK. It’s more fun being ambitious with a budget, and food and shelter and stuff :)
Just Cheering you on chris!! Good on you for going hard. Remember to take care of yourself though! We can skip a week! We got loads to work with already!! Your spoiling us!! You deserve a power break!
Love
I tested out Spiral a while back and thought it was “pretty cool.” I stuck it in an Ableton Effect Rack so that I could adjust input and output simultaneously to really push the plugin hard and make it overdrive. Thought about going deeper and adding a Wet/Dry but the sound wasn’t tickling my fancy.
Whatever I did wrong sounds terrible compared to this GEM you just put out. Pleased to say Spiral2 (for my uses) blows Spiral to pieces. Warm thick overdrive that I can only get with Airwindows plugins. I’m not sure how I can have so many other saturation plugins but yours are the only ones I can listen to for hours while I input power chords and listen to the decay. This is in the same ballpark as the mesmerizing sound I got from power tube and transformer saturation on my SWR Interstellar Overdrive back in the day. There is no aliasing at all to my ears, the sound transports me back to my old bass and amp just completely content listening to the tone. There is something about the curves on the clipping that is truly entrancing like a flame/campfire or the ocean’s waves or the heat waves coming off a hot grill or pavement.
When you try out “tube emulation” plugins, they don’t sound like this. They sound like hot garbage. This is warm harmonically rich smooth yet rough and…I just have to stop now. I’m going back to my DAW to play and listen.
This plug has soul, Chris…You weren’t joking about your muse! Rest my friend — no one has any doubt that you’ve earned it.
Also if you need tips for meditation please don’t hesitate to contact me! You should have my email from this form. I would love to be able to help you out beyond my comfortable Patreon contribution. I have some other ideas that might help you out as well, just waiting for the right time to suggest them.
Hello,
sorry for posting to this thread about dither but I do not know if you read the older posts from 2017 also.
I have question about “flatness” of your TPDF dither variations. On all the Voxengo pictures within the videos you do not have complete flatness in the low end (20-50 Hz) range. Also on the gearslutz forum it is clearly seen on the comparions with other dithers.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/high-end/1131877-good-dither-practices-what-yours-5.html
Can you explain this? Does it affect sound and/or dither effectiveness? Or it has no importance and it is nothing that should be of concern?
@ charles shores
care to elaborate which other airwindows plugins you use for “powerchord overdrive”?
i’d like to experiment with that a bit …
https://www.airwindows.com/drive2/
https://www.airwindows.com/iron-oxide-5/
and a few more I can’t remember right this sec.
https://www.airwindows.com/capacitor/ for filtering
Now here is the kicker – put this before one or more of the above in your signal chain, set your gain so that each plugin is doing something to the sound but the load should be shared between the plugs. https://www.airwindows.com/powersag/ the key is in the layering. For example – Two Spiral2’s in series with just the right amount of push give a more complex overdrive than just one.
Pair with a natural yet interesting reverb, decay around 1-2sec and a predelay of about 20ms and you have some beautiful music coming your way.
This sound is great for slower rock, song endings, transitions to breakdowns, etc. My favorite part is just listening to the bloom and decay.
Obviously if you like an amped sound, either reamp after this chain, or use an amp sim. A little Airwindows drive can enhance any good amp sim to the point where I can’t tell a difference in the mix from a real axe and $3k rig.
Have fun!
@mathias drive, ironoxide5 and the above spiral2 are a great start. You can use more than one plug, cascade the gain and even start the chain with powersag. Great for held notes, chords with long sustain and slower solos. Have fun!
great! thanks a lot charles! :)
If God used an algorithm to get the best sound from a digital plugin, it would be this one. Thank you, Chris. I am guessing that further work can be done with this. For example, using the Fib Seq on the dry/wet knob (and/or presence knob), so that it inversely interacts with the effect amount so that it is clean or nearly clean when the maximum effect is activated… really the possibilities are endless. I have been basically trying to think of ways to make this effect “less perfect,” and I haven’t thought of anything other than the above, so far.
[…] https://www.airwindows.com/spiral2/ […]