Console8 Updates (and more!)
Hi! If you’re using these plugins, especially on VST, you might want to update them!
Console8.zip(4M)
Console8Hype.zip(2M)
Monitoring3.zip(673k)
PurestWarm2.zip(613k)
Shape.zip(622k)
This is what I’ve been doing for the last couple weeks. It’s always a little like trying to sprint and falling down and spraining your ankle to hit a major bugfix scenario, but this hopefully straightens things out and allows me to return to plugin-making and releasing the cool stuff I’ve got in the pipeline.
So what happened? All these plugins share an experiment I did with PurestWarm and continued with Shape, looking to test it out before trying it in Console8. Turns out the experiment failed, but in such a way that it wasn’t immediately obvious until folks started measuring things. The plugins use an ultrasonic filter (or in Monitoring3’s case, define how Dark works) and since it’s a fixed filter, they try to set up how the filter works in ‘reset’, just once when the whole plugin is created for the first time in your DAW.
In doing that, they use a thing called getSampleRate. You would expect that if getSampleRate() returned a garbage value like ‘zero. zero samples per second. Have a nice day!’ then the plugin would crash or otherwise not get through testing… but these plugins ALSO do a thing where if you’re not running at high sample rate, they switch the filtering off, because it’s not useful running at 44.k or 48k: not enough room to suppress aliasing at those sample rates.
And if the plugin is asking ‘are you under 49 kilohertz in sampling rate?’ and the DAW is apparently saying ‘why yes, I have zero kilohertz! I killed all the hertz! ahahaha!’ and will only give the real value when the plugin actually runs and processes stuff… well then, zero is less than 49k, isn’t it? If the plugin asked ‘oh BTW are you 44.1k or 48k?’ it would’ve figured out something was wrong, but instead they happily just said ‘yeah we’re at low sample rate, don’t run the filter’ on ALL VST PLUGINS no matter what sample rate you were at.
And this affected my mixdown of my track Skronk, and I never knew it.
So now it’s fixed. Please re-download the plugins above (or get the collections of plugins below) and Console8 will use its ultrasonic filtering properly, which it wasn’t on VST.
You might think since it’s ‘ultrasonic filtering’ there would be no change in sound. Uh no :) the point is to suppress aliasing. I think you’ll find it DOES change the sound and make it what it was always meant to be, which also means if you need to recall stuff done in the last couple months and MUST have it be the same, you’ll need access to the original releases (this is an ‘update in place’ so you should replace your old plugins with the new ones and they’ll just automatically work with no changes to your stuff). So, if you go to those plugins’ pages on airwindows.com you’ll find, at the bottom of the post, a link to the original version still downloadable. In every case it’ll be, for instance, Console8original.zip(4M) with the word ‘original’, in lowercase, appended to the zip name.
I would suggest trying the updated version to see if you just like it better, though. I was using the VSTs because on Mac Reaper they’ll run a double precision buss and get slightly more of the sound I want from them. And the update, I think, was very helpful in doing that.
download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
please update for old dmg plugin for vst the sampledelay
Hi Chris! It would be amazing if your plugins would help out those of us stuck with 48KHz project rates. Most of the cinema, sampling and live-performance worlds that I’m a part of need to work at 48KHz for various reasons. I understand that 96KHz is the preferred/ideal standard—but it’s just not possible in my case. Could you consider adding a 2x oversampling option that would activate when using lower sample rates? This would allow those of us stuck in low sample-rate land to benefit from the anti-aliasing features of your plugins.
Thanks for all you do!
@Trevor id love to answer you but i’ll let Chris speak for himself :-p
@Chris thank you for you being you… im greatful for your idilic example as a human. Always humble and potently genius! Much love Sir! much love!
As for the plugin, i THOUGHT something was up with 8! wow. i cant believe i caught that heheheh. Looking forward to hearing the difference again!!
Compulsory side note: I don’t know why but Cabs baffles me too hehehhe To be precise the room and size.knobs. do not behave “well”. I mean well subjectively since maybe im not awayre of their true functions. Room does infact add no room (i keep imagining a tuny eq’d reverb or IR(s) would have done that trick) instead it add a digitalish clipping or similar, 0 always sounds best. Size knob is undetectable, It would be great if Size knob REALLY implied a bigger size on the cabs. and maybe the “room” too.
Sorry i don’t mean to whine… hehehe i mean to PRAISE!! /||\
Thanks for being!
Chris, your updates are always a thrilling moment and an excuse to start a new project. Kudos and thumbs up !
Mr. Chris from airwindows, i have no words to tell you how BETTER my sound became with console8 and console8hype. I was a console7 user for quite a long time, even after console8 was released. But i played with it in the first version, didn’t liked the general approach and came back to Console7. But after these updates, i felt atempted to try again. And it worked flawless. Switching between normal inputs versus hype in different stages of the mix gave me a control about tone and depth that i could never get with any other software available (you and other few people know its impossible to get these layers and depth without console8). Its almost like a tone control on the pres of the channel, the summing amps on the submixes and the 2buss. It has the HiFi tone i was serching in the box for all time. Console7 sounds like a big oldschool console, kinda darkier and fatter. This is balanced, it’s almost the transition from transistors to OP AMPS in the clarity and definition, also with better headroom. YOU’RE A GENIUS!!!!
Chris your work speaks for its self and your reputation precedes you. im a user of your z-plane clones and tried out the latest zlowpass2 and wow this is the right crunch for a lot of audio sources. im so impressed and in love with these filters! thanks for your hard work and model of business.
Is there a way to not lose all the faders without having to put every track in yet another folder track? Console8 is nothing short of amazing. It breathes air around instruments and brings this special sense of clarity and juice that reminds me of analog mixes. Btw, I don’t understand how I can change waveform spacings to the pixel in Reaper, but cant have post fader inserts. Shit, I just lost my faders, quite possibly forever. Chris, this changes the game. I hate that phrase, but here it is true, really.