Console8Lite
TL;DW: Console8Lite is simplified Console8, working with just a single mix buss.
Here’s a useful update on Console8! The original Console8 was unlike any other Airwindows Console, as it’s designed to be used only in a Channel/Submix/Buss configuration. Its ultrasonic filtering needs to run through all three stages in order to be set up right. Yet, Console8 also introduced other things: a custom distributed highpass algorithm for acting more like real-world analog circuits, treble softening to mimic the use of transformers, and as a result you got a distinctive sound that wasn’t present in more purist Console versions.
Enter Console8Lite! Bear in mind that the full three-stage Console8 will still have a slight edge in certain ways: the interactions with the ultrasonic filtering are more intense, and things like the capacitor emulation work more effectively on the larger mix topology with more stages. But there’s also a place for simpler, more direct mixers, and that’s where Console8Lite comes in.
It’s designed from the ground up to bring all the Console8 features but in simpler, traditional Airwindows Console form. You put the channel plugins last on each channel, have the faders at unity gain, and put the buss plugin first on the buss. Everything else, from the custom highpassing to the treble softening to the ability to boost the buss output into an on-board version of ClipOnly2, is there in the simpler form, easier to set up and ready to bring analog tone to your DAW mix.
When using it, set it up like any pre-8 version of Console. Use it as a replacement for Console8, though each plugin is roughly equivalent to a Console8 stage’s In and Out run in series: if you mix and match it with Console8 full version it’ll function but the ultrasonic filtering will no longer be calibrated.
Hope you like the new, simpler and more direct Console8Lite :)
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.
VCV Rack module
This is excellent stuff, thanks Chris.
I like where you’ve been heading with the summing plugins.
Other developers have their own tastes and takes on how to get channels sounding more ‘glued’ at the DAW mix bus, and sometimes that seems to involve stages of exciter type eq, bass bumps and various types of saturation and so on.
All of them (I have perhaps 4) usually have a place in the right project, but I do find the aggregated effect of so mnay instances on some of them makes them a bit less useful, so they are only good in the the occasional project or style of music.
Your summing plugins (at least Console 7 and 8) are not so obvious in their aggregated effects and I appreciate that subtlety. The glue is certainly similar to what you get with a decent analogue mixer, which I do have (not a fancy one like yours though) and don’t need to mix through thanks to your excellent summing plugins.
Hello,
How do I install Consol8lite? I’m a little lost here.
Thanks,
Can you make a FFT Vst