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Chris

Hi! I've got a new plugin you can have! These plugins come in Mac AU, and Mac, Windows and Linux VST. They are state of the art sound, have no DRM, and have totally minimal generic interface so you focus on your sounds.

Kalman

TL;DW: Kalman is not a real filter!

Kalman.zip(501k)

So… come with me, if you will, on this journey.

There’s a huge amount of audacious Airwindowsness that hinges on this little bit of code that was never meant to work for audio purposes. This isn’t just from finance or science, it’s literally from GPS satellites and their care and feeding.

Meet Kalman. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has this as an audio filter up to now. And now you do, and you’re staring at it going ‘wait, what?’, and rightly so. At first glance this ticks none of the boxes, and then it sounds awful.

What’s happening? Kalman is ‘filtering’, but really it’s trying to predict a ‘real’ position from what it sees as hopelessly noisy data. The thing is, it’s the audio input data. None of it is ‘wrong’ in any sense. In other situations I go to great lengths to preserve every detail, and here Kalman is, trying to get rid of ‘mistakes’ that aren’t even mistakes.

However, this is also how Air3 got its amazing ability to extract or suppress the air band. So what happens when you’re sweeping it from the highs right down through the midrange, into bass and beyond?

Bad things. It neither knows nor cares what a frequency is, or whether it’s producing a filter slope. Really, it’s not. It’s producing wavelike outputs like it was charting a GPS course and only roughly correlating them to audio frequencies. It won’t produce sharp breaks in its curve, but the farther you go down, the more its ‘steering’ will interfere with the audio, producing a sort of grinding, overbearing solidity, like the audio was freezing solid or turning to stone.

This is not even an audio filter, remember. I’m sure anyone who’s tried this, abandoned it, immediately, because you set it to full-wet and it immediately sounds awful.

More fools they!

This thing is best experienced not as a synth-style filter, not some sweepable musical thing, but as a crossover. You can hear either it, or on the ‘inv’ setting, its opposite. You can subtract its output from the dry signal, and then recombine them again. Works just fine in fact. And that’s where things get really interesting.

Full wet produces this unbearably heavy, petrifyingly solid, unyielding sound. Up higher it’s an exaggerated version of the Air3 roll-off. It makes everything dead, weighty, even when higher frequencies burst through in artifacts it’s like they’re the bones of the sound you started with. It’s a really strong texture.

When you subtract it, you’ve got this hot, lively, aggressive texture. It’s fiery, energetic, a little like my old plugin Cojones which identified unpredictable elements in the sound in the treble regions. This will do it at any tonal range: I’d say frequency, but the whole effect defies frequency. You can have opposite tone colors with your opposite frequency ranges: low/stone, high/fire. At the extremes, the effect is so aggressive it’s disruptive and sounds broken and wrong.

And then… just blend them more subtly, and Kalman shows what it’s really for.

When both elements are present (in this one, it’s inv/wet settings that are near the center and mostly dry, but it’d also work as Fire/Stone faders meant to stay mostly balanced) you can lean the whole texture in different directions across an amazingly wide range of basic tonality. You can fool with just the deep subs, making them monumental or leaning them out. You can darken abrasive upper mids, or mid-mids, or, heck, lower mids if you like. Above the range will be more or less Fire, below will be more or less Stone. The range, however, will never be just an isolated ‘cutoff frequency’ because the whole thing completely transforms that whole range.

If you can transform how you hear away from ‘frequency’ and hear things in terms of texture, you can apply sound changes completely unattainable by normal filtering, no matter how complex. And the neat thing is, since it’s a form of crossover, it excels at subtlety. And since the range options (shown here as simply ‘Kalman’) are so wide, you can transform texture of all sorts, not just ‘stone = heavy = weight = bass’. Heck no! You can adjust a piano to have weightier low midrange if you like, or take a drum room sound and make everything over the bass frequencies more fiery. You can take a big guitar amp, crank the weight, and then just sneak up the Kalman knob until the brutality of the lows are undeniable.

There will be more like this, as seen in the video. But Kalman is here now. You’re welcome to begin playing with it. If it fights you, don’t give up on it too easy. You might be able to do more with less. I think in many cases that inv/wet control is going to hover nearly exactly halfway. It won’t take much to get this plugin doing obvious texture shaping. The rest is up to you…

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

Trianglizer

TL;DW: Trianglizer is a special waveshaper that can transform sines into triangles.

Trianglizer.zip(499k)

This should be interesting. It’s a waveshaper with a couple unusual tricks. Meet Trianglizer.

The first thing it can do is turn full-scale sines into triangle waves… sort of. The slope on the triangle wave is slightly inconsistent (because there isn’t a magical math function to make the sine into a perfect triangle, it’s just a side-effect of something else). It’s all a product of some work I did refining the algorithms of Console 6 to improve their accuracy as they do a zero crossing, which is constantly when music is playing (whether or not the music is loud, it all centers on zero and issues around zero crossing produce crossover distortion in tiny amounts)

The thing to note here is that, while it wants full scale sines for a sharp point on the triangle, if your sines aren’t that loud, what it will do is instead make a triangle wave with a round point. The point gets sharper or rounder depending on how loud the wave is. That means it’s a dynamic triangle, like there’s a filter, except it’s getting synthesized without one.

Plus, it’s a waveshaper, so it doesn’t care if you have a sine or anything else. It’ll just reshape the wave for you. Then if you’re not done, you can adjust the ‘tri/fat’ control and it’ll do the same thing except it widens the top of the triangle into a rounded-top trapezoid wave, adding a different kind of saturation beyond simply clipping, while keeping the same slightly inconsistent ‘triangle wave’ angles, through zero crossing.

But what does that DO?

Turns out we are applying two different shapes to get our result. The loud stuff mostly gets turned down (though with Fat engaged, it’s turned up to make peaks thicker and hotter). There’s a place in the waveform where the level remains exactly the same, and all the transitions between these points are super smooth. But as the sound gets quieter still… that, too, gets turned down. The slope of the waveform remains totally smooth, but it’s a shallower angle than the sine that feeds it, and even shallower than what a true triangle wave would give you (subtly including some dry signal might fix this).

And so, we have an effect that dries up fat siney basses and makes them more articulate, cutting the level a bit, when it’s on Tri. On regular music, drums etc. it does likewise. Stuff drops back and becomes more dynamic, with the hottest peaks poking way out in spikey form. It’ll make things more crisp and defined.

But the really interesting part is when you set it to Fat, and begin using that for added beef and slam. Because when you’re doing that, you’re doing the loudness saturation… but your quietness is simultaneously dropping back. So you get a super-dynamic retro effect that to me sounds like old Kinks albums or something: it’s distorted, it’s loud, but it’s all punch and no wallow. Unlike just using sine functions to make everything super fat, this purely adds muscle and some variation of it is probably going to find its way into a retro Console emulation from me. It’s that good at conveying Fifties and early Sixties sound, where everything was intensely dynamic yet weirdly opaque and dense and the sound was felt as much as heard.

Or, you could just play with it and see what you get :) I am only trying to interpret a new plugin I didn’t have before, which is kind of like my old High Impact plugin, but using a far more elegant algorithm that could have all kinds of uses.

Just remember: set to Tri to lean out and point things, set to Fat for guts and punch while still leaning out things, and use the dry-wet if the effect is too strong. It handles the loud and soft parts separately while handling them at the same time with one very smooth and accurate algorithm. It’s a mystery to me too, but I think it will find many uses as a sonic muscle-adder. Enjoy!

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

Overheads

TL;DW: Overheads is for compressing only part of the sound, strangely!

Overheads.zip(501k)

I could say this was a compressor for putting on drum overheads to take out the drums and leave only the cymbals, but that would only be scratching the surface…

Overheads is one of those old Airwindows plugins built on really strange ideas. Let’s assume we want to compress drums but leave cymbals. How might we do that? We could filter, but why would we do that when we could do something more perverse? Instead, let’s take a really short delay, like a flange. Next, invert it: compression gets driven by the source audio minus the delayed. Then expand the delay. Then what?

Then, high frequencies tend to slip through the cracks between the delay gap. They don’t get affected as strongly. But deeper frequencies will produce one part louder than the other, and subtracting produces an output that can kick in the compression. Except it might not, because the sounds might not line up. So add a control called ‘Node’ to move the delay gap. But how do you know what to do with ‘node’? Best change it to something else: ‘Sharp’, for instance (which is what happened). Then what?

So, put ‘Sharp’ in the middle somewhere. Start cranking up Compr to compress it, and you’ll hear the sound squish, then negate: an area in the sound will dynamically invert, as if you’re deleting the snare or kick or whatever, but it will be weird. Move ‘Sharp’ around to adjust it: larger ‘Sharp’ should let it grab slightly deeper sounds, smaller ‘Sharp’ shifts the cancellation up a little. Push ‘Compr’ further to hear what it does. To actually use it for its intended purpose, back it off so you’re only slightly clamping down the drums and leaving the cymbals, making space for spot mics. It’ll mess with the cymbals: see if you like how that works.

Or: do whatever go nuts, do crimes, ruin everything. Put it on every drum and set them all differently. Get a really bizarre sound that’s not like anything else, live long, prosper. (if you do, join my Patreon!)

No promises.

Oh, also, as seen in the video, if you use this on a sine wave at just the right level, it will turn the sine wave into a triangle. I totally didn’t mean for it to do that, and am not really sure how it manages it. Beware. Have fun :)

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

Air3

TL;DW: Air3 creates a new form of air-band EQ based on Kalman filtering.

Air3.zip(495k)

This should be fun :)

Welcome to the experiment zone, once again, with Air3: an air band EQ based on an extension of Kalman filtering, which isn’t normally used for audio purposes. As usual, Airwindows is bringing in algorithms that act weirdly because they come out of finance or science. In this case, it’s science.

What’s Kalman filtering? You’ll be hearing more about it, but it’s a method of trying to bring accuracy out of noisy data by projecting what the real data might be, and then incorporating sensor readings based on how closely they correspond to the projection. The key idea there is ‘based on’, because Kalman is all about willingness to throw out bad data and try and zero in on what’s really happening.

Of course, in audio, it’s ALL real. There’s nothing to throw out, it’s all legit. Give Air3 some audio, and it begins to do its analysis and projections based on something that doesn’t exist: a hypothetical underlying sound, upon which your real-world cymbal sparkle or voice breathiness are just ‘noise’ to be removed. It’s not even based on frequencies, it’s trying to chart out a ‘real’ sound based on what’s already a real sound.

What happens? For one, you get a rolled-off sound that is very, very convincing. It’s easy to believe the sound was just that way to start with. You don’t get a sense of brightness reduction, it just sounds natural. Air3 is shunting off the whole air band to a separate control, and what it leaves behind is very plausible and doesn’t sound filtered. Great for reduction of tizz, glare and detail.

And then you take that redirected air band, bring it back in, and crank it up five times as loud, and Air3 comes alive.

I’ve not heard a better EQ for this super-high stuff. It seems really good at lighting up any audio you send through it. Bear in mind that much like both Air and Air2 before it, this is not an EQ in the normal sense at all. Air and Air2 used the algorithms I also put in Energy, and what Air3 does has more in common with DeBess or Acceleration than it does an EQ. It’s going way into concepts of measuring the rate of change of the rate of change and trying to project that onto expected future samples… it’s got a large amount of boost on tap, but can be a bit unpredictable. If you simply cut the Gnd control (for Ground) you get just whatever air there was, if you cut the Air control you remove it, but if you boost the Air control lots and cut Gnd, you get another sound from the sheer intensity of boosting being done.

I think this is going to be hard to beat for this purpose, especially used subtly, and expect to be including it into upcoming stuff that doesn’t have to act like ‘an EQ’. Still a lot of ‘lettered’ Console versions that need to be made, to emulate analog gear. This one’s for imagining where we can go after that, for a new sort of mixing in the box that doesn’t follow the constrictions of analog gear, letting you dial in tone characteristics as much as frequencies.

For now, enjoy Air3, and if you’ve got opinions on what needs to follow it next, drop by a livestream: you have Air3 today because a livestream viewer asked for it to come out ASAP, and here we are. There’s lots more. I’ll keep working on all this stuff, it’s great to see it all come together :)

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

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