Airwindows

Sidepass

TL:DW; Highpass on the side channel. Utility plug.

This one was by request. It’s not very fancy, but I hope it’ll come in handy. If it is, spread the word!

I’ve got a plugin called ToVinyl, which is rather fancy. It’s the Airwindows attempt at a vinyl mastering suite: elliptical EQ, highpass on the mid to help get levels, an acceleration limiter to tame sudden energy spikes without really cutting brightness otherwise, and even a groove wear modeler that was the precursor to Airwindows Aura. That’s one of the Kagi for-pay plugins, number 9 on the list when I reach $800 a month and begin doing those.

But, I got asked for something much simpler. A highpass filter on just the side channel, and one that would go up the full range from subs to highs, so at full crank it’d be purely mono.

Well, I’ve altered that a teeny bit: Sidepass is aware of sample rates, so if you’re at a 0.1 setting at 44.1K, it ought to be doing the same thing at 0.1 at 96K. But apart from that, here’s a little utility for AU, Mac and PC VST that just highpasses the side, from DC to 22K. It’s an Airwindows filter, same as what’s in Density and Drive as a highpass, and it ought to do nicely.

My work’s supported by Patreon, steadily growing as I keep on working. (My Patreon is new-ish but I’m not—I’ve been at this ten years, no sense stopping now!) If you’d like to see the fancier, for-pay plugins start to come out as free AU/VST too, join up for a buck a month (more if you’re flush) and we will eventually get there, without inconveniencing any one musician too badly! Patreon is a lot less lucrative than trying to make that one killer plugin, but it’s steady and it’s growing and I’m committed to the open/free model :)

Date February 8, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Xiaomi Yi Tuning With autoexec.ash

Here’s another Airwindows Starving Artist posting! It’s kind of long, but this outlines what I’ve done to get high-performance results out of the Xiaomi Yi. I show the visual tools I made to focus and calibrate the Yi, explain how to set the saturation and vibrance controls, and make an impassioned plea for allowing the Yi to use its noise reduction when shooting compressed HD video. Even if you didn’t hack your Yi like I did, there’s stuff you can use here! :)

Date February 6, 2017
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Not Just Another Dither/CD

NotJustAnotherDither

The votes are in, and the Internet has spoken. We’ve got a name for the new noise shaping variant on Naturalize, after a January of wild suggestions. Seems most people simply wanted to emphasize that this was not your ordinary dither, not your daddy’s TPDF.

This is the plugin (two, in fact) that beats all the other ones, including the original Naturalize. In normal use, this ‘dither’ (in fact it’s not a dither at all: it’s the Benford realness stuff from Naturalize, run with a noise shaper, and all the added random noise taken OUT) will make any fixed-point output sound like infinite resolution. It’s AU, Mac and PC VST. It has a switch for 16/24 bit operation (defaults to 24) and a ‘DeRez’ control where you can get low-bit NJAD audio if you like, or if you want to audition its noise floor behavior.

The output levels are low, without a bunch of extra energy coming from the noise shaper: it’s pretty well behaved, though like any hyper-performance ‘dither’ this is really meant for output formats. I don’t think any harm can come from repeatedly using this in processing, but you can always use a normal TPDF if you want no change in tonal balance (plain TPDF dither only adds broadband noise: more opaque, but if it builds up it won’t accentuate anything: dithers with a lot of high frequency energy can end up exaggerating that.)

This is supported through my Patreon, so the more people hear about it the better: pretty much the whole industry can use Not Just Another Dither and Not Just Another CD, to enhance their monitoring and mixing, and to produce high-res output files and CDs. It should make your audio sound better, no matter what your audio is.

That’s my wish for you :)

NotJustAnotherDitherOriginal, for those that need the less-well-working version without DeRez or a switch between 24 and 16 bit :) The original plugin comes in two forms: NotJustAnotherDither which is 24 bit, and NotJustAnotherCD, which is 16 bit.

Date February 1, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 8 Comments

Tremolo

TL:DW; Fluctuating saturation curves for a tubey tremolo.

Tremolo

So, you’ve probably got a tremolo built in to your DAW.

But, if you’ve heard tremolo effects off classic records, it’s a whole different animal. DAW tremolos are neat little volume animations, capable of many cool effects (try making ’em squarewaves synced to the tempo for a nifty sequencey effect). But they don’t have that organic pulsating thing that takes a sound and gives it a whole new character.

So I made this!

This Tremolo uses saturation and antisaturation curves like you’d find in Density, and does the tremolo with that. It’s the same trick I use on the compressor ‘Pyewacket’. The result is, the loud parts develop a density and thickness mere volume won’t give you, and the lean parts hang on to a skeletal form of the transient attacks so your music comes through. This is not just ‘analog color’ like a coat of paint, Tremolo works quite differently from your DAW tremolo. It doesn’t sync to tempo, but that’s partly because I don’t know what to read (in AU and VST) that’d give me that information: could be added in future if the secrets are forthcoming, but there’s no sense withholding Tremolo just because of that!

Further development of Tremolo and literally everything else is supported by Patreon, which as I expected is steadily growing month by month as I keep working. I’m not some dotcom that needs to be instantly rich or I go poof and vanish, far from it, but don’t forget to tell people about this project! I’m just about to release the Airwindows wordlength reducer (works like a dither) to dramatically eclipse everything else that’s been done dither-wise. And I even have an idea for slightly refining PaulDither, for those who really like that one (if you want TPDF it’s hard to beat it).

Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy Tremolo :)

Date January 29, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Chris

Sidepass

Xiaomi Yi Tuning With autoexec.ash

Not Just Another Dither/CD

Tremolo

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club