Airwindows

PurestGain

TL;DW: High-res noise shaped gain, with smoothed fader.

Marking the 200th plugin in Airwindows’ ‘AU’ category (not perfectly accurate, but yay anyhow) is PurestGain, in VST-enabled form!

What’s to explain? It’s a gain utility. :D

No, seriously, that’s what it is. Here’s why some folks are a fan of this plugin anyway, even though every DAW has this as a utility plugin, plus the DAW faders built in.

Firstly, gain is processing. When you apply even a simple gain change, it expands the word length of your digital audio out to arbitrary size. PurestGain comes from a set of plugins I did to experiment with the extremes of digital audio accuracy. You might think digital audio is automatically accurate, but that’s far from the truth. We hear degradation in the resolution domain as flatness, cardboardy-ness, and it’s cumulative. I don’t think anybody can hear the difference between PurestGain and a DAW utility gain plugin, when just a single plugin is in the signal path… but it’s cumulative.

Also, you can’t be sure that a gain plugin is truly minimalist. If a plugin takes in floating-point audio of great quietness, and multiplies it by 1.0… that’s a math operation that can force the result into the same floating-point ‘level of resolution’ as the 1.0. Floating-point is treacherous, and the damage done is still very subtle but again is cumulative.

PurestGain takes the input audio and does the gain processing at ‘long double’ resolution. It then noise shapes the result back into the DAW audio buss, whether that’s a 32 bit buss for normal VST and AU, or a double-precision 64 bit VST buss, if available. The result is an ultra-high-precision gain plugin that refuses to lose any audio quality. It’s the plugin equivalent of using switched attenuators with precision resistors in a mastering console, rather than potentiometers.

There’s one more trick PurestGain has up its sleeve: a second control especially for fades. The trouble with DAW faders is that they must serve two masters: they’ve got to adjust smoothly and avoid zipper noise (crackling while you move the control, most clearly audible if you get a low-frequency sine wave going and then manipulate the control) but they’ve also got to snap instantly to a position if asked. The second slider in PurestGain runs in series with the dB gain control, but it functions very differently. One way to resist zipper noise is to have the gain smoothly ramp between volume settings, and that second control is designed for human-performed gain rides. Map the fader on a control surface to it, do your active mixing, and PurestGain will smooth every fader motion until it’s as fluid as any real-world analog console: try it with sinewaves and see how flawless the result can be.

That’s a surprising amount to say about a gain plugin, but that’s Airwindows for you :)

PurestGain is free. The way I get compensated for these plugins, after a decade of commercial work, is through Patreon. Why? Because it’s that important to me to put working, useful, high-quality plugins in the hands of musicians and producers. Back in the day when I got started, people were getting paid and were able to pass that along to software and hardware makers. I think people should keep getting good tools whether or not the industry’s really thriving well enough to support it, so Patreon is my choice: when enough people hear about it, the cost of me doing this work can be spread out among so many people that it’s not a burden. Also, it’s steadier than the boom-and-bust economics of releasing individual plugins for $50, which tends to force you to only release really mass-market types of plugins, and pander to only what’s most popular.

Date November 16, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 22 Comments

Distance

TL;DW: Sound design or reverb far-away-izer.

Distance

Here’s another utility plugin: Distance is specifically set up to mimic through-air high frequency attenuation. It’s from my initial wave of Airwindows plugins, come to VST and with a new twist: though in the video it’s a one-knobber, when you download it you’ll find that it’s got a Dry/Wet control, just to expand the things you can do with it. That’s new! I try to listen to people, even when it’s tempting to make it a super-dedicated one-trick pony.

As you can see from how it behaves, Distance is a lot more complicated than just running a shelf. For that reason, I suggest this plugin for sound design and creative mixing purposes. Don’t try to use it for mastering or 2-buss, I feel it’s too intensely colored. However, for creative use it’s exactly what it says on the tin! Stick it on anything that’s supposed to ‘read’ sonically like it’s super far away, and you’ll be able to hear for miles and miles. Works on anything from pads to thunder to basses to reverb returns (I suggest using it on reverb returns rather than sends: it will be able to add thunder and size to the output of the reverb algorithm)

Distance is free, AU and Mac and PC VST: if it’s useful to you, rather than pay $50 to own it or something like that (you already own it! enjoy! <3 ) you should instead go to my Patreon and support that. My hope is that it continues to grow steadily as more and more people discover what I’m doing. If you can’t deal with putting a digital leech (a benevolent one, that I get to eat later! OK, ew, never mind that analogy) on your credit card or don’t have a credit card, I want you to use my plugins anyway, and get the word out to other people who might be able to join my Patreon with no trouble or concern. The whole point is to spread it out so much that I’ll be okay, but no one person feels burdened by the cost. So get the word out! The point where I’m doing pretty okay is the same point where I start porting the Kagi commercial plugins for free: around $800.

Date November 13, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 5 Comments

SurgeTide

TL;DW: Surge and flow dynamics plugin.

SurgeTide

I’m a little distracted today (I’m an American from Vermont, which normally is a fine thing to be). And a little freaked out that the plugin I had waiting to release is named SurgeTide: I swear I named it a week ago based on what it does to the sound, never thinking it’d come out the day after a historic, er, ‘event’.

But it’s what I’ve got and it’d take a bit of work to change… and right now it means a lot to me to carry on with what I do, and have that not change. So, let me tell you about SurgeTide. This is a sort of dynamics plugin.

It comes from an experiment, where I had to find a way to make a behavior useful: SurgeTide runs on three different compression time constants stacked onto each other like the waves in an FM synthesizer. You don’t usually see a compressor work with the rate of the rate of the rate of change, because for normal sounds and time constants, the result sounds bizarre and unmusical.

BUT, it turns out if you set it up to run a very deep and slow change, like tidal forces on the mix, it can do really interesting things. You end up with a mix that seems totally uncompressed, because small variations just don’t alter the sound at all… but as the pressures of the music affect the compressor, it can ease off or boost volume.

And because the behavior’s so odd, it can react to an easing of pressure by swinging up very quickly. This behavior can be timed, sort of. You can end up with an effect that’s a little like EDM compressor pumping for effect, except it swings up to accentuate the downbeat. And not just the downbeat: a huge surge of bass underneath the downbeat. You can practically pull any degree of thump out of a track, but it’s tricky to dial in because mostly you can’t hear it working. It’s like an invisible size boost for subs.

The way to get SurgeTide working is to adjust the Surge Node until it squishes away the sound on the beat, then find the right speed for Surge Rate to work, and then back off Surge Node until it’s no longer inverting the dynamics. (unless you really want to: I’m not the boss of you.) It works really well as a subtle accentuation of mix low-end movement, giving some of the effect of a buss compressor but in an unusual and much cleaner way. Also works to subtly act as a level control and restrain dense mix moments so they can hit something like loudenation with more consistency.

It doesn’t work in any useful way on isolated tracks, particularly not staccato drum tracks: just maybe it would do helpful things with say, a lead vocal or a synth pad. Just remember that SurgeTide is for powerful, whole-mix movements rather than the usual compressor things, and that it can have effects on the extreme low bass, and build up the swing and flow of a mix. It’ll work on some things and be useless on others. I hope you like it.

I don’t feel like linking to my Patreon right now because today the important thing to me is being generous and helping people. SurgeTide, like all the Airwindows plugins, uses no DRM or copy protection and like the other VST era plugins is free. At a time when people are trying to sell you stuff that’s designed so it can be taken away if the developer or DRM decides you’re bad or a deadbeat, it matters a lot to me that Airwindows plugins can’t be taken away. Download ’em and you’re good to go, forever or until our DAWs crumble to dust. And that hasn’t happened yet, either to our DAWs or to me, so here is another free plugin from me to you, whoever you are. :)

Date November 9, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Point

TL;DW: Explosive transient redesigner.

Point

WARNING: Point goes critical and explodes at 1:36, in the video! I turned it down -12dB in post to spare my YouTube audience (still quite loud), but you get to watch my reaction!

The one, the only! Point was introduced in 2007, just ahead of an amazing series of spatializers, analog modelers, and stompbox-style FX that consumed months of work. The curious thing is, Point didn’t. It’s one of those odd plugins that only required an idea: ‘what would happen if I did this?’, and an afternoon of coding. And ever after, it’s lived on as a mysterious and untameable plugin monster, secret weapon and mixer’s friend, always just as an obscure Audio Unit…

…until now.

You get three controls: an input trim, the Point control, and a reaction speed. Point goes from -1.0 to 1.0 and ‘dry’ is 0.0. Reaction speed goes from 0.0 to 1.0 and there’s nothing to particularly suggest where anything should be set, so I’ll tell you now, and I’ll also tell you where NOT to set it if you know what’s good for you.

For squishing off the fronts of snaredrums to make them huge, use Point -1.0 and a reaction speed around 0.166.

To spotlight cymbal attacks while rounding the drums, use Point -1.0 and a reaction speed around 0.14.

To hype up kick drum attacks and suppress the sustain in a gatey sort of way, use a reaction speed of around 0.3 and carefully add positive Point until you have the effect you want.

To blow up the DAW and kill your ears, do that and crank Point to 1.0, then stop the transport, and then start it up again with Point still at 1.0…

That’s your warning. Point is kind of like a ZVex Fuzz Factory or some such mad hardware device: the range of settings DOES include ‘out of control’, and it’s such a simple ‘circuit’ that it does little to restrain things when you Go Too Far and operate it in a state that will explode. It won’t just do it out of nowhere, but don’t make it transition between ‘off’ and Point 1.0: even if you have the fader buried, it can still clobber you.

The reason I leave behaviors like that in there, in a plugin like Point, is that some people will want the full range of Point’s output, and will be following it with something to manage Point’s outbursts. If you’ve got it surrounded with plugins to tame it, I want you to be able to use Point settings near or at 1.0, and if you set it near that, you’ll immediately hear how intense it’s being so it won’t come as too much of a shock to discover it’s become an unstable isotope of transient destruction.

Also, I don’t always mention this, but all my new Patreon-supported plugins are created as AU, Mac and PC VST. All the Mac ones are compiled to run on at least 10.6.8 if not earlier, and run on 64 bit Intel, 32 bit Intel, and 32 bit PPC (yes! PPC!). The PC VSTs contain 32 and 64 bit versions, and will certainly work as far back as Windows 7 if not earlier: I’m not sure how far back you have to go to make these not work, but I’d be curious to find out considering that the AUs run on PPC Power Macs!

Also also, no subscriptions or DRM. EVER. That has never changed and won’t ever change. Patreon doesn’t count as a subscription because it can’t take the plugins back from you, which all true subscription based systems must be able to do (even if it means hacking the heck out of your poor DAW).

Point doesn’t count as hacking the heck out of your poor DAW. It counts as blowing UP your poor DAW if you set it to explode on startup. :)

I don’t intend to make blow-up-your-DAW plugins as a regular thing, but if you want to support and sustain the person who thinks up algorithms that literally explode like no math ever should, you should sign up for my Patreon. I’m looking to use it in such a way that I can earn a living doing my work while never asking more than about $12 a year from anybody (compare to $50 a year, if you bought just one Airwindows plugin each year). That said, people do pledge more, from $2 to $20 a month as they feel comfortable doing. (to some, $20 a month is not too much to ask for hundreds of the best plugins)

Date November 6, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Chris

PurestGain

Distance

SurgeTide

Point

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