Airwindows

Pressure4

TL;DW: The Airwindows compressor, malleable into many forms if you know how.

What can I even say? This is the golden ear favorite. Version 4 brings new functionality that has never existed in Pressure before: the stereo version (default for VST, and the Audio Unit that doesn’t specifically say ‘Mono’) uses a special linked mode based on diade bridges in hardware compressors. That’s not to say that it is ‘analog modeling’ because it isn’t. From the beginning, Pressure has been made out of a lucky algorithm with a particular organic, pleasing quality, and part of Pressure4 is knowing what to strip down, how to simplify that algorithm until it lets all the music through.

But then, when you explore the way Pressure4 squishes up depending on how hard you drive it, and then start listening to the textures of different speed control settings and what that does, and then begin exploring what the ‘µ-iness’ control does… and it turns out that each one of those things gives specific and controllable shapings of the sound, but in ways very difficult to put into words, yet you can learn what it does and make the plugin do what you intend even if it’s tough to articulate exactly what you’re going for…

This is why we turn to odd little tools like this. The whole character of Pressure4 can change with tiny adjustments of the controls. It can do about twelve wholly distinct things when set up right, but they’re all inherent in that one curiously simple, but chaotically strange, algorithm. And now the linked stereo form of Pressure does all that with a naturalness and fluidity never before seen with this plugin.

I hope you like it. This is one of the really good ones, and it is AU, Mac and PC, VST and free (please support my Patreon and I’m sure I’ll come up with some more really good ones I haven’t imagined yet.)

Date September 8, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 7 Comments

FathomFive

TL;DW:

Build this bass-enhancer into an aux on your mix to generate controllable tape-like fullness and bass depth.

FathomFive

This is a first for Airwindows VST: FathomFive introduces a special Airwindows algorithm that acts like a combination between an EQ and a bass amp. This plugin can be used in sound design or on isolated tracks, but it’s also part of an Airwindows DAW workflow I outline in the video I’ve made. The idea is this: rather than blur and damage your sound by running through lots of ‘fake analog’ effects on your buss to impart deepness and analog-like tone, use the Airwindows plugins Console4 and FathomFive to get a big-sounding mix while letting most mix elements through with minimal processing. You can run the ‘bass bloom’ behavior on an aux, and feed it with only the elements you want, and then integrate it into the sound with Console4 which both works the way Console wants to be used, and addresses limitations that Console has when used all by itself.

It’s all in the rather long video, and of course you can simply download and use the plugin if you prefer making up your own rules. There are no rules, I’m only explaining one very specific use case where FathomFive works symbiotically with Console.

Hope you like it!

Date September 2, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 10 Comments

SlewOnly / SubsOnly

TL:DW; Monitor through these plugs to hear only the highs, or only the subsonics, and adjust your mix accordingly. Also works as special effects.

SlewOnly / SubsOnly

By request, here’s my mix monitoring tools, for VST and Audio Unit, Mac and PC! Please remember, these like Guitar Conditioner are control-less plugins so you don’t operate them by opening their windows: they’re either on or off, which probably is shown in your DAW mixer window already.

SlewOnly gives you what it says on the tin: only the difference between samples, expressed as a sample. This produces a super-bright sound with zero latency and absolutely no pre-ring or post-ring. You can do two poles of this filtering: just add another SlewOnly. But, as is, this will give you an incredibly clear and transparent window on the ultra-highs, so you can dial in subtleties in the treble. Beware: don’t switch right back to the normal sound or it’ll sound incredibly dull. Rest your ears for a moment before resuming work.

SubsOnly does the same thing for subsonic bass. It sounds a little like a house party from an adjacent house. You can tweak sub-bass elements and really hear how they’re balancing against each other, and if you’re packing too much into the subs you’ll hear that as well. Get things thumping properly through SubsOnly and it should translate well to all manner of bassbins and subwoofers.

Lastly, these are calibrated (in SlewOnly quite literally: pink noise will be about the same amplitude with or without it, though the tone will be way different) so that you can switch them in and out, and expect roughly the same loudnesses. It’s okay if SubsOnly is louder for fullbodied bass: with that, it’s not so much about level-matching, it’s about getting your sound (at whatever desired loudness) and then having the bass still make sense through SubsOnly. If you’re madly overloading it, there won’t be groove, just a lot of thunder and noise, at elevated levels. These go on at the end of your master buss, so you can hear what your 2-buss chain did to the sound. Especially if you try and go for ‘commercially loud’ volumes, sanity checking with these tools can be a real silver bullet.

Like my other VST plugins, SlewOnly and SubsOnly are supported entirely by a Patreon. This is going to grow until it replaces the income I used to make by selling my plugins for money. I can’t justify charging musicians (many of whom aren’t earning money themselves) $50 a pop just to use my tools, so I’m in the process of porting everything I’ve ever made, to Mac/PC VST, and making it all free (even open source). Supporting the Patreon furthers that goal.

Date August 29, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 4 Comments

Guitar Conditioner

TL;DW:

Replace your Tube Screamer (plugin OR REAL DEAL) with this plugin, to get ‘scrunch’ and subs conditioning, but without the sponginess that even hardware TS9s have.

Guitar Conditioner

I designed this plugin when I saw what Slew was capable of. It uses a combination of Slew and Highpass in a sort of parallel matrix arrangement, with heavy use of my Highpass’s unusual tone shaping features (extreme lows get Tight tone shaping behavior, and a boosted mids circuit is set to Loose rolloff for the proper texture). Both aspects hit their own Slew at different levels and with different voicings, causing a distinct tone quality.

This is not a Tube Screamer plugin at all. It’s an alternate tone for doing similar things but with more sonority, focus and impact. It’s intended for Djent style sounds and people who can play much, much better and more aggressively than me :)

It is free. Get more like this by supporting my Patreon, because lots of other people can give you ‘imitation Tube Screamer’ but Airwindows is for trying to give you ‘beyond Tube Screamer’ through understanding what, in the conditioned sound, should be distilled and extracted. Happy Djenting :)

Date August 23, 2016
Author Chris
Comments 10 Comments

Chris

Pressure4

FathomFive

SlewOnly / SubsOnly

Guitar Conditioner

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club