Airwindows

ToVinyl

ToVinylDemo is worth a look if you’re rummaging through old versions for treasure. It’s one of those plugins where I had a ‘clean things up and simplify’ urge; the big change between it and ToVinyl2 was that ToVinyl2 changed to a single knob design.

That’s far from the case with ToVinyl (and in fact I went back to the complexity with ToVinyl3). It has stereo bass cutoff, mono bass cutoff, HF limiter sensitivity, and output level.

The bass cutoffs are highpasses. I’ve learned more about how to make these sound better, over the years—this is a sort of naive approach, which I now feel is over-processy. On the other hand, it’s quite good at highpassing, though the frequencies are assigned a little arbitrarily (I think I set it to the 6 db down point? Result is, it takes away more bass than you think it should)

The HF limiter continues to be a strong point of ToVinyl to this day. It’s using DeEss code to track down primarily stuff that would cause a lot of hash and overshoot, so it’s very good at taking away only that energy that should be taken away (and still is, in ToVinyl3).

If you’d like this, buy the recentest version and ask for ToVinyl by email. I’ll send it. But you’re nuts to pass up the Groove Wear on ToVinyl3, that worked out amazingly…

But you’ll have ToVinyl3! So all is good. :)

Date August 5, 2011
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

Broadcast

BroadcastDemo is the precursor to Podcast, originally designed to be part of the signal chain for low-power FM broadcasters. The idea was to bring really powerful loudness maximization with some of the tools of FM radio processing, and make a plugin that didn’t attempt to sound hi-fi or like mix compression, but specifically like radio signal chain compression.

You balance the output between level and drive boost (both make louder, but in different ways), and apply phase rotation to the extent that you want. Output level and especially dry/wet are just there for completeness.

Bear in mind that this plugin does NOT attempt to perfectly prevent overmodulation. If you slam it, it might well deliver some ‘fringey’ overshoots on highs, and you don’t want that in real FM broadcast. SSL’s meter ‘X-ISM’ can show you some of the overshoots in a crude way: if that meter’s analog clip lights come on when the digital clip ones don’t, it means you’re getting serious overshoots that would raise hell with an FM broadcast.

I haven’t got anything (for now) that will ideally control overshoots on FM broadcast, nor do I have pre-emphasis for FM radio. So, Broadcast isn’t really that complete, hence the name change to Podcast when I simplified it. It’s just as close as I’ve come.

If you’d like this anyway, buy Podcast and ask for Broadcast in email. I’ll send it, then you’ll have both.

Date July 26, 2011
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

Channel3

Channel3 is the classic freebie analogifying plugin, Channel, brought up to date again as the antialiasing techniques evolved. It’s been sort of my test bed for the ‘house Airwindows sound’, often with little tweaks and experiments.

The selector switch bug is still fixed, so you can play with the Neve and API settings! The other change between Channel2 and Channel3 is this: instead of defaulting to a gain boost going into the Channel saturation effect, Channel3 links that to the saturation slider. So, at low settings the curve is even more gentle, halfway it’s pretty much the same as the other two versions, and at full crank there’s more boost on tap than in any previous version. So, Channel3 is the version which has the ‘highest gain’, if that matters: but it’s the same ‘circuit’ as before, just letting more signal in.

Channel3 works in three ways. First, there’s a very faint touch of highpassing, reining in the extremes of digital bass to more of what’s practical in analog circuits. This was worked out by measuring impulses from real hardware, but the application is very simple. Then, there’s a slew clipper that restricts the slew rate of the plugin. Lastly, there’s the same type of saturation present in Density, but applied in the simplest way, and then blended with the input signal as dry/wet—which means the curve becomes gentler and gentler as you saturate less. It’s this super-gentle saturation curve that people loved in Channel.

Date July 24, 2011
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Drums

While I was coding plugins in 2011, I attempted something ahead of its time. Specifically, it was ahead of the time that I SHOULD have tried it. It was a set of drumkits that I’d sampled.

This was miked with Studio Projects SDCs which I’d modded, through API mic pres, into the guts of an old 20-bit ADAT which I had rewired so intensely that the API’s transformer outputs ran through 1/4″ TRS jacks, and heavy(ish) point to point wire, directly to the balanced inputs of the converter chips themselves. Considering how small this circuitry was, it was an amazing feat of hacky ingenuity to wire the ADAT this way, and it let me do multi-miked drum kit recording.

It also picked up a bit of digital noise from inside the ADAT, which is a problem I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. (I’m using an old Apogee Rosetta now, not hacking apart ADATs to try and make them tolerable…)

The kick mic was various things including an Audix D6. The drums themselves were everything from Gretsch to Ludwig Acrolite to Slingerland, typically not that fancy. Cymbals mostly Zildjian.

Date July 20, 2011
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Chris

ToVinyl

Broadcast

Channel3

Drums

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club