Menu Sidebar
Menu

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.

DeHiss

DeHiss has just one control, Threshold. Sounds below this threshold will be de-hissed.

It’s not like a simple EQ: the algorithm’s doing freaky things relating to the mean level of samples, but for all practical purposes it acts like a gate that can clamp down brutally on high-frequency noise. The plugin was designed to cope with a tacky little prosumer USB mic pre that I won’t mention here, except to say it is the MXL Mic Mate and its claims of having a “Fully balanced, low-noise analog front end” are BAAAHAHAHAHA… erm, possibly somewhat exaggerated. But for $40 I suppose it’s all right (you can pay that much for a really high quality JACK…)

DeHiss maybe isn’t very sophisticated, but it sure as heck clamps down on noise. Most of what it’s doing codewise is dragging musical tone out of a pit of raw hiss. It’s a pretty good sounding lowpass in some ways and could be used as one if you just crank the threshold to full. I’ve tried it on basses and guitars, and it can produce pops and ticks from the threshold engaging/disengaging but it can also work pretty well as a gate, or as purely a lowpass. Since the method of clamping noise is so unusual, it produces a distinctive tone when used in place of a traditional lowpass, with a bit more muscle to it.

DeHiss declares one sample of latency.

Silhouette

Silhouette is a specialized plugin that takes a track and replaces it entirely with noise shaped to the exact dynamic profile of the track- use it to tell if you have a beat or just an over-compressed mess. It’s not exactly a pure gate with regular noise underneath: it’s calibrated to give a sense of what the dynamics really are, so it exaggerates those dynamics somewhat. This effect is built into Ditherbox as a mix check, but the standalone plugin version is free.

Chrome Oxide

Chrome Oxide was an alternate technique to go for ‘tape grunge’, originally sold as a separate plugin. It worked like this: it threw in a random noise, but instead of just overlaying the noise onto the sound, it used the noise to interpolate between the current and previous sample.

What that did was noise up the treble of the sound, and the steeper parts of waveforms, leaving the silence and flat areas of waveforms alone. It very quickly affected highs, and turned everything to a roaring grungy mess. Small traces of this effect are still used in Iron Oxide, though it’s not being sold standalone anymore.

If you’d like the original Chrome Oxide, buy Iron Oxide and ask me for Chrome in email. I’ll send it.

Shelves

Shelves is another strange little Airwindows EQ. This one’s a simple two-band shelf… that’s all Airwindows-ized in subtle ways.

The crossover’s altered in the way that Highpass and Lowpass are. As near as I can work out, what’s happening is that if you boost Treble, it gets harder. If you cut it, it gets softer. If you boost Bass, it seems to get softer. If you cut it, it gets harder. Seems to work…

Also, it’s using Density techniques rather than straight gain altering, so if you boost something it gets subtly more saturated and comes forward, and if you cut it it drops back. The whole thing is coded neatly and cleanly, so it works alongside recenter plugins without sounding inadequate. Its only weakness is really just that it’s a two-band shelving EQ without fancy tricks, best used for very subtle tone shaping.

Its strength is that it’s quite awesome at this very simple tone shaping, if you know all that its doing under the surface. If you just need to tilt things a bit or doctor the overall balance of things, without doing anything obvious, Shelves is awesome.

Newer Posts
Older Posts

Airwindows

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club

altruistmusic.com

Dave Robertson and the Kiss List

Decibelia Nix

Gamma1734

GuitarTraveller

ivosight.com – courtesy Johnny Wishoff

Podigy Podcast Editing Service

Super Synthesis Eurorack Modules

Very Rich Bandcamp

If you’re pledging the equivalent of three or more plugins per year, I’ll happily link you on the sidebar, including a link to your music or project! Message me to ask.