Airwindows

Point

Point is the Airwindows transient designer! It’s tricky to use, but powerful.

For starters, try putting it on some drum like a kick or snare, set Point to -1.0 (all the way to the left) and then set reaction speed to 0.160 or so. You’ve got an instant squashed mega-compressed drumkit! Hair metal for days.

Now take reaction speed to 0.24 or thereabouts. You should be able to hear a big pillowy front end come on to the wave, very Pink Floyd.

Now drop it to around 0.120 with care. Suddenly it’s a funk drumkit, super close-miked, all attack! The cymbals in particular get ridiculously attacky. You can blend between these tones all day, and that’s all just with Point at -1.0… with LACK of point.

If you intend to fool with positive Point, you’re probably going to want to whack the input gain way down, like -12. But then you’ll find that reaction speed of around 0.2 to 0.4 give you an outlandish spike on the kick drum. Cymbal attacks live around 0.6 to 0.7 on the reaction speed.

If I was going to set up a multimiked drum kit entirely with Point, I’d try -1.0 Point with speed 0.16 on the rooms or overheads. Same on the snare mic, faster for Floyd and slower for funk. Kick would get padded and a positive Point at around 0.3 depending whether I wanted click or whack, and if I had a hi-hat mic I’d probably mix it in super low, but give it positive point at around 0.6 just to bring out that little spike.

Point will blow up your mixbuss if you treat it wrong: know what you’re doing and be careful of positive settings. But, it’s very powerful all the same. And yes, it’s a freebie too.

Date February 3, 2007
Author Chris
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Highpass

Highpass is a really old one! It’s a simple one-pole Airwindows interleaved highpass filter, but it has a weird control (because of course it does). That control is loose/tight, and it’s one of the most spectacular secret weapons for bass/subs mastering ever.

In the middle, it returns a very normal sort of highpass, not too steep in slope.

Set to Tight (all the way to the right) it acts like high transients are the goal in life. Lows around the cutoff are held back, like the higher frequencies are directing them. This is done by input level modulating the cutoff, so louder means ‘less lows’. Lows only come through if they’re gentle. It really reins things in, softening the lows by stepping on them harder when they’re loud.

Set to Loose (all the way to the left) it’s the opposite. Things are restricted, but when the lows kick in they slam. It exaggerates the subs a bit, at least makes them seem to kick in extra hard. This setting will also tighten up sustainy lows on kicks (which is ironic, since it’s labeled Loose).

The way to think of it is, the bigness of the swing of the bass transient. Tight means the bass kicks are tight and higher in frequency for whatever the cutoff is. Loose means the bass kicks go deep and wild, seeming to get more carried away, while the body of the music feels more bass-restricted. And of course you can adjust that more finely with the control once you’re familiar with what it’s doing to the subs.

Highpass is a good tool for handling bass. Not all highpasses are created equal.

Date January 31, 2007
Author Chris
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Density

Density is a special plugin, because it demonstrates things that ended up resonating through Airwindows plugins for years. It became part of the toolbox for implementing other things, and started in 2007 as one of the first Airwindows plugins. It’s the ultimate flexible saturation freebie.

Not just saturation, though! Yes, Density can be cranked up to incredibly distorted levels, producing a huge and fat sound. It’s got a type of distortion that is intensely thick and tubey, and it can be highpassed and then mixed in with dry signal to do lots of great things with the energy of the tone. But you can also set it to negative values, which gives you ANTIsaturation.

What’s that for? Not for thickening the sound and making it more upfront, which is what Density likes to do with positive settings. Rather, the opposite: it thins the sound and makes it more far away. This probably won’t seem useful immediately, but consider that you can throw it on reverb returns, on mix elements that have to sit back in the mix—upfrontness is relative, and you can work a mix from both directions.

Elements of Density are used throughout the Airwindows product line, but here’s where it started: one very flexible plugin, still useful today.

Date January 24, 2007
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Distance

Distance was designed to try and suppress highs in sound, as if the sound was coming from a great distance… BUT, not through just rolling off treble.

Through slew restricting. Not even equalization at all.

This is so unusual an approach that it won’t work on many sounds, not by itself. If you take something upfront and normal and try to make it ‘distant’ it just won’t work. The trick is to take something that’s meant to be distant, like a reverb return, and put Distance on that. Match what’s there with an appropriate Distance setting to put the finishing touches on the sound.

Ignore the ‘miles’ part, think of it as just a slider that can be adjusted to place a distant element in its correct depth. Distance can’t really impose upon a sound, a specific distance. What it CAN do is take a sound that’s meant to be coming from a distance, be it ever so far… and make that really convincing in a mix.

Date January 23, 2007
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

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Point

Highpass

Density

Distance

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