Airwindows

PurestConsole3

TL;DW: PurestConsole3 is an alternate algorithm for minimalist Console.

Instead of immediately doing EveryConsole, how about the final Console version it’ll contain?

This serves two purposes. First, it’s an extension of the work I was doing in ConsoleZero: this is a custom sin()/asin() implementation along Airwindows lines, making it a little unusual. It uses a simple sin() approximation, but instead of being mathematically correct it applies all the multiplications and divides only in factors of two: bit shifts, in other words.

This is what ConsoleZero did, but more simply. This extends that to improve the sin()/asin() calculation, but then it’s not doing that correctly, it’s another approximation to make every calculation preserve the mantissas of the numbers as much as possible, every step of the way. Doesn’t matter if it seems like a ridiculous thing to do, that’s the experiment, and you already have this in mathematically perfect sin()/asin() form anyway: the original PurestConsole is just that.

The thing is, there are other gains. These new algorithms do so much with bit shifts that they’re blazingly fast. Both this and ConsoleZero run fifteen tracks of mix on my M1 MacBook Pro at about 5% CPU, with a couple bonus plugins in there.

And that means if you’re running something like current Reaper, as I am… with chain and individual FX oversampling… you can do that. And so I’ve made a video where I’m demonstrating a 96k project mixed in PurestConsole3, with ALL the Console plugins oversampled to 768k. (unless, because it’s starting at 96k, the 16x oversampling is actually giving me 1.536 megahertz oversampling?)

And it went from 5% CPU, with presumably 16x oversampling on all Console tracks and the buss, at base 96k sampling rate, to 30% CPU. I could’ve doubled the project and it would still have run. (probably the original PurestConsole would not be able to do this)

And it sounds… different! You’ll hear it. You surely can do it. It’s got its own sound. Not an Airwindows sound, I think. Sort of smoothed off and glossy. In the video I demonstrate this output, versus non-oversampled PurestConsole3, versus ConsoleZero. And, having heard all the original sounds off my instruments and modular, I think ConsoleZero is rawer and more accurate (that’s sort of the idea). But now, if you have a great love for oversampled nonlinear plugins, PurestConsole3 is my little gift, an Airwindows Console version that’s designed to work with, not against, what you like.

Have fun, and I’ll keep new stuff coming as well as I can!

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
VCV Rack module

Date August 6, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 4 Comments

EverySlew

TL;DW: EverySlew is a wide variety of unique sound processing tools.

EverySlew.zip(501k)

Where to even begin? This is the Swiss Army Chainsaw of treble processing plugins. It’ll do Slew, GoldenSlew, PlatinumSlew, or any combination of them, forwards, backwards and inside out. I hesitate even to recommend it as there is no real introduction to it, or any other plugin or processor that will really teach you how to use it. If you’d like to just tame unruly high frequencies, you can still use GoldenSlew or PlatinumSlew, and as long as you can still hear audio coming out you’re fine (don’t crank up Slew or GoldenSlew all the way to 1.0 unless you want to sample and hold, because they will do what you asked).

But if you’re still reading, here’s what you get extra in EverySlew, which is mainly for me to use developing versions of Console that sound like real analog desks.

Firstly, the Depth control gives you number of stages, with full crank being the equivalent of GoldenSlew or PlatinumSlew. For many sounds there will be no difference between the full ten stages those have, and much fewer. It’ll be hard to hear. Fewer stages means lighter CPU load, so I’ll be finding optimal settings here, but it also means less of the ‘golden’ effect when given extreme inputs. When used to take off only the brightest highs (more on that later) you can use fewer stages with no penalty. Two or three should suffice: 0.2 or 0.3 or so.

Secondly, the Halo control gives you a terrifying, industrial meltdown of a sound that also introduces attenuation into the deep bass. I called it Halo because it brings in an odd sparkliness and energy that could come in handy. It uses another level of previous-sample to try and identify actual corners, changes in the angle of the wave, like my DeEss and Acceleration plugins do. I’ve never got this algorithm to work until now: having made it work, it’s a strange and unruly thing. Realistic settings will all be rather low, especially if Slew is anything like obvious. HIgh Halo settings are a kind of terrible distortion I’ve never quite heard before: I expect this to be used in anger to make some very aggressive noises not quite like any other (which is always handy, right?)

Lastly, you’ve now got a dry/wet. But not JUST a dry/wet, an Inv/Dry/Wet. Dry is 0.5 on the control. Crank it up and you have full wet… but set it to Inv, and you can make it cancel out the dry signal. When you do that, it shows you only the bits that are slew clipping, and silences everything else. So, for the first time, it’s a slew clipper where you can monitor the clipping only, and directly hear exactly what the thing is doing. And this is handy, because the effect is very hard to hear at the levels it should be used! It will tend to make things sound exactly like they already did, except with glue and space in the mix, combing over the stray edges and points. Setting it to Inv means you can hear the points being put into place. Also, if you’re using Halo, you can hear when that begins to reshape the effect, bringing in lows and so on.

EverySlew isn’t for everybody. I made it because I’ll need it. I share it because that’s what I do. If you’re the sort of person to like this sort of thing, I hope you like it :)

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
VCV Rack module

Date July 30, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

PlatinumSlew

TL;DW: PlatinumSlew is the best easy-to-use slew clipper.

PlatinumSlew.zip(495k)

This is something I’ve specialized in for a while: types of processing that aren’t common. Slew clipping is like what you see out of certain op-amps, circuits that can’t keep up with high frequencies and are given semi-magical qualities having to do with just the right IC and so on. And you can program that, and I have (for instance my Channel plugins, or Guitar Conditioner).

And then I discovered, in GoldenSlew, that you could cascade slew clippings and it’d actually give you a unique sound, unlike just using one slew clipping.

And then it went beyond, as I tried to incorporate another previous sample and bring in the rate of change of the direction of the slew, and ran into strange audio bugs that were the digital equivalent of my circuits blowing up or short-circuiting, unable to handle what I was asking of them…

…and came out the other end with PlatinumSlew (and a plan for a more complicated, control-laden plugin where I can get really detailed control over everything that happens in the plugin).

The original Slew, and GoldenSlew after it, is a bit of an audio chainsaw. For instance, if you slam it to full crank it acts as a sample and hold, because that’s literally what you get when you cut slew to 0.0: permanent holding of whatever voltage you had. Good for use in the VCV Rack port, not so good for subwoofers. So, don’t use those for swooping the audio down to bass and then silence, especially not fast, or you’ll trap energy.

PlatinumSlew explores a new space in slew clipping where its algorithms don’t hold energy in the same way. But what does it sound like? It sounds like a record. It sounds retro. What happens is, you can control the transients of the high-end, but then as you push further, as it gets darker, it also begins to alter the subsonics, the bass… which is something I’ve never been able to do, not like this. It’s not a filter, this is a clipper. But it’s not clipping the bass… it’s hard to explain.

Crank it way up and hear the odd things it does when you push it way too far… and know that you can bring in just tiny amounts of that very unusual, very retro, very vibey flavor. This tech is central to where I’m going with the new Console designs, as I come up with stuff that really truly sounds like classic desks. It immediately found its way into my music, taking my legit analog gear that last little distance it needed as post processing. It’s mastering friendly if your tweeters and ears are good enough to hear its subtlest effects. And unlike the swiss army knife version I’m still developing, this one is one slider which can’t be set wrong, and it’s free and open source, and it’s yours. Hope you like it :)

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
VCV Rack module

Date July 23, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

GoldenSlew

TL;DW: GoldenSlew is a multistage slew clipper based on the Golden Ratio.

GoldenSlew.zip(492k)

Slew clipping is a fairly uncommon effect: it takes the bright off sounds, but replaces it with a distorty edge. You’ve already got Slew to do slew clipping with, and if you like Channel part of what you like is its built-in slew clipping… but what if you could expand on what slew clipping does?

GoldenSlew is a chain of slew clippers becoming increasingly restrictive as they go, each one scaled by a factor related to the Golden Ratio (if it was applied to the ‘slew’ control). You would think this would produce a simple result: the sound would always be restricted to the smallest amount in the chain, and it’d sound just like Slew.

Except it SO doesn’t… because each new value’s working from what the previous one was clipped to. And so, when you apply slew clipping as a chain, you get a completely different effect. And what it sounds like… is distant, roaring, big, loud, powerful in a way you just don’t get from slew clipping alone.

Be warned: for this plugin, like Slew, if you have audio going through it and you crank the slew clipping ALL the way to 1.0, what you’re telling it is ‘stop slewing completely, don’t budge’ which means sample and hold which means you’re stuck on a DC voltage. There are reasons why you might do this, for instance if you’re in VCV Rack and using it on a control voltage and you want to do sample and hold on that voltage. Don’t crank it up to 1.0 on audio signals or you might hurt your speakers if they’re DC coupled.

This is one of a series of plugins starting with Slew and continuing with GoldenSlew, where they’re refinements of a tone I like using for analog emulation. When used for that, you typically want to keep the setting fairly low, less than 0.5 certainly. It’s for controlling the digital-ness of the highs without apparently making them quieter: remember this is a clipper, not an EQ, and it’ll kick in only on LOUD treble. There will be more explorations of this concept because I’ll need a really good test-bed to use for when I start dialing in sounds of actual classic analog consoles: it’s not just the maximum restriction of slew (like in the Channel plugins), it’s about the sound character as we hit that limit.

You can use GoldenSlew on things like drums, final mixes: anywhere you want the effect of extreme loudness, but don’t want the treble coming forward and poking at you. Hope you like GoldenSlew!

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
VCV Rack module

Date July 16, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 5 Comments

Chris

PurestConsole3

EverySlew

PlatinumSlew

GoldenSlew

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club