Airwindows

StoneFireComp

TL;DW: StoneFireComp is some of the dynamics for ConsoleX.

StoneFireComp in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Dynamics’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2: now on WinArm64 thanks to baconpaul!)
StoneFireComp.zip (520k) standalone(AU, VST2)

This is new.

People have had compressors for a while (and you’ve just got a new one in Pop3). And people have had multiband compressors, and used them for both good and nefarious purposes. And technically, people have had Kalman filters, mostly because I made some and have had them out there for a while, both in the basic form and the ‘air band’ form I use for Air4.

But KALMAN multiband compression?

And yet, here we are. This is probably the trickiest aspect of ConsoleX, put out so you can come to terms with it (or, indeed, make a mess and a bunch of strange noises, while having no idea what’s going on: that’s cool too!)

This is two Pop3 compressors, run as a multiband filter, except the bandsplitter is a Kalman filter so it doesn’t really work in terms of ‘frequencies’. It works in terms of ‘isolating sound qualities’ and splits that, and then when you assemble the split audio again, if it balances perfectly you get the original sound back.

But if it doesn’t balance, because for instance you’ve compressed both the parts in different ways? Well, that’s when things get interesting.

You can isolate each part using the Fire and Stone controls: like in ConsoleX, they’re unity gain at 0.5 and can be used to apply makeup gain to the compression. You can set the range control quite low so that Stone is basically kick and rumble, or quite high so that Fire is basically about brightness, or you can take a middle setting and fully use the strangeness of the crossover and the way it digs into transients and produces midrange in non-harmonic ways. Again, if you reassemble the parts perfectly, the strangeness goes away. But where’s the fun in that?

I can only bring this much to Airwindows Consolidated, restricted to ten controls. ConsoleX is this plus gating and an air band (uncompressed) and separate ratios for all parts of both bands, plus sidechain EQ flavor boosts that are also uncompressed. This uses the same ratio control for both bands, and that’s your secret for dialing back the strangeness and regaining control: you can crank Ratio to hear what StoneFireComp is doing, which could be nearly anything, and then turn it right down to apply appropriate amounts of your effect. In ConsoleX you do that and can also let through ‘peeks’ (peaks) of heavily filtered raw sound by way of equalization in the normal sense.

In line with my desire to make stuff that serves new purposes, that can be used for new musics and new kinds of sound, I honestly don’t have that much advice on how to ‘make classic sounds’ using it. Or even, what sounds are good from it. I do know that using it subtly, with low ratio, should work better on the 2-buss, and that different sounds will end up needing different treatment, perhaps very different. But I don’t know what will sound great yet, just that I suspect this can really find some interesting uses. Remember, Stone and Fire are distinct textures that recombine into the original sound perfectly, so combining their qualities with the qualities of compression should get you interesting results. Keeping settings similar will help it act ‘normal’. Taking wild departures… won’t.

Have fun, because ConsoleX is coming (though there is still a lot of work to do).

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

Date December 1, 2024
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

Hypersoft

TL;DW: Hypersoft is a more extreme form of soft-clipper.

Hypersoft in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Saturation’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2: now on WinArm64 thanks to baconpaul!)
Hypersoft.zip(497k) standalone(AU, VST2)

A funny thing happened on the way to posting the video for this…

Hypersoft is a new softclipper. Its purpose was to answer the question ‘what if a softclipper, that develops a sharper and sharper corner as you overdrive it, placed that corner NOT up at the maximum volume, but somewhere else?’

I feel like this isn’t investigated because it’s ‘wasting’ the distortion, assigning it to quieter parts of the sound, and that it’s been such an assumption that everything be LOUD, that nobody would even try such a weird experiment. But I’ve been working on Airwindows Meter, and looking at how hit records in my collection produce these ‘clouds’ of peak energy and slew energy that always take up more space than modern mixes allow. And so, I wondered: what even do you get, if you used soft-clipping and techniques like wavefolding to produce a ‘curve’ where the ‘flat-topping’ instead became a circle or something, and it tries to get progressively sharper somewhere in the middle?

So I started working with test tones, sine waves, and hashed it out for a while on livestreams and made a thing that produced this curve, plus the wavefolding caused the ‘flat top’ that you eventually hit, to stick around longer than it normally would, and then curve down into a strange point. When you send a ramping-up louder and louder sine into this, the harmonics it produces go from very soft and mellow, to more sharp and high-frequency, based on how loud the sine was. (compare to a hardclip, where you get highs immediately and then they mostly don’t change.)

On music, it’s a wildly grungey dirt-factory that’s almost as colorful as class AB distortion, for some of the same reasons. The place that the ‘curve’ changes most sharply is no longer at the top. But it’s still a softclip, so quiet sounds don’t grind as they would in class AB distortion. It goes from subtly punchy and textural, all the way to aggressively gnarly.

And then I made a video and used a simple room-miced drum beat, a basic boom-bap played as well as I could, just two mics placed in front of the kit, and cranked up Hypersoft until I thought it sounded pretty amazing, thought I’d be able to use something like that.

And ContentID flagged it as Rammstein, ‘Das Alte Leid’ and refused to let me monetize it. (ads that run are out of my hands now, and go to Rammstein.) With no other processing at all, my simple drum playing has apparently become Rammstein enough to fool YouTube. The raw mic feed wouldn’t do that at all: Rammstein is a highly processed modern-metal sound. But there it was.

What’s happening is this: drum impacts are being allowed to persist (like in the highly sculpted sound) but the body of the sound is brought up and reshaped interestingly, producing a ‘big’ effect that acts kind of like the sound is experienced in real life. Pushed hard enough the dynamics will invert, but it’ll take a lot to do that. It’s a new form of softclip which I think lends itself to drums, but will probably also suit basses.

You get Input, Depth, Bright and Output. 0.5 is as neutral as it gets though the effect will add a little boost just by reshaping. Depth specifies how many additional wavefoldings to apply (each runs its own sin() function so high settings will cost a bit more CPU) and more Depth intensifies the effect, making it more focused and colorful. Adding Bright means all the wavefoldings will be used even if they’re going to alias: less Bright means the wavefoldings start to bail out when they risk aliasing. Note that this WILL NOT fix aliasing! It changes the tone in such a way that you can dial in the amount of treble hype you get out of Hypersoft, or leave it as a darker effect.

This will not be as effective a loudenator as just clipping the crud out of something, before you ask. This adds harmonics and intensity while retaining dynamics. In fact it tries to heighten dynamics by throwing more overtones when the overload is greater. I think it’s going to be really, really useful but not for simple loudenating: if you’re after intensification and impact, Hypersoft might come in handy. I hope you find it helpful :)

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

Date November 24, 2024
Author Chris
Comments 8 Comments

Pop3

TL;DW: Pop3 is the dynamics from ConsoleX.

Pop3 in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Dynamics’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
Pop3.zip (709k) standalone(AU, VST2)

As I work on all the things that go into ConsoleX, now and then it becomes useful to give you a little preview. Pop3 is like that. It’s the latest Airwindows compressor, but also gate, this time.

I hope it’s pretty simple to understand, because in ConsoleX you get two of them per channel/buss, one for the Fire band and one for the Stone band. (if needed, I’ll put out a StoneFire compressor to help you practice that). In this case, it’s a fullrange dynamics processor tailored to my needs with ConsoleX.

For the compression section, Threshold brings down the squish. It doesn’t use makeup gain, so you use it to restrain the sound. Attack and Release work as you’d expect, though Pop3 runs a new sense circuit that’s very transparent in action. The Ratio control is simply a dry/wet: if you have signals peaking really hot, over 0dB, you’ll have to set Ratio to 0 to truly bypass the compression. Since this’ll be available in multiple places on multiple bands it’s designed to be more a ‘glue’ type, though you can run audio really hot into it in order to get an exaggerated result. In the final version you use the Stone and Fire controls to boost post-compression if you want.

The gate section had to be designed into Pop3, like it is in ConsoleX. It triggers off the uncompressed signal, so whatever you do with compression has no effect. It uses its own threshold (coming up from zero) with a release that goes from slow to brutally fast, and a handy Sustain control which stretches out the gating to control whether it’s sputtery or crisp. This gate is good at tightening things up, especially with the sustain feature there as a primary control, and again: works totally independently of the compressor, so you can sculpt those dynamics (or put percussive bumps on things using the gate ratio to dial in the spike and then blend it with the regular signal) and then shape your primary audio to make it more squishy. I found that just kicking in the compressor slightly gives a huge change in texture compared to only using the gate.

I wanted it to be extremely approachable because you deal with two of them in parallel in ConsoleX, and not even with a normal crossover, instead with multiple Kalman filters and a set of parametrics that bypass all the compression (but which are in fact gated, but the different parametrics and the Air band respond to different gates).

The glimpse of ConsoleX interface is only a rough draft: in particular, I gotta add user control over whether that 3D effect is on the knobs at top and bottom. Some people will prefer it flat, some will like the extra room provided by some of the knobs being seen edge-on. Also I have a lot of work to do on the dynamic positioning and reflowing of controls, perhaps with some divider lines to help highlight which knobs went where. Suffice to say, all my days and all my attention are focussed on this now, and I hope it comes out (right now it’s not running properly in my DAW Reaper, so there’s bugfixing too)

Talk to ya later, and I hope you enjoy the chance to come to grips with Pop3.

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

Date November 17, 2024
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Air4

TL;DW: Air4 extends Air3 with controllable high frequency limiting.

Air4 in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Brightness’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
Air4.zip(509k) standalone(AU, VST2)

I’m pleased and honored to bring you Air4, which extends Air3 in a way that can help people trying my Meter plugin, and unable to get good high frequencies without bombing the slew section with red ‘overslew’ spikes.

Back in the day, because of natural limitations of analog media and disc mastering, we didn’t have extended treble, and yet there were still bright hit records. We more readily hear brightness when it’s really upper-mids, but the really high stuff has special characteristics: first, it’s harder to hear, and second, it conveys a spatial position in air. That position is ‘CLOSE’. Within arm’s reach, within a few inches, within a few millimeters… of your eardrum.

This is because air is lossy, but digital isn’t. Digital loses nothing, it just adds various distortions while it goes (this is why oversampling fans get excited about that: the extra distortions are rarely nice). For that reason, it’s easy to make digital sounds unrealistically ‘close’, and this characterizes nearly all digital mixing.

We see this in Airwindows Meter as massive red spikes. Because there’s absolutely no flexibility or ‘glue’ to the highs, what happens is you get all the sonic cues of ‘far too close to my ear’ before you get the brightness lift you’re expecting. Air3 only aggravates this: it’s based on Kalman filtering, and it can boost ONLY that airy glitter, and then you’ve got that problem. Fine if you want that effect, but then you’re also distorting.

Air is the control for doing that, and Gnd means ‘ground’ and is literally everything else, so you can also adjust levels with it. Then there’s the new controls. DarkF means ‘dark filter’, and it’s the same as the control in Sinew (remember that? you already have it, but I saw it as a tube-fuzz sort of thing). And Ratio is basically a dry/wet for just DarkF, just Sinew (which, when it was invented, didn’t get one: really novel stuff often appears as a super minimal plugin first).

As seen in the video, if you adjust DarkF it produces a hard limit on the slews. It defaults to just over 0.5, which automatically stops ‘red spikes’ in the Slew section of Meter, no matter what treble boost you do. This’ll be an aggressive sort of ‘glue’ for the highs, or a safety highs-restrictor if you want to not mess with the red spikes of brightness.

To use it the way I use it, maybe lower the DarkF a bit, and then sneak Ratio back from full crank. What’ll happen is, the spikes will gradually creep up towards their original volume, forming a spread-out cloud rather than a hard clipped line, except they’ll be quieter than they were. The idea is to find the loudness you want for these bright peaks, and then work out how wide a range they’re to cover. Doing this gives you brightness, but without the brittle harshness of digital treble boosting.

I hope you like Air4! I’m working on ConsoleX every day now, and it’ll get there. It’s a LOT of work.

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

Date November 10, 2024
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

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