TL;DW: kPlateC is a plate reverb, not unlike its namesake atop Abbey Road.

kPlateC.zip(626k)

Onward with the plate reverbs! kPlateC is an interesting contrast to kPlateB, and an example of how Airwindows k-series reverbs work. Since there’s no GUI you can’t be fooled by different visual depiction of the two plates, so they’re exposed as just sound. These are meant to resemble real things, and the real Plate C is said to be even shorter and brighter than the real Plate B. This is on top of them all having an array of controls (I’ve been asked to flip Damping over so higher numbers equal more damping, but that would apparently be contrary to how the real ones are laid out, not that you’re likely to go to London and see… nor I, for that matter, though it would be fun)

Since kPlateB came out very nicely, how is kPlateC different?

Obviously it’s voiced a bit differently to match the real one, but unlike other plugin approaches, the Airwindows plates each run completely different reverb matrix algorithms. I’m not talking about things like saturations etc (though kPlateD, being a tube reverb, has to have completely different software for that than A, B and C which are hybrid circuitry). What I mean is, all the little delays inside are different (normally so tricky that you come up with one great algo and then adapt that to each flavor of plate).

And so, kPlateC is like kPlateB and yet completely different. The room, the space it makes is shallower, wider, a different shape. There will be things where it works way better than kPlateB, and vice versa, because they’re just plain different flavors. If a note resonates on one plate, its brother is going to act completely different and won’t highlight that note at all.

This will be the case for the whole k-series of reverbs as they expand. Hope you like it. Back to work :)

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

TL;DW: kPlateB is a plate reverb, not unlike its namesake atop Abbey Road.

kPlateB.zip(627k)

In the continuing saga of ‘Chris makes plugins in a competitive marketplace’, kPlateB is one heck of a statement!

This is the follow-up to the plugin kPlateA, which I’ve talked about recently. It sought to get the sound of a famous EMT plate reverb on top of a famous recording studio, through study of internet examples of that sound. Turned out to be a little more complicated than that, but who’s counting? As a result, you’ve got kPlateA, and it’s a big deep plate reverby sound.

Plate B from that studio is said to be shorter and brighter, and indeed the examples you can find of that sound in plugin form draw the plate in a different color (I believe in the real world they’re all big steel objects and none of them are painted nor are any of them the gold foil EMTs, but artistic license) and in other plugins the algorithm’s EQed a bit different and the controls give you shorter reverb times.

Airwindows is different.

In kPlateB, as with ALL different reverbs that will ever exist in the ‘k’ section of Airwindows-land, the fundamental algorithm is different, even the topology and basic code of the verb is different, and notably both of these use the following technique: my studio computer grinds away for hours or days to generate a 3×3 Householder matrix for allpasses that can be used two ways, horizontally and vertically. Same allpass values, but L and R see them in completely different combinations. And then, even more hours and days of grind for a 5×5 Householder matrix that does the delays of the actual reverb, the same way: L and R see completely different combinations in the same matrix which then has the sides crossfeed into each other in a way that’s custom for each set of matrices. So the guts of the thing are totally different each time, and will continue to be (technically this means I could make a celebrity a bespoke space for just them to use, but they’d have to make it worth my while to NOT share that data with the open source world ;) )

So, you’ve got kPlateA, and it sounds big and platey and deep and metallic and not unlike a big ol’ plate reverb.

kPlateB sounds not unlike MAGIC.

It really freaked me out in the nicest way, how good this one sounds. Audio put through it just blooms, coming alive and sitting in a wonderful space. It’s gonna be a hard act to follow… except that there will be a place for each of these, and a place for more traditional acoustic spaces I come up with later. It just so happens that kPlateB really does the ‘envelop sound in a lush, vivid atmosphere’ thing really well. I think kPlateA sits back a lot deeper and sounds more old and retro. kPlateD will have to sound even more retro as it models a tube EMT-140, not custom hybrid ones. kPlateC will need to be even shorter and brighter to properly emulate the famous real ones out there. All will have to have custom algorithms and matrices.

I’m doing this as fast as I can, and I think it’s coming along quite well. Sky’s the limit, really. Hope you enjoy the sound of your new reverb plate as much as I enjoy it, having made 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