Airwindows

GoldenSlew

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

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

Pear

TL;DW: Pear is the testbed for a new filter, implemented as a highpass/lowpass shelf.

Pear.zip(493k)

Welcome to the Airwindows skunkworks, where you can get your hands on really unusual experiments!

Pear is a new sort of filter I’m looking to use for my famous-console versions of Console. I’ve taken the concept of Holt and altered it along the lines I explored in Console Zero, and then I ran with the things I experimented in BitShiftPan a little more.

So, now you have a fixed frequency shelving EQ that can be either a lowpass or a highpass, and it uses an algorithm that is literally different than anything used before, with a behavior that’s likewise not like anything else (the code certainly isn’t going to be found elsewhere, and the slope steepens as it nears the edge of the passband: cascading it, which this plugin lets you do, makes that end point ever-steeper rather than adding a bump to a steepening overall slope like in any normal filter)

What’s it sound like? Hear for yourself, it’s yours. My take on it is that it’s exactly what I need for the future of Console: this is not a synth filter, it’s a desk filter. I can make it be really clear, even when doing extreme things at really steep slopes. It’s not a scientific filter for doing really accurate curves, it’s for sounding musically good.

I’m not sure what the frequencies are, partly because the transition point is an increasing slope even when it ends up quite steep, and partly because it’s not calculated on the basis of frequencies. Those filter points come out of the use of bit-shifting in the algorithm: it will still work in designs that don’t use that, and I’ll be using more carefully placed crossover points in future Console versions, but for this one, treat it as a switchable EQ. One way to get an EQ point to shift slightly is to increase or decrease the number of nodes (also stepped): consider it the digital equivalent of an analog switched circuit. Use the inv/wet control to dial in how much highpassing or lowpassing you want: that becomes your shelving control on the filter.

Another part of the big-console sound is saturation, and this filter does not include that: expect what I do with this to be more intense as far as sounding like real big consoles. I’ll need to configure that to suit the target console, as some are famously dirty: so often, people restoring these desks are told how to replace the dead capacitors and the original inductors, on the grounds that the original ones had no headroom (HMMMM…) but for now, Pear is very pure in tone, and it doesn’t distort on its own.

It’s going to be a lot of work doing what I’m going to do with this tech, and that’s not even counting the changes to my reverbs that will come about as I learn from the Bricasti: sure enough, I’ve identified stuff that I can probably do, and the result should be worth it. I’ll try not to bog down and keep plugins coming out as I dig into all this! Stay tuned :)

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 9, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 5 Comments

GalacticVibe

TL;DW: GalacticVibe is the stereo vibrato from the original Galactic reverb.

GalacticVibe.zip(503k)

GalacticVibe is about taking the code I used to make the Galactic reverb super wide, and breaking it out into a chorus-like effect… at which it turns out to be great!

Used in Galactic, it’s always full wet. It’s a dual vibrato that’s ‘quadrature’, meaning the channels are two different offsets on the same LFO. Except it’s not exactly an LFO in the sense of low frequency oscillator, because it’s slightly irregular. You don’t hear it as being super off, but it’s a somewhat organic quality whatever speed you choose.

This produces two stereo outputs (even if you’re just giving it mono) and the way they modulate is a bit like a miked-up Leslie: the pitch wavers across both channels. But then, if you add dry (which isn’t part of Galactic’s modulation) that blends against both stereo channels… and you end up with a nice little vibey chorus, with definite Leslie-like qualities, but without any of the speaker emulation and without an accurate pitch modulation on what would be the treble horns (instead, it’s something else, a little smoother).

So it turns out the modulation inside Galactic (Galactic2 is different) is quite nice just by itself! In particular, it seems very nice giving slow swirly effects, and ramping up to a quicker speed has a really striking ‘leslie, but not leslie’ quality. A happy accident that is now yours, because this is an open source, free plugin, so enjoy adding this tool to your stereo toolkit.

All this is paid for by my Patreon, and the better that does the more I can do with it: as promised, the Bricasti reverb is here. Like I said I am not going to make a clone, but I am certain I can both get some useful k-series reverbs inspired by classic Bricasti patches, and design future reverb algorithms that incorporate more Bricast-isms, just from being able to hear it properly and make use of it in the studio. There’s also the new Console versions coming along, currently in study mode as I explore a world of classic vinyl records heard in the fullest fidelity, and develop channel EQs that will go along with the new Console versions.

Thanks, and hope you like GalacticVibe!

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 2, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Fracture2

TL;DW: Fracture2 is a wavefolder that allows more extreme disruption.

Fracture2.zip(499k)

Fracture2 is straight up a West Coast wavefolder, in a plugin. You’ve got Drive, Fracture, Threshold, Output and Dry/Wet controls. Drive is basically overdrive like in Mackity, and you can get unity gain at a setting of 0.1, and Output and Dry/Wet are what you’d expect.

Fracture makes the signal go exponential before folding. What this means is, if it’s at zero you’ll get a simple wavefold. With a sine, that’ll create a distinct overtone (stronger than the original Fracture) which will slow down as it nears the top, then reverse. As you increase Fracture, the pitch of the wavefold increases because the wave you feed in will start folding faster and faster the more it folds: it will also open up the unfolded part of the wave, making it more dynamic. On non-tonal sounds, this makes the effect dryer and punchier and more aggressive.

Threshold is by request from a fan who asked in Youtube comments, and whom I’ve got some things in common with. The idea is basically, can you make the folding part only take up a certain amount of space, like back to the zero point but not past? Turns out you can! And what this does is, it lets you have a volume control on the fold part. So, at zero threshold, you have a soft clip (or, with Fracture, a weird expando-clip like High Impact). As you increase it, the wavefold comes out of the clipping, expanding down (or up) from the flat-top of the wave, with 0.5 going to the center of the waveform and 1.0 doing a full-amplitude wavefold.

Because this effect lends itself to the Rack port of my plugins (where you can feed audio rates into any controls), all the controls except Fracture are smoothed for better automation. I don’t do this all the time, but it just seems to be the kind of effect where you might be sending sine waves into it (revealing zipper noises) and then modulating it like crazy, so it’s using the same smoothing that’s in the Z2-series filters.

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 June 25, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 6 Comments

Chris

GoldenSlew

Pear

GalacticVibe

Fracture2

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club