Airwindows

OrbitKick

TL;DW: OrbitKick is a bass generator and kick drum reinforcer.

If you’ve seen modern recording, you’ve probably seen a little drumlike object in front of bass drums. This device is a ‘SubKick’. It’s basically an NS10 woofer hung in front of the kick, so it can be knocked around by subsonic bass waves, and transfer that to electricity for recording. It might or might not be in an actual drum shell, needs to be recorded with an actual preamp (these can have very high output though!) and acts as just another mic, but one that captures the very deepest bass in conjunction with your full drumkit and all your other mics.

But what if you could do that… without the pre? And also without the little drum shell, and without the NS10 speaker, and for that matter without the drumkit. Just ‘deep bass subs’ like a kick drum. On anything.

Enter OrbitKick. This is basically a little physical simulation, like a planet orbiting a sun. When your input sound hits, it kicks this thing into orbit and it just spins, gradually slowing down as its orbit gets bigger and bigger. It’s a little like a second-order sine wave, in that it’s one of those Airwindows things that can get out of hand, which is what the controls are for.

Drop is how fast the note will drop, from ‘not at all’ to real quick. Shape is the same, but makes it drop quicker to start off, so it’s your taper: it gives you punchier attacks, rather than ‘modular guy beeeoooo’ kicks that have no impact. Start controls how high up your attack goes, in conjunction with Thresh, which is the threshold at which the note is kicked off… and Finish is where the note cuts off (set super low, you can get clicky releases).

That’s all. If you want shorter kicks, make it drop faster, start lower, or finish higher. These controls do it all. That includes weird nasty effects where the note is triggered in a scruffy, inconsistent way. OrbitKick does NOT sound like a sample. It’s like a living bass thing, able to put the lowest of bottom octaves on whatever percussive thing you like, or add a thump or ‘pewww!’ laser sound to any other thing so long as it has a distinct attack. And without a distinct attack it will still work but it’ll make an unpleasant noise. And if you can only listen on a laptop or cellphone you may never hear what it does at all…

This one goes out to DnB friends of mine in London :) rarely do I get a plugin that will wreak so much mayhem on really, really big sound systems. Be careful out there, or don’t :)

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 May 7, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

Huge

TL;DW: Huge is a dirty, dirty loudenator.

Huge.zip(516k)

So the idea here was to explore a trick people are doing with Pafnuty: adding just a few odd harmonics, to get really smooth and mellow saturation. You can keep going, and the more harmonics you add the closer you get to a square wave (or just really intense saturation), but when you intentionally pick just a couple it means all your lower frequencies are totally free of aliasing, since you’re not really saturating: just doing a transform that gives you only the added harmonics. If those are below the Nyquist frequency, you automatically have zero aliasing.

But what do you get if you do this, and then magically omit all the frequencies that are so high that they’d be aliasing?

Probably wonderful ultimate loudenation. And Huge is not that.

Instead, it’s tracking the slew rates of all the outputs and just watches to see if those high frequencies are wiggling too fast… and cuts them off if they are. So in theory it’s doing the wonderful clean ultimate high saturation with never an aliasing frequency.

And in practice it’s just STUPID LOUD with extra bassiness and a level of dirt and grunge you wouldn’t believe, from all those harmonics switching on and off. Clearly there are still some bugs in the system. This is not the lovely pure pristine loudenator, it’s a kind of monster, unlike anything I’ve heard.

There is one control apart from the boost control (that’s roughly unity gain at about 0.2: it’s simply an input trim, that’s all it does). The other control is Nasty. You could also call it Placebo, as damn if I can work out whether it’s doing much: I find it, too, seems good at around 0.2 but I could be wrong. It’s controlling how aggressively the plugin cuts off harmonics, so when you increase Nasty, it should allow the harmonics to go closer to aliasing. That said, if you send test tones through this, you’ll get a confusing mess, and if you send clean sounds through it, you’ll get a rude shock.

If you send loud aggressive sounds through it you will level buildings. Choose wisely, and enjoy :)

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 April 30, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 4 Comments

kPlateD

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

kPlateD.zip(627k)

We’re not done, but we’re done with the lettered plate reverbs not unlike certain ones in a famous studio! And we’re ending with a banger. This is kPlateD. This is the one that wasn’t modified to run with hybrid circuitry, though it’s still got the circuitry removed from the box to lower noise (ok, easier to do that with a plugin: I’m literally not putting fake mains hum or anything, in). This is the all-tube one.

Just listen, and compare it with the others, notably kPlateA which is also more of a ‘long deep’ plate.

You’re not going to get the sheer scale of the difference off competing plugins, and these are free open source and if fixes are ever needed everyone will get fixes or updates for free, forever, with source code so you could maintain it yourself: how much is that worth to you? Probably not as much as being extorted for software, because people will always pay more money if they’re backed into a corner and forced to. But you know, I don’t need ALL of the money from all of the people. Just enough to live, and buy a Neve console to put in my home :) (just kidding)

So even though it’s purely software, the tube circuitry is plainly obvious as a contrast to the other three with their hybrid sound. How is this done? Partly through tuning everything (and selecting the actual reverb matrices) to suit the target sound. And partly through literally coding each of them a little differently, with kPlateD being by far the most distinct, its internal saturation algorithms being a whole different type.

So if I can do this, why didn’t I do it with kPlateA, B and C? For the same reason the Beatles album Abbey Road and the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon wouldn’t automatically be better if they were cut on the old REDD consoles. Each sound serves a purpose. They convey distinct atmospheres, which your ear can learn and remember, so rather than struggling to adapt all manner of strange controls you can do ‘this should have kPlateB’ and then concentrate on what music’s meant to go into it. Hope you enjoy the atmosphere of the classic kPlateD :)

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 April 23, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 8 Comments

kPlateC

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

Date April 16, 2023
Author Chris
Comments 4 Comments

Chris

OrbitKick

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kPlateC

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