Airwindows

Pop2

TL;DW: Pop2 adds control and punch to Pop.

Back in the day, I said I would get an Allen and Heath compressor to do Pop2. That is not what happened here, and Pop2 is not a hardware emulation (even though I’m demonstrating it against a Heritage Audio Successor using a sidechain filter on the hardware comp that Pop2 doesn’t even have)

What happened is this: Pop was the best testbed for some experiments I needed to do. I needed to split out attack and decay speeds (as much as I could, on this crazy algorithm!) and I needed to build ClipOnly2 into the output stage.

This is because there’s a trick you can do if you know how. If you compress in such a way that a huge spikey attack pokes out, and then you clip that attack, you can get and control a sort of distorted ‘splat’ on the attack that highlights it usefully. (I didn’t make this up: Paul Frindle talked about it publicly as a useful thing to do)

The result of these experiments is Pop2, a software compressor so intense that you have to shoot it out with a rackmount compressor which will set you back $1700… and even then, it’s not a given which wins. The hardware will give you more midrange sonority (that Successor is fully transformer balanced and a really nice piece of kit) and hangs on to decays in a characteristic way… but Pop2 stands up for itself damn well, plus you can run one on all 16 inserts of your hybrid analog/digital recording setup, plus there’s a bit of a price difference.

On a personal note I apologize for the delay and lack of plugin last week: I was at a hospital but not over myself or my lady, in this case it’s my best friend out here in Vermont. Suffice to say I am studio building like a madman because it is my way of coping with grief and loss, and I’ll rest at times too, but he would appreciate me turning to my lifework at such a time, as he’s been an inspiration to me in turn: and that’s enough of that for now. Just know: maybe sometimes go for your dreams and don’t wait, because you never know when your life or those near you will be just taken away.

I am proud to still be here helping you go for YOUR dreams, and hope that Pop2 helps you do that. Please help support my Patreon and I’ll continue to charge forth doing everything I can, and it also helps me be there for my friends and loved ones when I need to drop everything and drive or fly to somebody’s side (which we will hope does not become a constant refrain!)

Love you folks, talk to you later :)

download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
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 27, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 13 Comments

TexturizeMS

TL;DW: TexturizeMS is a hidden-noise plugin for adding mid-side sonic texture to things.

TexturizeMS.zip(634k)

This is further development on my earlier plugin, Texturize. It existed to blend sculpted noise with the direct signal in a way that can enhance the qualities of your audio… depending on what that was, and whether you liked the results. It ‘does something’, that’s for sure, but what? My code for doing it already existed, but there was a lot of buzz over another plugin which did a variation of this effect with a great deal of mystery and hype. I thought it was useful to do an open source version where you could clearly hear what the thing did, and that’s Texturize.

But what if a simple stereo effect isn’t enough?

TexturizeMS breaks the effect into mid/side processing, and then lets you set them independently. That means you can add a bit of extra zip in the highs to just the side, while keeping the center cleaner. If you have synthetic elements that show obvious noise using Texturize, and they’re centered, you can tune just the middle. I think it’s a major upgrade in terms of actually using the effect usefully.

It’s still Texturize. It’s still a sort of funky snake oil (or maybe truffle oil?) It’s a flavor and is absolutely doing a thing, but you don’t have to consider it useful. But if you liked the flavor and atmosphere of this one, I think it’s your lucky day. Hope you like it!

download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
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 13, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Dynamics

TL;DW: Dynamics is a combination compressor gate.

Dynamics.zip(946k)

Dynamics started with a request: the gate, from CStrip, on its own. Then I thought, what if I included the compression too? I could tweak both and see if I could make ’em better for the new plugin. And then I thought, what would it be like if I combined them into a single dynamics object?

I think it worked.

Dynamics can be very transparent, or you can crank the speed and intensity to be hyper-squished… but since it’s a single plugin, you can hypercompress AND gate as a unit. That means you’re triggering the gate off the source audio, you’re able to control the closing of the gate like it’s raw sound, but the sound you’re gating is the compressed one. And that means terrific control and cleanness on the sculpted, tightened sounds. I’ve designed it so you can make it gate on almost anything, and squish very aggressively. It’s unlinked so you can use it on a stereo submix with distinct parts for each side, or put it on a mono track to control and shape it.

download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
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 6, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Holt2

TL;DW: Holt2 is a bass-cab-like resonant lowpass filter.

Holt2.zip(627k)

Holt2 extends what I did with Holt, to produce an astonishing effect like Aura for bass.

How is this? Simple: Holt is a method you can use in Excel for predicting sales figures based on trends. It basically uses two variables each of which chase each other to try and cut through the noise of realworld data and produce useful predictive results. My friend from the livestream thought it might make a lowpass that was more fuzzy in tonality. It did not do that thing.

Instead, I got something like a low-frequency version of Aura: a resonant lowpass like a synth filter with huge control over the extreme lows. I had to do weird things to get it to track fairly consistently over different resonance settings, because the Holt method doesn’t really have anything like that at all: turning it into a synth filter is strictly my deal. So is the multipole arrangement: this thing morphs seamlessly from no poles (dry) to eight poles (48 dB per octave) with intense resonance or no resonance at all, based on how you set it.

The changes from the original Holt are, it’s got more poles of filtering, and no longer has the Spiral soft-clip built in. So, if you’re incautious with this it might blow stuff up real good. It won’t quite self-resonate but it sure throws out a lot of resonance, which is sometimes just the ticket for making amplike tones out of beefy sounds.

I’m going to be using this as a go-to bass sound, which makes use of DI bass immediately less studio-y. It’ll also handle automation nicely (except the Poles control doesn’t like to be automated) opening up modern electronic music effects on what might seem like a set-and-forget bass amp. But since there’s the dry/wet control, you might also find Holt2 just the ticket for taking guitar sounds (either real or plugin) and throwing thunderous cab weight behind them. Dial in the desired huge rumbling low-end, and then go all dry, crank the output level and sneak in just enough of the super-lows to expand your guitar tone. It might also find other uses: let me know if anything really clicks for you!

download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
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 October 30, 2022
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Chris

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