Airwindows

Doublelay

TL;DW: Doublelay is StereoDoubler with independent delays and feedback.

This one was a request: I have a weakness for doing plugins for folks who worked on records I grew up listening to on vinyl. So often we recognize only the rock stars, but the guys behind the desks do so much to help the magic happen. And this plugin is there to bring the magic. It was a GREAT suggestion.

Doublelay starts with Stereo Doubler, then adds delay taps to the pitch-shifted L and R independently, and then it also lets you feed back the results into the input again, in a secret combination that nobody knowing me will be surprised to know is the Golden Ratio. It’s 0.618…. direct feedback, and the inverse as crossfeed. The direct feedback will continue pitch shifting up and up, and the inverse/crossfeed will continue shifting the pitch back again to where it started. The end result is an ability to further expand the spatiality and pitch-iality of the effect to taste, up to 1.0 where you’ll get close to infinite feedback… unless you’re using the pitch shifting, where it will trail off faintly into color-smeared audio trails.

Or you can skip the feedback and use it to thicken vocals and things, or do an ‘echojam’ effect in stereo with just two taps where the echoes are also pitch shifts, or have one side not be a delay and the other side be a big delay: turns out there are a lot of things you can do, and since this is a very immediate (based on the very ‘raw’ sounding Glitch Shifter by way of Stereo Doubler) delay based effect, the added ambience you create will not fill up nearly as much space as a full-on reverb might do. Truly a great way to fill up some mix space with what you’ve already got in the tracks, and go on from there if you like. And I hope you do like Doublelay.

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 August 22, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Balanced

TL;DW: Balanced lets you run an XLR input into a stereo input, sum it to mono, and use it.

Balanced.zip(596k)

Balanced is inspired by the adorably tiny Teenage Engineering TX-6 mixer. You might know that the TX-6 is notorious for being wildly overpriced as a small line mixer, since you can get a Bastl Dude for one-twelveth the price and have almost as many inputs (five jacks to plug in, rather than six). If you multiply that by twelve you’ve got sixty jacks, ten times as many inputs per dollar, and pretty much as tiny.

But the TX-6 is a digital mixer, not analog. And its inputs are stereo. And it also functions as a ADC, a converter for getting stuff into your DAW (at 48k, granted, but 32 bit audio). And that means it can serve other functions, like replacing other multichannel converters… and it’s normal for multichannel converters to be sort of costly.

But how much can it replace? Enter Airwindows Balanced (and some patchcords you will have to make).

Firstly, with breakout cables (also very expensive, from Teenage Engineering) you can get twelve inputs. You will have to process them in pairs or leave them untouched: the TX-6 will do stuff ITB on input before sending the result to your DAW, but I don’t think it can operate on sides of its stereo channels, so the processing has to match.

With Airwindows Balanced, you can plug a balanced, professional XLR output into your TX-6 (or ANY consumer grade stereo input of any kind) and turn it into a mono channel with all the benefits of balanced operation. In fact if your poor-quality consumer input hums or buzzes the same on both channels, Airwindows Balanced will cancel that out as if it was interference in the analog domain. It flips one of the sides and then sums to mono, with a handy gain trim based on BitShiftGain to let you gain-stage stuff that might come in very quiet.

The reason that’s an interesting option is this: with Airwindows Balanced and Teenage Engineering TX-6, you can record certain things at professional quality in multichannel WITHOUT professional mic pres. And that makes TX-6 the budget option. Completely aside from its tininess and portability… or the fact that everything in this portable rig is internally battery powered and can exist, in any combination of professional mic input and stereo line input, miles away from mains power.

The key here is that you can get a battery-powered 48v phantom power box (I’m using Xvive P1s, which charge off a laptop or charger) and power a high-headroom and high-output condenser mic (I’m using Roswell Mini K47s), make a XLR to TRS 1/8″ cable, and put the mic in front of LOUD things. The key is that the TX-6 (and some other bad quality line inputs on laptops and such) is not professional line level. It’s consumer line level. There’s no headroom, it maxes out way short of professional grade.

And that means when you put your mics in front of loud things (and I mean brutally loud drums, stage amps, etc) the peaks won’t be limited by the phantom power box. They won’t clip a mic pre inside the TX-6 as there isn’t one. And it’s a bit like trying to run your mic into a line input and getting no signal… BUT, with the right signals, you will actually get peaks within 6dB or so of clipping. Hell, if you clip the TX-6 it doesn’t sound particularly bad, it handles clipping gracefully compared to some boutique ADCs: and it would take impossibly high loudness to do that off a mic.

The budget gear you can record with can’t do that, not even close. In the ‘loud into condenser mic into DAW’ scenario, this setup with the Xvive P1 and TX-6 compares most closely with APIs and Lavrys, just without 96k capability, and everything on the budget side comes off as congested and flat by comparison.

My hope is that Airwindows Balanced also helps other recording situations. You should be able to take a hot XLR condenser mic, a 48V phantom power box, make the cable (these do not exist as far as I know) and a cheap old laptop with a 1/8″ stereo line input, and get a respectable and good sound as a mono capture… also entirely on batteries, and anywhere. My hope is that if you’re not buying tiny $1000 digital mixers on a whim you can still get value out of this.

But if you’re able to get the TX-6 and scorned it, check out what I was able to make it do. I could have put up four other mics, all on things that would crush budget pres and converters, and carried the whole rig in a backpack including the laptop to anywhere I wanted to record, and also would never have to set a level because by definition nothing the mics can do can ever overload the inputs in a negative way. That makes setup quicker. Just saying.

I can give you Balanced. You gotta make the cables yourself, as I did :)

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 August 15, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

LeadAmp

TL;DW: LeadAmp is an amp sim with a clear, penetrating, vocal tone.

LeadAmp.zip(780k)

Hi! If I’m counting correctly, here is the final Airwindows amp sim: LeadAmp, number six of the set. Not that there aren’t other things, too, but this concludes that project.

And so, in the video for this one, I’m demonstrating ALL of them together so you can hear the differences! You’ve got stuff like FireAmp and GrindAmp giving ‘normal’ heavy guitar tones of various sorts. You’ve got MidAmp and LilAmp for less distorted combos of various sizes. You’ve got BigAmp for an even more flexible distorted amplike sound. And now, LeadAmp.

LeadAmp acts like one of the ‘normal’ ampsims, but leaning more towards the vocal, fluid, Vox-y side of things. It’s a distinctive voice and even though they’re all pretty simple and direct, it’s really obvious how LeadAmp isn’t the same flavor as FireAmp or GrindAmp: distinctly different vibe even though they are all cut from the Airwindows super-direct amp sim cloth.

I 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 August 9, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 4 Comments

RickenbackerBass

TL;DW: RickenbackerBass is the first set of instruments out of Airwindows Free Studio (CC BY 3.0)

RickenbackerBass.zip(532M)

Hi! Here’s something new. Turns out the music I make out of Renoise (such as Skronk) leads to a whole new set of Airwindows goodness, and it’s in the spirit of how I do the plugins.

This is RickenbackerBass. Still no graphics, sorry! This is not here to replace a Rickenbacker(tm) instrument. It’s a Renoise and SFZ instrument that is there to replace ME… or extend me in ways I could not, as a human being, do.

You get six different Rick instruments each playable at a distinct intensity level (lettered A through F: A is softest), three additional RickThumb instruments (A through C: A is softest) played off the thumb only, and a RickXtras instrument that gives you power chords, slides, and clicks/clacks for percussive effect.

All these are recorded in stereo, with the neck pickup on the left channel and the bridge pickup on the right. All these are extremely rowdy and nasty! They’re using Rotosound strings and a heavy attack, and although they are DI you’d hardly know it. They are also 24/96 samples, which will be normal for Airwindows Free Studio unless there’s something else worth doing (like 12 bit samples for use with Radio Music). You can blend them to mono with the Golem plugin, flange the neck pickup against the bridge, run the whole thing through an amp sim (or two amp sims, one for each pickup) or a filter such as XRegion or the Z2 series of sampler-style filters.

This is having me on bass playing the hell out of my Rick, only faster than my fingers could do, and without getting tired or making wrong notes. It’s designed for arrangement and composition: basically load the velocity level that’s appropriate and use that to get a consistent bassline, adding whatever accents or Xtra noises you need.

You can also adapt it into your own creation, and even sell that or redistribute it also for free. It’s a lot like my plugins. Now that I am making music and sample instruments for myself to use, I’ve got folks taking an interest in this and some of them are hot to have me monetize my work since they see how long and hard I’ve been working on it all. My compromise is this: when I put out songs and albums those are old school my property, not designed to be youtuber music or anything like that.

But the TOOLS I use? 100% patreon-supported free studio equipment for all. You’ll know the difference, I’ll be linking to bandcamp when I have songs and albums out (24/96 downloadable, and you’ll be able to hear everything on the album off the Bandcamp page). The samples, like the plugins, get a license (MIT and CC BY 3.0) and my blessing.

And much like my plugins, this is not normal marketing and product-making. This is real specific to how _I_ use things. This one is not set up with velocity layers, it’s manual, by instrument choice. Will I make a velocity layered one? Nope. Can you? Yes, and if you do then tell me in the comments. I’m off making something else.

Will I be prolific with these as I am with plugins? Maybe. Depends how much time I spend in Vermont tracking stuff that I can use on songs… but much like with the plugins, the patreon-supported freedom of this means I get to release stuff that’s DIFFERENT, on every level, and seed other people’s creations in the bargain, and move on.

I suspect if you work with this kinda stuff (or even just have ideas for how to twist it to your own nefarious purposes) you might be off and running with RickenbackerBass, just as it is. I really am serious that basslines ought to be made out of notes of consistent intensity, and that you should pick one level and use that for basslines, with any departures intentional rather than ‘isn’t it great my fumble fingers hit a note softer and now there is variety’. But if you’d like Rick A through F built into a single velocity-switched instrument… you can make one, and you can redistribute it under CC BY 3.0 :)

Mediafire Backup of Free Studio

Date August 4, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 6 Comments

Chris

Doublelay

Balanced

LeadAmp

RickenbackerBass

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