TL;DW: ZNotch2 acts more like the Emu e6400 Ultra phaser in motion, with coefficient interpolation.

ZNotch2.zip(618k)

This completes the reboot of my original Z-style filters! These are all based on study of a real hardware Emu e6400 sampler. (If my Patreon does well, I’ll be able to study more interesting hardware gear like I did this one). ZNotch is based on the ‘phaser’ settings, and ZNotch2 brings the coefficient interpolation people longed to have in this filter.

Bear in mind, ZNotch also has its place. It’s meant to sound exactly the same (I may possibly have improved the tone a tiny bit with ZNotch2, not sure of that) but the original ZNotch does NOT have coefficient smoothing. That means it started out less than the real hardware filter, ‘not as good yet’, BUT if you’re not modulating the controls, you can get the same tone with a lot less CPU by choosing the Z filter that is not the 2 version. The originals will use less CPU because they’re not recalculating so much every sample, and that means you should probably have both installed if you like this type of filter. I demonstrate ZNotch2 on an electronic kick drum to great effect, and there’s nothing I’m doing there which I couldn’t do with the original ZNotch at lower CPU cost.

That said, this one will move more fluidly, and the ‘Phaser’ sound is very special in motion! I hope you like it. We’re starting 2022 with the full DnB arsenal available ITB: Mackity, MackEQ, and the Z-style filters! I hope people have a lot of fun with this.

You can also have fun hanging out on my new Twitch :D https://www.twitch.tv/airwindows which is where I got my music today! I’ve got it set up so that I can talk to chat without it going to my recording, so it’s a very good way for me to get back into making new music (heavily techno influenced, but with all sorts of things going on) and also answering questions. I’ll be streaming most afternoons, as early as noon EST, ending as late as 6 in the evening, more typically an hour or so. Please drop by! For the time being I’m also streaming to YouTube, because I’m far from the threshold where Twitch would tell me to stop that, but Twitch’s probably the best place to do it, and the more people show up, the more likely Twitch will end up letting me be visible in ‘Browse’ (techno music streams). So if you can pick one, go for the Twitch and we’ll see where this goes :)

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
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.

TL;DW: ZBandpass2 acts more like the Emu e6400 Ultra bandpass in motion, with coefficient interpolation.

ZBandpass2.zip(618k)

ZBandpass2 is the followup that adds coefficient interpolation to my Z-Plane Filter emulation. Which of course is not to say that I had the code, or took apart the machine and cloned the schematic: no, these plugins are about running a reference sound into the real live Emu e6400 Ultra sampler, and smashing the crud out of it to get the most out of the filters and their distinct color and behavior, and then trying to mimic that in a plugin purely by ear.

The original Airwindows Z filters run more efficiently because they’re not asked to do as much: they have the same tone but aren’t trying to smooth zipper noise and interpolate, so if you need fixed filter settings don’t overlook those. However, half the fun of a real live sampler is to get funky with it, and so ZBandpass2 follows ZLowpass2 in adding the smoothing to everything, so you can automate whatever you like. Remember it’s set up to have lots of distortion and gain on tap, keep the input and output real low if you’re not just trying to melt the thing down (0.1 will give you basically unity gain, and the output will let you pad things a whole lot if you need to)

Getting close to the end of the year! I’m excited for 2022: it’s going to be a lot better than 2020 or 2021, in a lot of ways. Looking forward to seeing you there! :)

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
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.

TL;DW: ZHighpass2 acts more like the Emu e6400 Ultra highpass in motion, with coefficient interpolation.

ZHighpass2.zip(618k)

By request, here’s the followup to ZHighpass!

ZHighpass2 is the followup that adds coefficient interpolation to my Z-Plane Filter emulation. Which of course is not to say that I had the code, or took apart the machine and cloned the schematic: no, these plugins are about running a reference sound into the real live Emu e6400 Ultra sampler, and smashing the crud out of it to get the most out of the filters and their distinct color and behavior, and then trying to mimic that in a plugin purely by ear.

The original Airwindows Z filters run more efficiently because they’re not asked to do as much: they have the same tone but aren’t trying to smooth zipper noise and interpolate, so if you need fixed filter settings don’t overlook those. However, half the fun of a real live sampler is to get funky with it, and so ZHighpass2 follows ZLowpass2 in adding the smoothing to everything, so you can automate whatever you like. Remember it’s set up to have lots of distortion and gain on tap, keep the input and output real low if you’re not just trying to melt the thing down (0.1 will give you basically unity gain, and the output will let you pad things a whole lot if you need to)

Note also that I found an uninitialized variable in the previous ZLowpass2: the smoothing of the Wet control wasn’t being started out correctly. It didn’t seem to do anything but all the same I’ve fixed it: redownload it if you’re concerned, or use the updated version that’s in the big plugin collections below.

Join me tomorrow on my YouTube channel for a coding livestream and some questions: for the streaming and hanging out, would anyone like to move over to Twitch? I feel like that might be a better place for that sort of thing. I wish you could see all that goes on behind the scenes, but one thing’s clear: I need to let people in on a little more of that, I think. There can be days of work that go into little glimpses of stuff, like my take on a new way to approach breakbeats in the Bespoke environment. Might as well take it all to a platform where ‘hanging out as I slowly work through stuff in audio production’ is what people expect to be doing :)

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
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.