Airwindows

Airwindows Plugins Starter Kit

This is the Airwindows Plugin Starter Kit. It contains 11 plugins (if you count Console as its own kind of plugin) and you should be able to make ’em do just about anything musical you could want. This includes many forms of ‘analog emulation’ and a great deal of creative mix exploration. There’s a video explaining many things you can do, and I’ve got two tracks up on SoundCloud (featured at the top of the page) that demonstrate a heavy rock song mixed entirely on my fully analog system (MOTU>Heritage Audio>Heritage Audio hardware buss comp>Lavry ADC) and then the same thing done entirely ITB using the Starter Kit (not even all the plugins). It’s not meant to be an utter and exact clone, but the Starter Kit is basically just as good as the expensive analog rig tonally, even on a mix designed to get the most out of the analog approach (no sound is so much as touched digitally in the analog mix: it’s basically using Logic as an iZ RADAR)

The downloads of the full songs are FLACs of the 24/96, on the one hand the raw capture from the Lavry and on the other hand a simple bounce from Logic using the Starter Kit. So if you want to subject these claims to extreme scrutiny, that’s possible. (maybe I should have a mix-off and put the Logic project file up somewhere: a mix-off where you can ONLY use the Starter Kit. We can see how extreme the variations can become!)

These are the plugins included in the Starter Kit: the video goes into detail on why these perhaps audacious choices were made. It’s not arbitrary: this is meant to serve professionals and also to guide newbies towards mix enlightenment.

EQ: Baxandall, Capacitor2, Focus
Dynamics: Pressure5, ClipOnly2, DeBess
Utility: PurestGain, Monitoring
Analogifying: Interstage
Ambience: Galactic, Verbity
Console System: Console7Buss, Console7Channel, Console7Cascade

(edit: I have added Channel9! Consider it as part of the Analogifying category :) )

If you’ve never gotten into Airwindows Console, or Airwindows Plugins, this is the time. I’m demoing this kit on Logic Pro X, which is now available from Apple on a 90-day free trial, but the plugins are provided in signed AU and VST2.4 form for Mac, Windows64 and Linux (x86 and ARM64 for Raspberry Pi). It shouldn’t be that hard to translate everything I’m doing to any DAW that supports generic-interface plugins. Most importantly, if you looked over the hundreds of plugins Airwindows produces, and wondered where on earth to start, here is your answer! Start here.

Note there are no tape plugins or any name-brand ’emulations’ of anything. You should not be starting with that stuff. Fight me :D

If you have other questions you can post to this thread about the Starter Kit, or show up to a Monday Q&A session, or get in touch with me some other way and I’ll try to help. The Starter Kit is meant to be very approachable, so it should help you start to get pleasing results provided you know what kinds of sounds you want to make! :)

All this is made possible by my Patreon. If it turns out that these free and open source plugins help you out a lot, and especially if you start wanting other more special-purpose ‘kits’ or still more plugins, you might want to support my Patreon! That’s how I’m able to do this full-time.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the Airwindows Plugins Starter Kit! If you want more plugins, there are hundreds, but this is a good start. If you need the original version of the starter kit, before the signed plugins and all, it can still be downloaded at OldStarterKit.zip(5.6M)

Date April 8, 2020
Author Chris
Comments 11 Comments

Cider (and Beyond Snares)

TL;DW: Cider is a re-release of another old Character plugin. (also, drum samples!)

Cider.zip(373k)

So, don’t watch the video!

I mean, you can, but it’s nothing but me talking. My rig broke. I hope I can have it fixed by next week, we’ll see. (Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday streams are still on)

So in the absence of ANY audio…

Hi! I have two things you unfortunately can’t hear, this time. Firstly, Cider is another Character plugin. Works like the last few, sounds kinda like an MCI console? You’ll have to listen for yourself as my rig is broken (this might drive me back to Logic or something, but I’ll fix it somehow).

Secondly, I was working on drum samples. I use a little sampler in my music and it can take pretty high-end samples, so I thought I’d re-do my snares. Specifically, I ran them through this chain: Ponoplayer into Heritage audio mixer with Successor compressor on the 2-buss insert into Lavry Black ADC… the signal path of how I make music, with a heck of a lot of transformers and stuff. This was to compress the snare and re-record it: not only that, re-capture it at 24/96 because the compressor, transformers etc are producing effects at that rate even though the raw samples are the ones in my Dimensional Snares collection, and not 96K to start with.

And then I processed ’em with SoftGate to cut off the hiss from the comp, and make them merge with silence on the tail end more cleanly. Also sets ’em back spatially a bit, while they still open up to full brightness. Just right for my purposes.

And then you can’t hear them on the video because it broke… but that doesn’t mean you can’t have them. I’m not waiting until I’m up to tackling my twitchy recording process again, I’m giving you both of these things NOW ‘cos why not?

BeyondSnares.zip(4.5M)

You can still get on my Patreon if you want. I’m not doing as well as I’d like but I can still handle taking a dive if it helps people survive, and I’m not sure more income is even relevant to what’s tough about all this: we shall see. I think Cider works excellently and I think the new snares will be useful: both to me, and to anyone who needs some reinforcers or a proper backbeat in your own productions. I’ll try to fix my rig for next week, and it’s working well enough that I can still do my early-week streams as normal. So I’ll see ya Monday, and I hope you like Cider! (really, if you’ve been getting the Character reissues you were going to grab this anyway so it’s a moot point that I couldn’t demonstrate it. And I did such a terrible job demonstrating the snares that it’s better you discover them for yourself, and you’ll be hearing them in my music if you listen to that)

Date March 29, 2020
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Calibre

TL;DW: Calibre is a re-release of another old Character plugin.

Calibre.zip(373k)

Hi! I’m back with another plugin, though I’m still trying to keep it boring and encourage people to only be on my Patreon if they really, really can afford it. I’m doing my best to show that I’m doing fine, beyond that I don’t know what to do. Other than keep on keepin’ on.

Calibre is another Character plugin, re-released in AU and VST form. This one’s got kind of a steely quality and if you hype the Character control there’s a point where bass cancels out: weird variation on a tone control! Also, that means if you duplicated the track (or used Blue Cat Patchwork or something) and flipped phase, you’d get a really unusual lowpass and would have only the bass and a lot of strange color. It’s free and open source and I hope you like it.

Like I’ve said in the video, I’m trying to not be too exciting while I ask people not to overcommit to the Patreon, but I do have plans and I’m doing stuff. I could do a video on how I’m making LUTs, and I’ve figured out how I’ll review modular stuff I love while keeping it relatable to non-modular users: I will do the video celebrating the module, and then put up the raw module sound (very high res!) on my Soundcloud as downloadable 24/96 which will also mean I can post about the video anywhere I’m allowed to post release of sample products. And that way, if I’ve built fancy wiring harnesses with extra caps and stuff as my recommended way to use a module, you don’t HAVE to build the same harness, you can grab the samples heard in the video, isolated from my voice track :)

Anyway here’s Calibre ;)

Date March 22, 2020
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Luxor

TL;DW: Luxor is a re-release of another old Character plugin.

Luxor.zip(373k)

Hoo boy! Welcome to my nightmare. I just tried to learn how to use a LUT on my camera in OBS and unleashed the whirlwind. Nearly six hours of struggle later, I have a plugin for you, and a video, kinda.

And a message. And I’m so wrecked that I’ll keep it really brief (also, it’s in the video, which might visually disintegrate but the audio ought to hold together)

Luxor is the Character plugin that’s based off Manley impulses. It does NOT sound like a Manley anything. Instead, it does a weird and maybe cool thing: you might treat it like an amp sim or something, see what you can get out of it. Cranking syn drums through it ought to be good. It is what it is, namely ‘a weird plugin not like anything else’ and I hope you like it.

That’s the plugin. The video finally got made, after hours of struggle with my gear and a whole false start (recorded a massive echo by leaving camera mic enabled), and I think it looks OK except it might disintegrate towards the end, as the encoder I used seems to have been a disaster (won’t do THAT again). So, what’s the message?

You know I use Patreon. But you might not know that I’ve had some people bail off it, or dial it back a lot, because of coronavirus troubles. There’s a lot going on right now. It might not be reasonable to expect to keep that sort of thing going, for a pile of free plugins.

So I’m overhauling the whole thing. Plugins are now $20 rather than $50. And I set up all new tiers, and hid the old ones, so you are encouraged to reconsider what you’re committing to my Patreon and if you were actually thinking of it as ‘this one plugin that is my secret weapon’, well, that is an open invitation to dial your Patreon WAY BACK. Take care of yourself. I will let you guys know if I am in trouble: for right now, I’m not. I can stand it. Re-adjust what you’re doing in light of the massive ‘price cut’ (for stuff that is free anyway) and look more after yourself for a while. I already saw a waver, a dip in the Patreon. I’m no longer going to be ‘almost top 50 worldwide in the Music category, on Patreon’. So be it. Let me show you what Airwindows is really about: I’ll keep working FOR you even while you can’t do anything for me, and I’ll tighten my belt and buy fewer synthesizer parts and we’ll both get through this! And we’ll look back on it and go, damn. Those were tough times.

I’m not joking. Cut back your patronage if for ANY REASON you need to take care of yourself. I am planning for a really major cut-back and will keep on working regardless. You’ll be back if we get through these tough times. Let me show you who I am.

Also, let me post this (including the possibly screwed-up video) and go have dinner ‘cos work did not let me rest for way too many hours.

Hope you like Luxor.

Date March 8, 2020
Author Chris
Comments 5 Comments

Chris

Airwindows Plugins Starter Kit

Cider (and Beyond Snares)

Calibre

Luxor

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club