Airwindows

Golem

TL;DW: Blend a stereo track of two mics on an amp.

And back to earth we go, but some people will love this little utility plugin.

Golem takes in a stereo track, typically two mics on a guitar cab (a popular technique among metalheads), and mixes them to mono in the middle of the track.

But wait, there’s (very slightly) more!

Golem lets you balance the respective inputs so you hear more of L or R, and most importantly, Golem lets you apply a delay to only the side that you want to delay. The other side is always no-latency, straight through, but the one you’re delaying gets its little sample delay. Either one, it automatically switches.

Almost done…

The way this control is implemented, means that small adjustments give you a tiny, tiny linear-interpolated delay. I think linear interpolating is best for guitars because it’ll scrub off the tiniest amount of ‘hiss and rattiness’ while giving the least processed sound. That said, interpolating between samples in the way this does, allows you to dial in the subtlest imaginable phase relationships between your mics, and THAT has profound effects on the subtleties of your miked guitar tone. You are tuning where the cancellations between mics are, on a very fine level, in order to do specific things in the sound, and you need easily controllable subsample delays at your fingertips. Enter Golem, your simple tool for exactly that.

And THAT is the point, and also why this plugin has some cool marquee fans who swear by it. (Slippy, can I repost the ‘All Things Slippery’ mp3? I think there are lots of people who need to hear it, and it was a really soulful time in your life. I hoard it, since it fell off the Internet. But I digress)

There are some options for allowing a larger range of delay, or inverting one of the channels, but it’s basically just mixing two tracks and being able to micro-delay one of them. Some folks will be deeply unimpressed because you have to be a bit of a fanatic to get that worked up about delaying one of the guitar cab mics five-eighths of a sample in order to place a cancellation node JUST EXACTLY where you need it to be.

But you’re talking to someone who noise shapes a long double to the floating-point buss, so yay fanatics! You know who you are. This plugin is for you.

The Patreon is on the verge of another goal: if it is over $1000 when June begins, firstly that’s a cool birthday present (June 5!) and secondly it means you’ll get Righteous4 (with the new Spiral distortion algorithm) AND Energy in June, because >$1000 means I release two from the list each month from then on. There should still be time to include the new work I do, but the backlog goes twice as fast. Now, it probably won’t stay over $1000 because Patreon always has people drop off when billing starts, and that’s okay. I’m just saying, that goal is coming this month or next, and that means you start to get the ‘list’ released faster. And Righteous4 is next, regardless. (It should be possible when the list is all done, to go and start putting out specific legacy versions, including ones with legacy sound-code: sometimes people want things like the old bizarre antialiasing routines I was doing around 2007)

I think really the best birthday present is all of you. Thank you <3

Date May 27, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 5 Comments

Spiral

TL;DW: New best smoothest distortion algorithm.

Spiral

What if… the building-block sine-based saturation routine I build so many things on, which I thought was the smoothest distortion you could have, is NOT the ideal distortion?

I was watching a youtube video by Brady Haran, on his ‘Numberphile’ channel. It was about the golden ratio, and it showed the little drawing you’ve maybe seen, where you take a golden rectangle, and then make a square on it and put a circle segment (like when I use sine curves for my distortions), and then make a smaller square next to it and a circle section on that which connects, and so on ad infinitum. A ‘spiral’ like a seashell, a golden ratio spiral.

And Brady says, ‘of course this isn’t actually a spiral’ and my mind: blown.

Because of course it isn’t. It’s circle pieces butted up against each other, and only looks like it’s connected because it’s pretty flat going through those points. But the rate of curvature changes really suddenly and drastically at those points… and does it the same way, at the zero crossing of ConsoleChannel, Density, PurestDrive, PurestWarm, Channel, and lots and lots of other plugins I’ve made. It’s part of the ‘fatter, smooth’ sound of some of my distortions. Seemingly really fat and analog-sounding, but there’s a discontinuity as you go through zero, which is why it makes the audio sound obviously different.

People do like making the audio sound different, but people HATE the sound of discontinuities. An old version of Channel where I hacked in a ‘flat’ undistorted section, got me a huge blowback of dismay and outrage until I put it back to the simple sine-based one. People are incredibly sensitive to second order discontinuities, where the output number will be 0 but the direction things are changing will suddenly be the opposite. That’s what made the old ‘New Channel’ be such a failure: the center of the wave was flat no-distortion, and then without making a visible discontinuity it would suddenly change to ‘tighter sine-based saturation curve’, both on the negative and positive sides of the wave. It would look perfectly normal but people just hated the sound. Now I know why. And now it turns out the sine based one HAS a discontinuity, at the zero crossing, right where you’d get class AB and B distortion, and it never occurred to me.

And I can fix it, and turn the code for that part into ONE line of reinvented original code, which will be open source because I’m Patreon-supported and don’t have to stop people using my good audio code (they only have to credit me when they use it: it will be very possible to tell when they do. They don’t have to pay anything since it’s an MIT license, and they don’t have to open their own source, just publically credit that they used my Spiral code).

And of course I did: here, have Spiral, free. You can just install this and listen to it, if the video and the post are too long. This is the proof of concept which can be used in several useful ways. There are no controls, at all. You can gain stage into it and do stuff with it and sit it on the top of every track like it was PurestDrive or Channel, or use it as a 2-buss clipping stage, where it will clip to around -1.4dB with about -0.4 intersample peak maximum (so it is Mastered For iTunes friendly, used as a final clip). It also has a ‘freak out mode’ if you massively overdrive it, and you can do that with things like uncompressed drums, and it makes noises you’ve never heard before, or when used more gently it just sounds like the ultimate analogification.

I really had no idea I could do a basic saturation algorithm (which still uses long double precision sines as part of it) that was that good. It’s a considerably bigger sonic improvement than the new noise shaping technique, because what it does is on a far higher level… though of course it also is using the new noise shaping, for good measure. All the latest everything, right here.

Bear in mind, the original sin()-based one in Console5, PurestConsole etc. is still optimal for Console5 encode/decode because it can be lossless and has significant effect at low levels. My tape emulation stuff uses the ‘fattening’ effect of that on purpose. I can’t just go through and replace everything because all the sounds will change. I have to re-voice everything that would take advantage of the new code, and I’ll do it, and it’ll take time and effort, and probably become new versions of things so you can still have the ‘sine fatness’ versions if you want them. I don’t like taking sounds away from people, and old tones shouldn’t be removed or made inaccessible.

But what if there’s a WAY better analog-sounding distortion effect based on the way that the ‘constructed’ golden ratio seashell/spiral made of circle sections in boxes that get smaller, is NOT correct because much like the simplest sine-based overdrive, it doesn’t start with zero distortion but with the same tiny distortion the whole time (which, in joining to the opposite pole, makes a discontinuity you can’t see much like the golden ratio ‘spiral’ has discontinuities you can’t see?) …and I fixed it?

Try Spiral, and I will get to work incorporating this into my library of audio plugins that I make available using my Patreon. I’ve put out more than 100 plugins for you to freely use, since I started doing it. If even one of them is so useful that you’d have paid $50 for it as a commercial plugin, please join my Patreon at the equivalent of $50 a year. Or, you know, if you think I do good work and I’m better off continuing to do this stuff full-time with awesome resources, and not taking a day job or trying to fix my own porch with time I should spend coding stuff for you. It’s as simple as that.

And yes, my porch is still broken, but this has been a good day. :)

Date May 20, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 11 Comments

Channel5

TL;DW: Channel for 2018, with new subtleties.

Channel5

Channel has long been a sort of test-bed of mine, and so when I started working with new methods for some of my stuff it was an obvious choice. I’ve been asked for an extra Output level control, which it has (for those of you who are really into level matching, can’t fault you for that though sometimes I think it’s not relevant) but if you set Output to 1.0 it bypasses itself and becomes exactly, exactly the same as Channel4.

Except for two things, which first appeared in Atmosphere: this lets you A/B them with the original versions, using Channel 4 and 5.

One, I introduced the concept of live air denormalizing: before this (and on plugins I think are suited to it), Airwindows plugins watched for total digital black silence, and if it was present, produced an impossibly faint hiss sound, at around 300 dB down. If there was any audio at all that wasn’t digital black, this got switched off. With Atmosphere, it’s different: the denormalizing signal is always there, and if the result WITH the signal is digital black, then the signal’s subtracted again. Same result, but there’s a permanent noise hundreds of times quieter than typical ‘noise adding plugins’. The idea is that there can be no ‘dead’ silence, only ‘alive’ silence: you can’t save the file in normal formats and retain it (24 bit audio saving will simply turn this noise to digital black again), you most likely can’t hear it ever no matter what you do, but I wanted the deepest darkest silence to be alive rather than dead black nothingness.

Two, it noise shapes to the floating point buss differently, and on the one hand I bet you can’t consistently hear it but on the other, I think it matters. Before, I used an interleaving technique much like I often use in IIR filters and plugs such as Capacitor. It related to the sample rate by forcing everything to be considered as the interaction between two or more samples, and the energy being brought back into the output audio provided corrections at high frequencies. What began with Atmosphere, and what you’ll (maybe) hear with Channel5, is a completely different and more radical approach. These plugins noise shape ALL the error energy back into the audio. It accumulates, sticks around, and so it can contribute to bass energy in tiny amounts because it persists over thousands and thousands of samples. There’s a ‘pull-back’ in the form of multiplying the amount by something like 0.999999, which will bleed built-up energy away, but this multiply doesn’t happen on a per-sample basis. It happens per BUFFER. So, in the world of noise shaping floating point error, this is the one that stores up every tiniest bit of error and applies it, not interleaved but very smoothly, to the audio.

What should happen as a result of this is, there’s a sense of ease from switching from interleaved to the smooth way. It might seem a little less lively, and I’ll have some plugins that retain the other way. But due to the greatly increased time during which the error is held, plugins that use the new noise shaping will be crazy good at presenting analog-like, seamless bass and mids. So, more soothing, possibly less exciting, but a huge jump in depth and naturalness.

…in RELATIVE terms to what was there before. That’s the thing. I feel it’s possible that when you get used to it the change can be dimly sensed as a good thing. I don’t think you, or I, or anyone would be able to pick this out double blind. I can think of a mastering guy or two that MIGHT, but they’d struggle: these are people who take pains to dither to 24 bit and say that they sense something wrong if they don’t. It’s on the order of that, or even more subtle.

But I do feel that one eventually senses the full range of a sound one works with, and more importantly if I can make something better I will do so, without hesitating.

Have fun playing with Channel5. And if anyone needs to sound the alarm and say HEY! You need to stop using the new stuff! That noise is driving me crazy, and your noise shaping sounds awful now!

…well, that’d be pretty funny :)

All this is supported by my Patreon. I’ve put out more than 100 plugins for you to freely use, since I started doing the Patreon. If even one of them is so useful that you’d have paid $50 for it as a commercial plugin, please join my Patreon at the equivalent of $50 a year. Then, next year, we’ll see if I’ve done just one additional plugin that you’d also buy as a commercial plugin. I might make as many as 52 more by then, so the odds are kind of in my favor :)

Date May 13, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 6 Comments

Wider

TL;DW: Airwindows stereo space shaping.

Wider

Here’s a nice little building block. It’s stereo-only for obvious reasons (in AU, you won’t see it available on mono tracks): it’s a stereo space adjuster.

It works like this: you’ve got mid and side channels, but taken up several notches. Instead of being adjusted by level controls, the sliders use the Density algorithm. That means if you’re boosting, they get fattened up, and if you cut, they retain some of the edge and definition. This technique from Density has a way of moving audio’s position in space: boost comes forward, and cut moves backward. It turns out that’s perfect for manipulating the shape of a stereo space.

But that’s not all: as a final space-manipulating technique, Wider applies an itty-bitty time delay and interpolation (it can be as small as sub-sample) to whichever is the least forward, mid or side. That causes a delicate roll-off and sits the relevant part just a tiny bit back, spatially… and then the audio’s recombined into stereo again. It’s a bold thing to try, but it’s done very subtly so you wouldn’t know it was happening except I’ve just told you, so my secret is out :)

The result is this: you can kinda-sorta use Wider to produce extreme stereo effects (look for StereoFX, coming soon, as a better way to get aggressive with space) but it really comes into its own when used to redesign stereo soundfields. With tiny, small adjustments, you can get hugely effective results that sound totally natural. This is the mastering-grade one, where you can transform the source in a convincing and musical way, and not lose anything in the process. The effectiveness and transparency, especially when used for tiny corrections, will make this a go-to plugin for real stereo work.

Also, as always the Airwindows plugins are Linux VST, Windows 32 and 64 bit VST (both allowing for both 32 and 64 bit processing buss), Mac VST (allowing for 32 and 64 bit processing buss) and Mac AU. All the Mac versions are triple binaries that support 32 bit Intel, 64 bit Intel, and PPC (yes: PPC, in 2018. Because what if you have one you’d like to use for something?). I mention this because I saw another thread with someone bemoaning how big devs aren’t supporting 32 bit anymore. And I was like, hehehe. Depends where you look, doesn’t it? Somebody has your back ;)

All this is supported by my Patreon, and I’m delighted to say we’re getting close to another landmark: at $1000 a month, it will shift gears and I’ll give you TWO plugins from the list (of greatest hits plugins) each month. It’s also letting me pursue other very interesting researches: tonight I’m doing a music stream where I’ve programmed an Axoloti to play chords and basslines from a new chord theory I’ve come up with, steered by cross-linked Bastl Kastle LFOs (Sloths would also be suitable), so I can jam with a robotic brain that plays not prearranged chords, but an ever-changing spectrum of harmonic space that’s a true cyborg synthesis between modular generative patch and human accompaniment. I’ll also be using a card game I’ve been developing, which I hope to sell when I’ve got it good (open-sourcing the information to allow for free DIY too). for thematic ideas.

I don’t yet have the Axoloti listening to my playing so the robot brain will follow MY notes as well as me following it, but rest assured I’m working on it. Come and see, if you’re not too busy playing with Wider. There’s more where that came from, this is a fertile period thanks to the Patreon. :)

Date May 6, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 8 Comments

Chris

Golem

Spiral

Channel5

Wider

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club