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Chris

Hi! I've got a new plugin you can have! These plugins come in Mac AU, and Mac, Windows and Linux VST. They are state of the art sound, have no DRM, and have totally minimal generic interface so you focus on your sounds.

VerbSixes

TL;DW: VerbSixes is a calibrated reference reverb plugin for Householder matrices.

VerbSixes in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Reverb’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
VerbSixes.zip (604k) standalone(AU, VST2)

The only thing small about this is the interface, and there’s a reason for that.

VerbSixes applies Householder matrices to produce reverb, and it’s named VerbSixes because it escalates things up to the point of 6×6 matrices. Normally you get 4×4 matrices in conjuction with allpass filters which smear out the sound (example: my CloudCoat plugin is made up entirely out of allpass filters, as is MV). There’s a reason other matrix sizes aren’t popular: firstly, you can use multiple 4×4 matrices, and secondly the math is messier with other sizes. With the 4×4 you can feed all the delays into all the other delays at unity gain, just flipping the polarity.

A 3×3 matrix gives you 27 distinct echoes out of 9 different delay lines.

A 4×4 matrix gives you 256 distinct echoes out of 16 different delay lines, only 7 more, and the math is quite straightforward.

A 5×5 matrix, which I’ve been doing for all the kVerbs I’ve made, uses only 9 more delays to get 3125 distinct echoes… which is an impressive jump from 256, especially when you’re using the ability of a Householder matrix to feed back into the input again. That’ll quickly get you lots of echo density, though it’ll sound repetitive with smaller matrices like 3×3 or 4×4. 3125 with regen is a lot, though the math requires multiplications by -2 and 3.

A 6×6 matrix gives you 46,656 distinct echoes BEFORE regen. And all the math is either unity gain or times 2… which of course we know as BitShiftGain, a math operation that only changes the exponent and doesn’t alter the mantissa of the floating point number in any way (one of the secrets of the old Midiverb, which didn’t have floating point math capable of complicated multiplication).

VerbSixes comes with a built-in 6×6 matrix with a calibrated amount of regeneration, so it’s the most recent generation of Householder matrices, prepared to produce extremely lush fluid reverb, in spite of having no filtering or allpasses whatsoever. In fact it has no controls either: it gives exactly one RT60 no matter what the reverb is.

That’s because VerbSixes is also set up to demonstrate 5×5 reverbs. And 4×4. And 3×3… and ANY COMBINATION of those things.

So if you’re making a 4×4 matrix, generating variations on them with my program IntoTheMatrix, you can compare the results knowing they’re going to be consistent. They’re also pretty consistent with the other matrix sizes (to the best of my ability) and a full range of delay lengths (smaller spaces will tend to get louder). It’s a reference reverb maker, running all wet, and you can put it on an aux or just wallow in depth, and if you can get the VerbSixes code to compile and also run IntoTheMatrix, you can generate anything and try it.

Or you can use it just as a plugin, which is a 6×6 giant hall… times an entirely separate 4×4 matrix, so call it 256 giant halls laid end to end.

Just short of 12 MILLION echoes, even without regen. And they both have regen.

I’ll give you more reverbs based on this technique, but enjoy the new bigger-than-Cosmos space :)

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

Mastering2

TL;DW: Mastering2 is Airwindows style, and can do elliptical EQ now!

Mastering2 in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Subtlety’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
Mastering2.zip (609k) standalone(AU, VST2)

This update to Mastering adds the control at the top, which is elliptical EQ, and defaults to zero like Glue does. Not hard to explain: it cuts bass in the side channel, as if you were mastering a vinyl record, though this has uses in nearly any stereo environment. Below a sufficiently low frequency, stereo bass becomes meaningless if it’s stereo enough. Purely out of phase stuff will cancel out.

High time I put it out: been working on the reverbs so much that I have to dig into the backlog for a proper plugin. It’s also funny that the addition of Sidepass makes yet another control where it’s quite hard to hear what it’s doing. Mastering in general is a plugin all about doing little subtle hard-to-hear corrections, or dialing things in using Airwindows Meter. For instance, if you see red spikes on the slew section of Meter, Glue on this will let you control those without damaging apparent high-end. Scope lets you boost or ease back on detail again without apparently changing ‘treble’, and Girth enhances or eases back sub hugeness without apparently changing ‘bass’ that much.

Then there’s Drive which really doesn’t act much like a saturation because it is really Airwindows Zoom, except in a multi-band version that applies to the ‘EQ bands’, except they’re actually Kalman filters. And of course there’s dither, but it’s for modern formats so it is all to 24 bit. To the extent you can even register that, it goes in rough order of ‘how much excitement and brightness and focus there is’, up to Bypass which lets full floating point audio pass.

You should probably run this in conjunction with Airwindows Meter, because it’s all about massaging peak energy and ‘invisible transients’ to shape them exactly the way you want. My idea there was to be able to maximize that type of ‘invisible’ audio for the greatest possible effect, and I use Meter to observe what’s happening rather than just trying to vibe it. The hope is, tuning that stuff just right, produces audio that immediately sounds correct, whether the obvious parts are loud or soft, bright or dark. It’s not a replacement for remixing: I don’t consider mastering to be doing the same things as mixing but differently. Mastering should be tailoring the spell cast by the mixer, and that’s what Mastering2 is all about.

Won’t work for everybody, but for those who appreciate this plugin, having an invisible elliptical filter in there is probably a great upgrade. It all runs on the 64-bit dithered-to-32 floating point buss, so that’s one more area you can dial in to be just right, within the plugin’s processing. It ought to interact with Girth very nicely.

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

AngleFilter

TL;DW: AngleFilter is the synth-style extension of AngleEQ.

AngleFilter in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Filter’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
AngleFilter.zip (500k) standalone(AU, VST2)

So while I do stuff like make new forms of reverb (going from 5×5 matrices to 6×6!) and try to invent genres of music, there’s this funny little filter…

AngleFilter is an offshoot of AngleEQ, which was too strange by itself but ended up turning into the EQs used in PointyGuitar and ChimeyGuitar. This is probably why those can get weird when you set the controls too strangely, and AngleFilter gets even weirder. It was meant to be a nonresonant filter, just a very steep brickwall type thing, but instead it does crazy things with phase around the cutoff, and grows steeper and more intense the more you lower that cutoff.

Since it was so untameable I just put a full-on waveshaper on the output, so its excesses won’t blow up to huge dB spikes. There’s a Hard control, and what it does is it makes life hard for you in setting the other controls. Mostly it goes insane over lower bassy settings, but it can be set to produce a dull roar at higher frequencies too, and the whole design of the plugin is for letting you modulate the cutoff hyper-aggressively without problems.

I’m working on things like very serious reverb upgrades, but sometimes you just gotta have fun too :)

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

ChimeyGuitar

TL;DW: ChimeyGuitar is a supremely compressible instrument amp.

ChimeyGuitar in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Amp Sims’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
ChimeyGuitar.zip (526k) standalone(AU, VST2)

Here’s a followup to PointyGuitar. What if, instead of distort, the imaginary amp compressed?

The tone stack works the same: in fact, it’s exactly as it was in PointyGuitar, as is the cab simulation (a highpass and lowpass made out of AngleEQ, which is able to be very resonant and colorful). That’s on purpose. I want it to be familiar, so the way the tone shaping works is exactly like PointyGuitar, and if you can dial one in, you can dial the other.

But instead of the basic distortion as found in ‘FireAmp’, what’s there? BeziComp. Not even a normal compressor, no, it’s the new experimental one that turns the amplification factor into a Bezier curve… but BeziComp has one instance of itself in play. ChimeyGuitar?

ChimeyGuitar has eight, at full crank.

Stacking compressors like this isn’t unheard of: the FMR Really Nice Compressor has ‘Super Nice’ mode, which cascades three compressors in series. It’s just that ChimeyGuitar does eight, of a new design which I don’t think existed until I started it. That also means it’s on me to sort out what the strengths and weaknesses of this new kind of compression are, seeing as we have as many as eight of them in between every EQ stage now.

First, it can react very quickly, but refuses to alias since it will not apply a volume ‘corner’ above its minimum radius. This matters less used inside ChimeyGuitar because plugins like this repeatedly filter out aliasing harmonics anyhow, but it’s significant because usually as you have compression kick in you hear continued interaction between the sound, and the speed of attack. That lets you dial in a squished, unvarying sound by hearing that overtone as if it was a form of distortion (which it is), but BeziComp and ChimeyGuitar don’t have any of that compression artifact at all.

Instead, you’ll hear an odd warble when you push ChimeyGuitar too far. It’s similar to when you’re using DeRez3: while Bezier curves can sound like a brickwall filter, there’s an strange resonance associated with it. In a compressor, when pushed hard, we hear this as tremblings of the loudness, as if trying to squish the signal makes it more jittery. It can come off like an old Arp Pro Soloist trying to imitate a trombone, but the thing to bear in mind is that you can always back off the Compres control until it cleans up again. The transparency of BeziComp means it’ll clean up a whole bunch while still being compressed.

This is my go-to for articulate guitars and basses that don’t seem to have saturation or distortion. It’s got the flexibility of PointyGuitar, but super clean, or with strange new forms of saturation that are like derezzing. Hope you like it!

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
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.

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