AverMatrix

TL;DW: AverMatrix turns averaging into a full-featured EQ.

AverMatrix.zip(344k)

Here’s a good idea, by request!

My Average plugin is pretty handy. It gives you from one to ten taps of simple averaging, as a continuously variable thing. At higher settings, there are comb-filtery artifacts that come in as a result of how averaging works, but you can tune them with the filter setting and they sound pretty natural… and averaging has very good time response because it doesn’t have an IIR ‘tail’, so it’s very clean-sounding in ways normal filters aren’t.

AverMatrix takes that, and gives you one to ten POLES of filtering like in the first Average. That’s continuous too: you can have three and a half poles, no trouble (it just generates the third pole and then fades halfway into it) so the subtlety of adjustment is great.

AND, also by request, AverMatrix uses the Inv/Dry/Wet trick some of my other plugins use, and it’s a great idea to include. Go to full ‘inverse’ and AverMatrix is made to keep the dry and subtract the inverted wet from it… which means, now it’s a highpass. An amazing-sounding highpass, with great clarity and airy-ness and just as clean transient behavior, and just like applying dry/wet on the regular averaging, you can apply dry/inverse to give only a subtle treble lift. I think this is going to work real well for people. And one more thing: since native averaging at high numbers of taps gives a funny notch that you can tune, and since this is inverse, you can use this behavior to give a highs boost with a funny, tuneable peak. Set it wrongly and maybe it’ll make your mic sound nasty (don’t reinforce existing spikes in the mic’s response) but place it just right and you can get treble lift that neatly avoids the resonances of your mic… and enjoy the response of a much fancier microphone. (your settings will be sample-rate dependent so tune it again if you change sample rate)

All this is supported by Patreon, so the plugin is free for you to use with my blessing. In fact, so’s the source code (MIT license). If AverMatrix is indispensable for you, so you’d have bought it if I was selling it for $20, you can go to Patreon and add $20 per year to whatever you’re giving me (if anything). If so many people do this that I break $2000 a month (back in the day selling these commercially I often made that much, but it was real inconsistent) then I have a goal in mind: I will begin reselling electronic parts (IC chips, capacitors, trimpots, circuit board material) to people so you can begin trying to build your own synths and stompboxes and things. I’m working on replicating my modular system as a pile of DIY parts people can have for very cheaply, and as you know I find strange and new ways to do things, so this is going to be pretty exciting.

I’ll also see anyone who cares to show up, at my Monday Q&A session at 11:00 EST on my youtube channel: we’ll be talking about what I mentioned at the end of the video. I think it would be good if I moved my music jams to a more Europe-friendly time: 3:00 PM my time, which is 9 in the evening in Europe, and go for three hours instead of nearly two… because that way I can build up a schedule that I can promote and let people sign up for, like a residency, so that a synth-music listener can look up the schedule and (eventually) always have somewhere to go, every day, any time of day or night, to find live music they can listen to.

They call it Streampunks, and I’m thrilled to have found that scene. And it’ll be Colin Benders rules as well as Chris from Airwindows rules: from me, I’ll be looking for people who are willing to show up and stream when they say they will. I’m not so worried about skill levels or anything, because this is about ‘just doing’ and appreciating everyone, and because of the Colin Benders rules ;) though it’s not spelled out, anyone who’s been following Colin’s music streaming adventures knows that Colin rules are ‘there are no genres, there are no rules’. So it could be bangin’ intense underground club fodder, or meditative ambient chill spaces, or pretty much anything: don’t get trapped, don’t get predictable or play to expectations.

We’ll talk Monday about what I can do to set up a sort of venue (really, a schedule, as I’m not the boss of anybody but I can provide a certain amount of promotion plus I already stream regularly, have for years). IF anyone can do it better or take it over, that would be exciting too! But it ain’t happening yet, so I mean to kick this thing into motion, and anybody who can stream live music and explore their own creativity is welcome.

Thanks! See some of you on Monday, and talk to you later :)