kRockstar2

TL;DW: kRockstar2 is a realistic hall reverb using a new matrix!

kRockstar2.zip (678k) standalone(AU, VST2)
kRockstar2 in Airwindows Consolidated under ‘Reverb’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)

kRockstar is no longer the most impressive realistic Airwindows reverb, because everything changed when I discovered the Conference 6×6 matrix.

What that means is, each delay line output no longer feeds the next six delays in line. Instead, each delay feeds only five out of six… but they’re always different ones, and more importantly, they’re all either unity gain or inverted unity gain. Just like the 4×4 Householder matrix!

Except, with a 4×4 matrix one input sound produces 256 echo returns, before feedback. With a 6×6 matrix, one input sound produces 46,656 echo returns before feedback… NOT counting the 3×3 matrix that handles predelay and placement in the room, So, 1,259,712 distinct echo returns, before feedback.

It sounds lush. The texture is even better than kRockstar (exactly the same reverb algo and delay times, just so you could compare the two techniques!). It’s also adding a Distance control, which is FastDistance but split in two, so that one half of it runs inside the undersampling and produces exactly the same tone no matter the sample rate. The other half runs outside the undersampling, specifically to darken exactly the part of the plugin that’s meant to be smoother if you’re filtering. If you’re into dark spaces like your classic Bricasti tones, this control is your friend.

kRockstar2 does not use the subtle tone adjustments I came up with for Ultralight, because I wanted it to match kRockstar closely. Both do have a subtle taste of nonlinearity to them, cleaning up just a tiny bit quicker than expected, blooming with loud sound just a little more to make the point.

As a final touch, kRockstar2 has the same ‘alive silence’ thing I first added to kCyberCity, and continued in kRockstar, where the air in it breathes with a background space caused by the hall volume being activated by gentle air movement. It’s too quiet to hear, but like properly applied dither, it alters the way you hear sounds drop beyond hearing. It’s just that dither stops things from dropping into grit.

With kRockstar2, when sounds drop away they drop into a sense of place, that’s felt more than heard. Kind of like things in the real world. And again, if you’re hearing the reverb washes, that’s all fine, but that also means you have it distractingly loud. See how it works when you balance the sense of how big things are, against the other elements in the mix, so that sense of hugeness is simply another presence alongside all the other things you’re hearing. The sense of place you get from handling it that way might be just what you needed.

The reverb developments are coming fast, so expect me to beat this pretty soon :)

Note: I’ve worked out the problem some users have been having with CPU usage: the same instruction I’ve used in various recent plugins (RetroBass, ChannelX, PurestWarm3, Ultralight, Ultralight2, and now kRockstar2) to increase tone quality and performance, HURTS performance lots on AMD Athlons. That’s the fused multiply add instruction, which doesn’t exist on those AMD chips, so they work around the lack. For now I can flag which plugins have it, so on the Airwindows website there’s now a tag for it. Its usefulness, especially when the compiler can incorporate it into SIMD processing, is too good to pass up but I’ll remain aware, and it’s possible I can make special builds for those machines if there’s a special reverb that’s just too incredible to not let everybody have. I don’t think kRockstar2 is quite there but I might get one with upcoming work :)

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 for x86
download Pi4VSTs.zip for 32-bit Pi
download Pi5VSTs.zip for 64-bit 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.