Airwindows

DC Voltage

TL:DW; Literally control voltages for digital workstations, because why not?

This is exactly what it says on the tin. Do NOT just put this in a mix and crank it up to see what it’ll do. If your whole system is DC-coupled you will blow your woofers, just like that, after a big ‘whump’. I will not take responsibility for damage caused by misusing unusual tools.

What SHOULD you do? Here are some ideas.

There is no DC offset filter nearly as good as applying an opposite offset. Use metering, perhaps option/alt-dragging on the slider if your DAW permits it, to cancel out a DC offset without any sonic penalty at all. This is called a ‘DC servo’, but digitally. If you can get it perfect and then bounce files so you can work with a center corrected section (so you don’t have to get a pop from turning it on or off) this would be the highest quality way to get rid of a FIXED DC offset without altering any of the bass at all. It’ll retain right down to 0.001 hz or whatever, and only kill what is totally unvarying DC.

If you have a converter that’s DC coupled, and analog modular synthesizers, you can use this to create and modulate control voltages. Use it as a voltage source and then mix stuff together using DAW routing much like you use patchcords on your synthesizers, and be careful not to route control voltages to your monitors! I know there are people who’ve done odd things to get DC voltages inside their DAWs. Now it’s a lot simpler :)

This plugin may not be any use to you, and don’t play with it if you don’t know what it is. If it is useful to you, you already know exactly what you’ll do with it, so go right ahead, now you’ve got DAW control voltages out of a simple plugin.

THERE ARE CHANGES to my Patreon. The tape emulations are closer! I’ve scaled all the goals down to make them more reachable. (remember, I’d like it to be through many people rather than just a few, the goal must remain reached for me to continue doing those rewards!)

The new ‘start going through the list one a month’ is now $600, opensourcing is $800, releasing two a month is $1000 etc. This is added to what I’m already doing, not replacing it: I’ll keep doing the plugins I am doing, you just start to get the ‘greatest hits’ too. Looking forward to entering that phase! I feel that more people will recognize the worth of my Patreon if those plugins begin coming out. They are pretty amazing (and once they ARE out, I’m free to develop new versions, opening up my researches even wider).

Date March 23, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Hermepass

TL:DW; Mastering highpass to set by ear only!

Hermepass

This is specially by request from Gregg of Hermetech Mastering: it’s my try at a specific plugin he wanted. He wasn’t able to find a fantastic-sounding highpass with JUST a frequency control and slope, no bling, no other stuff, as small as possible.

This is of course right up my alley :)

All the more when he responded warmly to my idea of having both the cutoff and slope have NO LABELING to guide you: just 0-1 sliders. You have to listen. That’s the whole point, and I delighted in taking it that one stage further.

Two stages further, because I worked out how to make the slope control continuous. It uses up to six poles (staggered, an idea that Gregg and I independently came up with: it’s present in my ToVinyl2 and ToVinyl3) but as each pole is added it gets its own little dry/wet internally, so you can have two and a half or four and a third poles. Smooth continuous adjustment of how many poles (and how steep the slope), much like my bit-crusher has continuous sample rate crush and bit depth crush.

Three stages since it uses Airwindows interleaved IIR filtering for the very first stage to start off at a slope even shallower than one pole of IIR: sort of ‘half a pole of filtering’ to start off.

The controls are set up to give useful results around the middle of their travel. I’m not sure exactly how many poles that is, or what frequency: use your ears, says me and Gregg (for whom I made this). I do know that depending on how you set it, the transparent cutting of extreme low frequencies WILL give rise to higher peaks, so either gain stage it or use limiting or clipping. This plugin is not a loudenator. It’s a tone shaper, for retaining every possible bit of tonality while reshaping the extreme lows to trim the lowest frequencies: it’s sound balancing, not ‘make louder-ing’.

This work is made possible through my Patreon, without which I wouldn’t be able to do stuff like this. The more it expands, the larger projects I can tackle. Do bear in mind that I’d rather have 20 people easily paying $1 a month, than one person trying to pay $25 and then having to bail right away: do what is comfortable for you.

Hope you like Hermepass! :)

Date March 16, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Ed Is Dim

TL:DW; Mid/side conversion utility plugins.

EdIsDim

It’s always nice to expand one’s horizons! You don’t have to run the latest Logic to be able to use any plugin in mid/side mode… though you might need to do a little fiddling with settings.

EdIsDim comes in two plugs: first use MidSide to convert your stereo track into mid/side (on left and right channels). Then apply your processing (there’s a control with which you can balance the mid/side balance, which also means you can gain stage the M/S content into your plugin), then, go into EdIsDim (read it backwards) to convert back to stereo. The same control is present, and can reverse the gain staging you applied. Read More