Airwindows

Channel5

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

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

Atmosphere

TL;DW: Console5 processing with powerful acoustic distance effects.

Atmosphere

I’m pleased with this one: it’s in the Console5 family (so its parts can be interchanged with any other Console5 plugins) but it represents a few different breakthroughs, and if they work out, I’ll be keeping them.

First, this is a multi-stage slew clipper. The effect’s a bit like PDConsole, a gluing and taming of bright digital highs: but, where PDConsole uses the algorithm of PurestDrive to get a more analog mixing-desk kind of sound, Atmosphere’s many stages of slew clipping (across fourteen samples, each with a different maximum slew) enforces the behavior of free air and acoustic distance. This has been a goal for quite a while, but I’ve never got results like these before (might be worth fitting a more exaggerated version into a ‘Distance 2’, if people like). It’s not calibrated to overwhelm, but the scale of your mix should be huge, and since it’s an extended-window slew clipping effect your quieter, subtler sounds don’t get muddied.

This type of processing steps on the annoying digital harshness with a heavy foot, but doesn’t directly EQ: the results you get will depend on what it would be like to have your sound blasting away through a perfect playback system at a distance of ten to thirty feet. If you need up-close, bright and loud sounds, you’ll need to use another system (such as PurestConsole), this one is for space and scale. It’ll probably work well for some electronic mixes if they’re meant to sound loud, it’ll give a real hugeness to rock or metal mixes (so long as the desired effect is more ‘live gig’ in scale) and it will really come into its own summing orchestral stuff from virtual instruments (or anything with similar scale/power needs).

There’s more. The denormalization code is subtly different. Normal Airwindows plugins take pains to not add denormalization noise (prevent CPU spikes) unless necessary. This noise is incredibly faint. Atmosphere keeps this noise going at all times, to sit the mix in a bed of ‘live air’, much fainter than any electronics noise but present. It should feel like an acoustic space is out there at all times, even though it’s at levels way too fine to perceive.

Lastly, the noise shaping to floating point is different too, in an opposite way: previously, Airwindows plugins noise shape to the floating point buss (correctly valued for whatever you’re using, so double-precision buss VST gets processed for a 64-bit output word length) and use an interleaved buffer similar to things I do in Capacitor etc. The one in Atmosphere is different. Instead of incorporating whatever error you’d get as this interleaved buffer that fades out as it goes, Atmosphere uses a single buffer, continuously and seamlessly extended… and fades out NONE of it. Instead, every time the DAW latency setting finishes a buffer, that’s when Atmosphere’s code scales back the buffer just a tiny bit. The idea there is to avoid the noise shaping getting carried away, since it’s way more intense than the previous version: but it’s a smoother, more low-frequency centric kind of noise shaping that would produce DC energy rather than the brightness of previous Airwindows floating-point noise shaping. The result should be a new frontier of Airwindows depth and hugeness in the mix, and if it works it can be applied to new plugins that would benefit from it.

New frontiers cost money, even if it’s just to buy time to work and a place to be, so that’s why I have a Patreon. I’ve been trying to edit that, because back in the days of late 2017 I had it set up to tell you amounts to pledge that would add up to $50, or $100 etc. a year, under the Patreon rules that had you paying some of my fees. But Patreon recanted and decided not to do that, so the numbers I had were wrong: if I said ‘pledge this to be charged this much at the end of the year’, surprise! You’re being charged less than I said you would, because Patreon decided to only charge you what you pledged. I approve of that a lot, and don’t feel you have to alter any pledges, but now they just say how much it’d take to amount to $50/$100/$150 etc. at the end of the year. Pledge what you like :)

Finally, by definition you’ve all seen Youtube Airwindows because that’s where all my videos are. If you’re subscribed, you also have seen things like hardware synth how-tos that aren’t plugins so they aren’t posted to forums. But now there’s something new: I’m pointing my livestreaming techno/house jams to Twitch but also to the primary Airwindows channel, because people were interested and it seemed crazy to just bury it on an obscure channel with 17 subs. So, if you’re following Airwindows on YouTube, and you see a live stream, it’s music of some sort. This is not so much plugins and DSP, instead it’s a fully analog and very sophisticated electronic music-streaming studio that I look forward to teaching people how to replicate. I gotta get inspiration from somewhere, so consider Airwindows streams to be Chris getting in touch with his roots, and expect the sounds to be everything that I try to approach with the plugins. Musically? Expect surprises, and some of you will like it, and it may never be the same twice.

There’s one up there right now, just before the Atmosphere video. It came out pretty good :)

oh, one more thing…

From now on, NewUpdates.zip is organized by plugin TYPE, not just as a pile of plugin zip files. That was easy to put together, and it’s a bit more work for me now, though not much…

But now you can go to a folder, select all, and drop them in your plugins folder all at once.

That should help :)

Date April 29, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 7 Comments

Aura

TL;DW: New kind of resonant lowpass EQ.

Aura

So this turned out to be a bear to bring up to date, because the original code was insane. I’m not quite sure how I got there, and I was still bugfixing long after the demo video was made. You’ll find the actual version of Aura has a slightly wider range, better adjustability in the low range, and the Dry/Wet control gets a touch of added functionality: as you go full wet, the resonant quality gets enhanced, so be sure and explore the half-wet or barely-wet settings. If it’s too scary-resonant, just pull it back a teeny bit and it should cooperate.

And this one is a bit scary as it seems to be channeling analog filters. I agree that it would be great to have this principle work as a full-range, synth-style filter that goes all the way into the bass. I can’t do it, though: it freaks out when I try, and it took endless hacking just to expand it a bit from what you see in the video. This is the algorithm derived from GrooveWear, which averages the rate of change OF the rate of change of the waveform. It’s not even slightly normal. You get what you get.

But what you get, is a lowpass with a striking resonant edge that’s implemented in a totally new way, and which has no pre-ring at all… and the way it gets its sound gives it an extraordinary sonority. Pretty much anything in audio that you’d want to project loudly as if from an acoustic space, can be given a sheen and glisten and sonority with Aura. I’ve got it extending down fairly low into the midrange if you’re at 44.1K or so: that should help if you need to use it at high sample rates, because the technique for doing it is not exactly cooperative and I found no way to simply tune it down: everything’s so geared to slew rate between samples that it’s best used for treble effects. I think it’s got a useful tonality for its treble manipulations, and I’ve spent a lot of time coming up with interesting ways to cut or enhance treble. This one’s good at what it does. You can really do stuff with the texture of your mix by aggressively using Aura on suitable elements.

This work is supported by my Patreon. It’s super late and I’m trying to get this out before midnight on Sunday, because I promised it Sunday night and I’m gonna get some sleep Monday morning. So I’ll just repeat what I sometimes say: if you can do so, I’d really like it if you jumped on my Patreon as if you were buying the plugins commercially. It helps me keep working, it keeps my spirits up, and considering how many plugins I can put in your delighted hands, the equivalent of $50 or $100 a year is kind of what you’d be paying already (more if you’re relying on LOTS of Airwindows plugins and you can easily afford to help me more). Next year you can look and see if I gave you even more, which I think is probably going to happen ;)

And I hope you like Aura. Nobody else makes filtering quite this way (because it’s ridiculous, and very hard to control! But that’s my problem, you just get the working result of the experiments) :)

Date April 22, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Chris

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