Airwindows

DoublePaul

TL:DW; Like PaulDither, but more so.

This is for sort of a special purpose.

I’ve got an outrageous custom dither (well, wordlength reducer: there’s no noise and no randomness in it) called Not Just Another Dither. For final output, it’s that I recommend.

However, I’ve got a mastering engineer friend (Hi Bob!) who favors another dither of mine, PaulDither. The reason is, it’s traditional TPDF dither. It handles dithering duties perfectly (with a slight Airwindows-izing: the weight of the final noise floor is balanced to make one ‘bit’ function as zero, and to make the dither activate adjacent bits on either side for a better sound. This also gives a teeny least-significant-bit DC offset, if you assume ‘zero’ is between the two smallest bits, positive and negative)

I wanted to give Bob (and anyone else selecting traditional TPDF) something fancier that still counted as purely normal dither. So, here’s DoublePaul.

It’s TPDF highpassed dither, just like PaulDither. But, I’m also using some adjacent samples to skew the noise profile even further into the highs. It’s just a redistribution of energy, and it leaves the key pair of full-intensity noise samples to stay as TPDF dither. I just doctored the way you hear the noise, to push it a little farther into the highs. I’ve also backed off the teeny DC offset, and shaped every filter tap by ear. If you liked PaulDither, try DoublePaul and see if you like taking the PaulDither concept just a teeny bit farther, with no penalty to how the TPDF works. It’s just like a little sinc interpolation, a thing that’s trying to hide the TPDF energy by pushing it farther into the extreme highs. If you don’t trust NotJustAnotherDither, but you’d like something even quieter than PaulDither, try this.

All this is supported by my Patreon, so if you’d like to see me cheerfully continuing to think up this stuff indefinitely, help me get it to where it looks like a real job. I’m quite good at being a starving artist but money is a resource and it limits and distracts me when I’m starving too much.

Date February 19, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 4 Comments

Capacitor

TL:DW; Filter.

Capacitor

Sometimes half the fun is just inventing :)

People say all filter plugins are just biquads with different GUIs. It’s not true… or at least it’s not true at Airwindows. (actually I have to see what I can get out of biquads: I generally don’t even use ’em at all)

This is a new filter. When I say new, I mean that you don’t have it. I can demonstrate that, because due to the way it works it has a little characteristic response quirk at 1/3 the sampling rate: nothing that hurts the sound, just an odd little notch under some circumstances.

Because it’s a typically Airwindowsy, not-normal EQ algorithm, nobody has tried it, and because of the little quirk, if anybody did try it they knew they had to reject it, because it wasn’t perfect. It had a quirk! And even if they experimented, they probably weren’t that invested in concepts like the sequence of operations on stuff that, in theory, could be done in any order. Why care so much about the implementation details of an idea that had a quirk anyhow and was therefore useless?

More fools they :)

Because musically, this filter has tone for DAYS.

There’s almost an analog-synth-like effect to it: though it doesn’t accentuate the rolloff point, it behaves almost like a DJ ‘isolator’ in the obviousness of its filtering. It has a highpass, a lowpass, and dry/wet, and the high and lowpass are melded into each other as part of the algorithm to get the sound more fluid. It’s also got new experiments in rejecting zipper noise and clicks, because I’m figuring people will want to automate this one. But, even though it’ll work for crazy effects and ‘isolator’ madness, the fullness of the tone will also let you use it in mastering: if you need to tighten bass or roll off just a hint of brightness, you’ll pay no penalty in the body of the music. And the dry/wet is there to let you treat it as a shelf… or to create a presence boost by isolating an area of interest, and then leaving it mostly dry with a hint of the clarified zone.

I’m thrilled with this filter, and nobody else has it: nobody else would be allowed to do this one, because it has a quirk at 1/3 the sampling rate, and typical commercial developers are not allowed DSP quirks. But, since I’m supported by Patreon, I am. I’m developing a whole revised concept of what DSP in 2017 can mean, and I think you can hear what I’m up to in the plugins when you try them. Some might prefer the rather cumbersome methods and DSP of the commercial plugin industry, and if you like that, don’t let me stop you.

But if you like the stuff I started to get into when I brought out PurestDrive and that line of plugins, before Airwindows Patreon was even a thing, then it’s your lucky day. I’ve turned it into an analog-like filter, and it’s free. Have fun using it :)

Date February 12, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 9 Comments

Sidepass

TL:DW; Highpass on the side channel. Utility plug.

Sidepass

This one was by request. It’s not very fancy, but I hope it’ll come in handy. If it is, spread the word!

I’ve got a plugin called ToVinyl, which is rather fancy. It’s the Airwindows attempt at a vinyl mastering suite: elliptical EQ, highpass on the mid to help get levels, an acceleration limiter to tame sudden energy spikes without really cutting brightness otherwise, and even a groove wear modeler that was the precursor to Airwindows Aura. That’s one of the Kagi for-pay plugins, number 9 on the list when I reach $800 a month and begin doing those.

But, I got asked for something much simpler. A highpass filter on just the side channel, and one that would go up the full range from subs to highs, so at full crank it’d be purely mono.

Well, I’ve altered that a teeny bit: Sidepass is aware of sample rates, so if you’re at a 0.1 setting at 44.1K, it ought to be doing the same thing at 0.1 at 96K. But apart from that, here’s a little utility for AU, Mac and PC VST that just highpasses the side, from DC to 22K. It’s an Airwindows filter, same as what’s in Density and Drive as a highpass, and it ought to do nicely.

My work’s supported by Patreon, steadily growing as I keep on working. (My Patreon is new-ish but I’m not—I’ve been at this ten years, no sense stopping now!) If you’d like to see the fancier, for-pay plugins start to come out as free AU/VST too, join up for a buck a month (more if you’re flush) and we will eventually get there, without inconveniencing any one musician too badly! Patreon is a lot less lucrative than trying to make that one killer plugin, but it’s steady and it’s growing and I’m committed to the open/free model :)

Date February 8, 2017
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Xiaomi Yi Tuning With autoexec.ash

Here’s another Airwindows Starving Artist posting! It’s kind of long, but this outlines what I’ve done to get high-performance results out of the Xiaomi Yi. I show the visual tools I made to focus and calibrate the Yi, explain how to set the saturation and vibrance controls, and make an impassioned plea for allowing the Yi to use its noise reduction when shooting compressed HD video. Even if you didn’t hack your Yi like I did, there’s stuff you can use here! :)

Date February 6, 2017
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Chris

DoublePaul

Capacitor

Sidepass

Xiaomi Yi Tuning With autoexec.ash

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