Point
TL;DW: Explosive transient redesigner.
WARNING: Point goes critical and explodes at 1:36, in the video! I turned it down -12dB in post to spare my YouTube audience (still quite loud), but you get to watch my reaction!
The one, the only! Point was introduced in 2007, just ahead of an amazing series of spatializers, analog modelers, and stompbox-style FX that consumed months of work. The curious thing is, Point didn’t. It’s one of those odd plugins that only required an idea: ‘what would happen if I did this?’, and an afternoon of coding. And ever after, it’s lived on as a mysterious and untameable plugin monster, secret weapon and mixer’s friend, always just as an obscure Audio Unit…
…until now.
You get three controls: an input trim, the Point control, and a reaction speed. Point goes from -1.0 to 1.0 and ‘dry’ is 0.0. Reaction speed goes from 0.0 to 1.0 and there’s nothing to particularly suggest where anything should be set, so I’ll tell you now, and I’ll also tell you where NOT to set it if you know what’s good for you.
For squishing off the fronts of snaredrums to make them huge, use Point -1.0 and a reaction speed around 0.166.
To spotlight cymbal attacks while rounding the drums, use Point -1.0 and a reaction speed around 0.14.
To hype up kick drum attacks and suppress the sustain in a gatey sort of way, use a reaction speed of around 0.3 and carefully add positive Point until you have the effect you want.
To blow up the DAW and kill your ears, do that and crank Point to 1.0, then stop the transport, and then start it up again with Point still at 1.0…
That’s your warning. Point is kind of like a ZVex Fuzz Factory or some such mad hardware device: the range of settings DOES include ‘out of control’, and it’s such a simple ‘circuit’ that it does little to restrain things when you Go Too Far and operate it in a state that will explode. It won’t just do it out of nowhere, but don’t make it transition between ‘off’ and Point 1.0: even if you have the fader buried, it can still clobber you.
The reason I leave behaviors like that in there, in a plugin like Point, is that some people will want the full range of Point’s output, and will be following it with something to manage Point’s outbursts. If you’ve got it surrounded with plugins to tame it, I want you to be able to use Point settings near or at 1.0, and if you set it near that, you’ll immediately hear how intense it’s being so it won’t come as too much of a shock to discover it’s become an unstable isotope of transient destruction.
:)
Also, I don’t always mention this, but all my new Patreon-supported plugins are created as AU, Mac and PC VST. All the Mac ones are compiled to run on at least 10.6.8 if not earlier, and run on 64 bit Intel, 32 bit Intel, and 32 bit PPC (yes! PPC!). The PC VSTs contain 32 and 64 bit versions, and will certainly work as far back as Windows 7 if not earlier: I’m not sure how far back you have to go to make these not work, but I’d be curious to find out considering that the AUs run on PPC Power Macs!
Also also, no subscriptions or DRM. EVER. That has never changed and won’t ever change. Patreon doesn’t count as a subscription because it can’t take the plugins back from you, which all true subscription based systems must be able to do (even if it means hacking the heck out of your poor DAW).
Point doesn’t count as hacking the heck out of your poor DAW. It counts as blowing UP your poor DAW if you set it to explode on startup. :)
I don’t intend to make blow-up-your-DAW plugins as a regular thing, but if you want to support and sustain the person who thinks up algorithms that literally explode like no math ever should, you should sign up for my Patreon. I’m looking to use it in such a way that I can earn a living doing my work while never asking more than about $12 a year from anybody (compare to $50 a year, if you bought just one Airwindows plugin each year). That said, people do pledge more, from $2 to $20 a month as they feel comfortable doing. (to some, $20 a month is not too much to ask for hundreds of the best plugins)