Airwindows

Space

SpaceDemo is the latest Airwindows algorithmic reverb, set up to work like the first hardware digital reverbs, and giving more spatial depth than typical digital reverbs.

It decays in a special way, like acoustic space, and has bass and treble controls that help you fit it into the mix, and liveness can be cranked up until sounds just sustain forever (it’ll distort if it gets too carried away). The sample rate settings are for fitting its primary sound into different mix environments, but you can also set the sample rate wrong to get unusual reverb effects.

There’s a calibrated pre-delay built in which roughly corresponds to Haas effect, making the reverb blend with dry signal in such a way that you can send stuff way back without blurring it undesirably (for bigger predelay, add any simple digital delay to the aux). This scales to the sample rate as well.

Space is strictly a stereo plugin, generating stereo reverb. For mono reverb, dual mono or multichannel, try PocketVerbs which is more a special effect verb: Space is about being the primary mix reverb. It takes stereo input and shows some stereo effect with hard panning, but mostly fills up the space in stereo regardless of what channel the input’s on.

Space is $50.

Date November 4, 2013
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

AQuickVoiceClip

AQuickVoiceClip is for recordings such as gamer LPs, where the performance sometimes yells into the mic and completely blows it away into clipping. It subdues the HF hash while retaining clarity when not clipping, and contains a highpass that works with the anti-clipper code. It’s not a ‘un-clipper’ but it tames the distortion a bit.

The reason this little plugin came into existence was, I did some gamer Let’s Plays on YouTube, with a little headset mic. They were Minecraft, and I was trying to work out how to set levels in the situation where you were speaking nicely into the microHOLYCRUDACREEPERAAAAAAA!

There was no real way to pad the mic down to where levels were okay, and still not blow it up by yelling in sudden alarm. Plus, gamers seemed to like yelling into their mics anyway. What to do?

Fortunately, my video capture program, Screenflow, allowed for Audio Units on tracks.

This plugin can be thrown onto a voice capture, and will attack hard clipping to try and make it sound less nasty. It also lets you highpass the audio, for things like feeding voice-changers: just set the frequency. It’s totally free, so if it comes in handy that’s fine. Never did work out how to REALLY un-clip a clipped, yelling gamer voice track. But this did, and does, its job pretty well.

Date October 3, 2013
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

ToTape4

ToTape4Demo is a tape emulation AU universal binary plugin, and the next-generation Airwindows tape emulation. This one can go on the 2-buss! It operates by isolating all the factors in the sound that don’t sound like tape, refining them, and then taking them out of the source material with a single subtract—the input sound is otherwise untouched and unprocessed. This produces a tape emulation of resolution so high it can be used in mastering—or on the 2-buss. It now includes flutter, which turns out to be key to some of the spatial qualities tape offers—and crosstalk modeling for a little more texture! For this reason, ToTape4 now runs one sample of latency—it’s most accurate with flutter at 0.5, will shift a bit if you alter the flutter setting.

This is not an elaborate faceplate made to resemble a tape machine. There are no capstans or twirling reels, nor is it pretending to simulate a specific brand name. This is the Airwindows take on the matter, which means a plugin streamlined to deliver an unmatchably high-quality sound with low overhead and simple controls that tweak lots of stuff under the hood to accomplish simple, useful, obvious things without wasting mixing time.

ToTape4 does not work like old school tape emulations. You can’t use it to smear and roll off highs because real tape doesn’t necessarily do that, but there’s an Airwindows tape emulation that’s designed to be more of a bandpass, and that is Iron Oxide. That one lets you trap in the highs and lows, and barks more if you slam it, so if you’re looking for tape effects as more of a radical sound processing tool, try Iron Oxide. ToTape4 is about being totally, totally realistic.

ToTape4 runs one sample of latency.

ToTape4 is $50.

Date September 11, 2013
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Iron Oxide 4

IronOxide4Demo is a tape emulation AU universal binary plugin. It’s old school tape emulation. Unlike ToTape, Iron Oxide 4 doesn’t present a realistic tape model with wide-range sound—instead, it traps in the sound in the lows and highs and lets you make it bark. This is the one for putting on isolated tracks and cranking out, hitting hard.

Also, you can blur out the tone with flutter which will help get away from the ‘digital’ sound too—and Iron Oxide 4 features a new control, Inv/Dry/Wet. How this works is, you can narrow down the tone to a focussed area that is saturated, and then mix this with dry signal as you might in Reaper. But it doesn’t stop there: you can also add the Iron Oxide tone inverted, subtracting it!

What you get when you cancel out a saturated bandlimited tone is this: you’re producing a mid cut, but the mid cut stops happening when the Iron Oxide section saturates. As a result, your tone cut lets through only the punch and impact, and pulls back the mud. This makes Iron Oxide 4 a really flexible, easily approachable tone shaper. If you’re trying to heighten sound density it’s a great way to intensify a frequency range, and if you want to amp up the impact it can do that with the Inverted range on inv/dry/wet. You can also dial in the area you don’t want on full-wet, then subtract it.

Simulates tape speeds of 1.75 ips to 150 ips (!) and you can give a separate tape speed for lows and highs. This is really designed to act as a bandpass in a way more realistic tape sims can never do, it serves an entirely different role in a mix. I’ve never recommended use of Iron Oxide on the 2-buss or a final mix for it’s too colored and vivid- use ToTape for that.

Iron Oxide is $50.

Date August 14, 2013
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

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