Flanger
Flanger is one of the first Airwindows modulation plugins. It gives you a nice through-zero flange, and has code to brighten the tone that helps combat the slight darkness from sample interpolation.
Point
Point is the Airwindows transient designer! It’s tricky to use, but powerful.
For starters, try putting it on some drum like a kick or snare, set Point to -1.0 (all the way to the left) and then set reaction speed to 0.160 or so. You’ve got an instant squashed mega-compressed drumkit! Hair metal for days.
Now take reaction speed to 0.24 or thereabouts. You should be able to hear a big pillowy front end come on to the wave, very Pink Floyd.
Now drop it to around 0.120 with care. Suddenly it’s a funk drumkit, super close-miked, all attack! The cymbals in particular get ridiculously attacky. You can blend between these tones all day, and that’s all just with Point at -1.0… with LACK of point.
If you intend to fool with positive Point, you’re probably going to want to whack the input gain way down, like -12. But then you’ll find that reaction speed of around 0.2 to 0.4 give you an outlandish spike on the kick drum. Cymbal attacks live around 0.6 to 0.7 on the reaction speed.
If I was going to set up a multimiked drum kit entirely with Point, I’d try -1.0 Point with speed 0.16 on the rooms or overheads. Same on the snare mic, faster for Floyd and slower for funk. Kick would get padded and a positive Point at around 0.3 depending whether I wanted click or whack, and if I had a hi-hat mic I’d probably mix it in super low, but give it positive point at around 0.6 just to bring out that little spike.
Point will blow up your mixbuss if you treat it wrong: know what you’re doing and be careful of positive settings. But, it’s very powerful all the same. And yes, it’s a freebie too.
Highpass
Highpass is a really old one! It’s a simple one-pole Airwindows interleaved highpass filter, but it has a weird control (because of course it does). That control is loose/tight, and it’s one of the most spectacular secret weapons for bass/subs mastering ever.
In the middle, it returns a very normal sort of highpass, not too steep in slope.
Set to Tight (all the way to the right) it acts like high transients are the goal in life. Lows around the cutoff are held back, like the higher frequencies are directing them. This is done by input level modulating the cutoff, so louder means ‘less lows’. Lows only come through if they’re gentle. It really reins things in, softening the lows by stepping on them harder when they’re loud.
Set to Loose (all the way to the left) it’s the opposite. Things are restricted, but when the lows kick in they slam. It exaggerates the subs a bit, at least makes them seem to kick in extra hard. This setting will also tighten up sustainy lows on kicks (which is ironic, since it’s labeled Loose).
The way to think of it is, the bigness of the swing of the bass transient. Tight means the bass kicks are tight and higher in frequency for whatever the cutoff is. Loose means the bass kicks go deep and wild, seeming to get more carried away, while the body of the music feels more bass-restricted. And of course you can adjust that more finely with the control once you’re familiar with what it’s doing to the subs.
Highpass is a good tool for handling bass. Not all highpasses are created equal.