Airwindows

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.

Date January 31, 2007
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Density

Density is a special plugin, because it demonstrates things that ended up resonating through Airwindows plugins for years. It became part of the toolbox for implementing other things, and started in 2007 as one of the first Airwindows plugins. It’s the ultimate flexible saturation freebie.

Not just saturation, though! Yes, Density can be cranked up to incredibly distorted levels, producing a huge and fat sound. It’s got a type of distortion that is intensely thick and tubey, and it can be highpassed and then mixed in with dry signal to do lots of great things with the energy of the tone. But you can also set it to negative values, which gives you ANTIsaturation.

What’s that for? Not for thickening the sound and making it more upfront, which is what Density likes to do with positive settings. Rather, the opposite: it thins the sound and makes it more far away. This probably won’t seem useful immediately, but consider that you can throw it on reverb returns, on mix elements that have to sit back in the mix—upfrontness is relative, and you can work a mix from both directions.

Elements of Density are used throughout the Airwindows product line, but here’s where it started: one very flexible plugin, still useful today.

Date January 24, 2007
Author Chris
Comments 3 Comments

Distance

Distance was designed to try and suppress highs in sound, as if the sound was coming from a great distance… BUT, not through just rolling off treble.

Through slew restricting. Not even equalization at all.

This is so unusual an approach that it won’t work on many sounds, not by itself. If you take something upfront and normal and try to make it ‘distant’ it just won’t work. The trick is to take something that’s meant to be distant, like a reverb return, and put Distance on that. Match what’s there with an appropriate Distance setting to put the finishing touches on the sound.

Ignore the ‘miles’ part, think of it as just a slider that can be adjusted to place a distant element in its correct depth. Distance can’t really impose upon a sound, a specific distance. What it CAN do is take a sound that’s meant to be coming from a distance, be it ever so far… and make that really convincing in a mix.

Date January 23, 2007
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Peak Limiter

Peak Limiter is the first Airwindows loudness plugin, and has a number of unique features. While these days I encourage people to not limit or distort, and to use ADClip for the cleanest possible handling of overs, and to get NC-17 if you’re looking to just do silly loudness… there have been other approaches from Airwindows in the past.

Peak Limiter has three controls: boost amount, corner frequency and distortion.

Boost amount is obvious, offering 12 db of gain on tap. Corner Frequency isn’t at all obvious—what it’s doing is, sending a highpassed signal to the boost and the peak limiter, and then passing through what’s under the cutoff straight to the output. The idea was that you could push loudness while still having sine basses or something, and have them combine without distorting the bass. It sort of worked… and then Distortion is exactly what it would appear to be. Plus, it’s tracking overshoots and chasing them with a Chebyshev filter much like what NC-17 does.

The whole thing works like this: splitting of frequencies to clean up the bass, compression kicking in to handle the added gain, second harmonic added to supplement the lows: merge to an output, apply the soft-clipping of Distortion and then hard-clip after that just to be sure.

If you’d like a copy of Peak Limiter, buy one of the Airwindows loudenation plugins (NC-17 or ADClip, which clips much better than Peak Limiter ever will) and email me. I’ll send it.

Date January 19, 2007
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

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Highpass

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