Airwindows

Baxandall3

TL;DW: Baxandall3 is for new tone colors.

Baxandall3.zip (518k) standalone(AU, VST2)
Baxandall3 in Airwindows Consolidated (a separate project) under ‘Filter’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)

The new Baxandall combines elements of Baxandall2, with things I’d left behind in Baxandall the original, to produce something that has tone colors which haven’t been heard before.

The catch is, it’s because people don’t go for these tone colors, or know how to get them, or what to do with them if they had them. But when has that ever stopped us? This could be your lucky day (or, a big waste of time :) )

The new Baxandall adopts the technique from its predecessor, letting you apply larger boosts and cuts, and sweeping the frequencies so you’re accentuating the extremes when you get extra aggressive. It’s based on Bessel filter slopes, but it brings back interleaving (meaning that it’ll take on odd and interesting flavors when you get aggressive with the highs, and it can only tilt so far).

But most of all, it brings back the Console processing (tweaked for maximum sonic density) and it does it in a strange, backwards way.

If you apply slight boosts, the loudness goes up… INSIDE the processing. This is the same as if you were playing with the DAW faders in a Console mix. It’s ‘Doing It Wrong’, but wrong on purpose. What happens when you do this basic, fundamental thing wrong?

Firstly, the filter becomes hypersensitive to near-flat settings. If you boost, you’re not just increasing that frequency’s level, you’re also pushing it harder into the ‘anti-saturation’ and getting that much hotter a result. The calibration’s off. It’ll be expanded, peakier, more dynamic.

If you cut, you’re pulling it back before it reaches ‘anti-saturation’, so it’s not only softer, it’s also more distorted. The dynamic punch is flattened, because it’s saturation that hasn’t been counteracted. You step really hard on the presence and punchiness of whatever’s being turned down.

There’s an input gain control so you can gain stage this, but it’s all working off Treble and Bass being either exactly 0.5, or Bad Things happen. The fact that they’re interleaved Bessel filters just means the things that happen are spread across a wider range. The tone shapings that can happen out of this are really interesting and bizarre.

Thing is, there’s a twist to the catch. Stuff being expanded and dynamic-ified when it gets louder? That behavior also makes things sound farther away. Suppressing and distorting stuff more when you turn it down? That tends to make things sound more close-up. So the most basic, fundamental operations of Baxandall3 simultaneously apply huge EQ curves, while also hiding them and making them shift spatially the opposite to what you’d expect. Normally when we push levels up we expect saturation to rise. In Console7, the first time I experimented with this mechanic, that’s what you get: more is also closer, and it’s very natural and easy to hear. (FatEQ is the same.) This? This is backwards.

I can’t even imagine what people will make of this. If you’re not being super-aggressive with it, you’ll find that it responds to the tiniest adjustments. If you are getting super-aggressive with it, let me know what works and what doesn’t because I’m still wrapping my head around how it even works. I assume there’s going to be some sort of sound that Baxandall3 fits perfectly, and I’m not entirely sure what it’d be. But in its backward spatial tomfoolery, I’m sure it’s the missing link for getting SOME kind of tone. Enjoy exploring!

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.

Date April 12, 2026
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

ClipOnly3

TL;DW: ClipOnly3 is just plain stinkin’ loud.

ClipOnly3.zip (488k) standalone(AU, VST2)
ClipOnly3 in Airwindows Consolidated (a separate project) under ‘Clipping’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)

Turns out you can go harder than ClipOnly2, through the power of noise!

This plugin takes an idea currently rocking its way through bass music loudenation, the idea of covering up the sound of hardclipping through using noise, and runs in a completely different direction with it, to substantially upgrade ClipOnly while still not working quite the same as anything else.

There’s still the ClipOnly behavior of softening the onsets and exits from clipping. Still the total not-changing of any sample below the threshold. Still an ability to not add edgy digital glare to clipped highs like cymbals.

But now, delicately clipped stuff gets a delicate tinge of noise. Hitting the clip harder begins to produce more noise… and then as you blow past that limit in turn, the noise gets replaced with purely hard clipping to a greater and greater extent, so that hyper-slamming restricts the noise part to only the onset and departure edges of the clips. And then there’s an intersample peaking stage that was put in to deal with super-high-frequency test tones, which lets the maximum clip amplitude go insanely high without triggering analog peaking.

So, like all ClipOnly, it’s a tiny featureless plugin that will pass most audio untouched. It’s just that when you slam it, there’s practically no limit to what you can get away with. It’s a clipper, so if you need a limiter this is probably not for you. But if you already knew you were going to be getting some clipping, or if your sounds mask it, or if you were just looking for total meltdown… have fun :)

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.

Date April 5, 2026
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

Dattorro

TL;DW: Dattorro is the resonant lowpass filter out of Donut.

Dattorro.zip (496k) standalone(AU, VST2)
Dattorro in Airwindows Consolidated (a separate project) under ‘Filter’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)

Here’s the filter out of Donut! This started as an experiment to see if I could code an SVF. That’s a State Variable filter, and now that the other plugin makers have stopped laughing I’ll tell you what it is :)

Turns out a State Variable filter is about the simplest way you can do biquad-filter-like things (read: controllable and flexible) and plugin devs really like this one. That includes heavyweight genius devs like Andy from Cytomic who made The Glue and The Drop (Andy is a ‘model every component’ guy doing stuff I choose not to do, a rigorous circuit modeler). Dattorro is not that: Dattorro is me taking the concept of the state variable filter and doing Airwindowsy things with it.

For instance, the frequency control’s designed to go right up to the high frequency limit of the filter no matter what sample rate it’s running under. It does this not by restricting the max frequency, but by altering the logarithm taper of the control so midrange frequencies will always be roughly in the middle of the control’s travel. That means you never see exactly what frequency you’re using, but neither do you see it on a 303 or x0xb0x and those are great, and this is very much a synth style filter.

There’s code for every kind of SVF inside Dattorro’s source code, commented out, but the lowpass you get (and the resonant behavior, it has a great reso flavor) is not stock SVF, but airwindowsized. That’s because I’m using a sin() function in there (for code simplicity. PurestSaturation would work just as well for this, or TapeHack) but not in the way you’d think. The obvious thing to do is put it on as a post clipper for simply adding distortion.

But you know I’m always interested in anti-saturation, and so the softclip is going on the bandpass output… which is then SUBTRACTED from the lowpass (well, 0.5 of bandpass into sin() and then subtracted, I was working out what sounded best) and that’s the filter. It’s nearly as simple as the stock SVF but it sounds way, way slicker and that’s what’s in Donut and now here it is as a standalone filter for you.

The sound is like the filtered-out part gets deeper and more vivid and interesting. Applying inverted saturation is like expansion: it’s part of Dubly, and is like inverse Density, and is the buss section of every Console plugin in one way or another. It makes stuff sound farther away. Applying it to a synth filter in this way gives sonic depth and also a curious side-effect: the rolloff actually got shallower, even when it’s resonant.

This might be a clue towards something that could make a better Baxandall-style filter. I’ll keep experimenting. Enjoy Dattorro :)

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.

Date March 29, 2026
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

ToTape9

TL;DW: ToTape9 is Airwindows tape emulation and brightness compression.

ToTape9.zip (810k) standalone(AU, VST2)
ToTape9 in Airwindows Consolidated (a separate project) under ‘Tape’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)

ToTape is one of the most successful plugins I’ve ever had. Step by step, it’s come along and incorporated more and more things, but always in an original way. It picked up flutter, bias, Dubly, and then adapted all these things to the needs of the musician. So if you don’t know how to calibrate Dubly units for heavy music, you have a Tilt that will give you more of a leaning towards brightness, or darkness… but it’s implemented via the Dubly controls so it acts like adjustments on a tape machine. Shape works likewise, going for either more old-school sonority or more big-studio chill. Flutter behaves itself unless you don’t want it to, and the input and output controls make it very simple to manage ToTape9’s gain staging, for gentle use or aggressive slam.

But then the heart of ToTape is completely replaced by what I learned making TapeHack2, itself a giant leap over the original TapeHack, which was itself a huge discovery. When I tried this in the guts of ToTape I was just completely shocked by how huge it sounded. The scale of the sound put the previous version to shame. You do not have to slam this to have it sound amazing, but if slamming’s your thing I think this will bring delight and joy.

And then it’s topped off by not the latest ClipOnly… but the NEXT ClipOnly. The one where I ran with the concept, not completely unlike my old Chrome Oxide plugin but in a new perspective, of ‘dithering aliasing’. It turns out you can’t actually dither aliasing but there’s a large number of interesting effects you can produce by noising up clipping. So when I experimented, I ended up applying it in a way nobody else was doing, introducing noise just faintly as clipping begins to happen, ramping it up, and then as hard clipping takes over, shifting it to the ‘edge samples’ akin to what ClipOnly and ClipOnly2 have always done, meaning the noise goes back away again (and is never all that loud: sorry, no special FX here)

And combining this with the existing ClipOnly2 created a monster.

So that’s what’s on the end of ToTape9. Output at 0.5 means you’re just barely bumping this final clip stage. Boost it and you’re hitting the output clip harder, cut it back and it’s purely the ToTape section. I would imagine mostly leaving it at 0.5 is what most people will do, but it’s yours to experiment with. It produces a ‘beyond tape slam’ that is shockingly big and deep and loud, it applies its work only when clipping is actively happening, it’s all within a very tiny amplitude window so it stays clean on most everything, and it gracefully handles Gibbs effect overslew (intersample clipping) without ever applying upsampling or downsampling, so the sound is aggressive and raw the way I like my tape effects to be.

Try ToTape9. It’s the most intensely tapey plugin I’ve ever done, with new abilities like the ability to soak up highs like the real thing. It’s got all the little details you could ask of a no-compromises real tape model, but adapted to musical purposes so you can think ’tilt towards more brightness’ rather than ‘should I go with a 355 nanoWebers per meter calibration’. And it’s got the most killer output clip stage I’ve ever made, just to let you use it as a kind of loudness maximizer right out of the box.

I hope this brightens your day :)

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack Module
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.

Date March 22, 2026
Author Chris
Comments 11 Comments

Chris

Baxandall3

ClipOnly3

Dattorro

ToTape9

human-made bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club