Airwindows

Baxandall2

TL;DW: Baxandall2 is Baxandall, extended and made more powerful.

Sometimes the only way you can make something bigger is to strip it down. I’d been exploring EQs for the purposes of putting one in a future Console version, and revisited Baxandall… well, by the time I was done, a lot was different and a lot was still the same. It still uses my interleaved biquad filters (an unusual choice that helps the shallowness of the filter slopes in this very ‘broad strokes’ EQ). It still uses the technique of sweeping those filter center points to make increasingly extreme effects as you get crazier with it: it gets almost synth-like, starting with general ’tilt EQ’ effects of great subtlety but bringing in wild boosts as you crank it. The purpose of that is to do the sort of anti-Soothe thing I favor: if you have a track and it’s carrying highs, in no way do you need to also have full bass on it. Instead, you build a mix out of composite parts each of which bring a different voicing to the mix. And Baxandall2 is designed to get you to whatever broad EQ place you need, from a place of naturalness.

But there’s nothing natural about the cranked-up 24dB boosts and cuts you can now do. This is newly tuned with the filter sweeping to take you straight past the original Baxandall’s settings into wild new places. Also, the original Baxandall was made more forgiving by running it inside an internal Console processing, analog-ifying it. But it turns out that I can leave that to actual Console versions and strip Baxandall2 down to the guts of it, which actually gave it a lot more power.

This is Baxandall in the form that I will need it, for doing things with. But since it’s Airwindows, you can use it too. And you can still use the original Baxandall, that’s not going anywhere and has its own merits. Baxandall2 is just… more, at any cost, no holds barred. Hope you like it.

download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
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 December 11, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Airwindows Audiophiles

Just to confirm, I used my cellphone number to make a facebook account solely to be able to talk to the Airwindows audiophiles group: my lady friend likes you folks :)

So if you wondered if that was me, consider this authoritative ;)

Date December 8, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

ClipSoftly

TL;DW: ClipSoftly is ClipOnly2 but as a softclipper: a very handy building block.

ClipSoftly.zip(604k)

What more needs be said? ClipSoftly is ultimate softclipping, using the techniques used on ClipOnly2 for softening the edge of the hard clipping, but on the softest possible clipping. Where ClipOnly2 manipulates the onsets of the brightest transients to give you pure hard-clipping without digital grit, ClipSoftly is doing that without even hardclipping.

So what we have here, basically, is a control-less (like ClipOnly and ClipOnly2) safety clipper, but it’s a saturation effect. It’s also a building block I (or others) can use inside larger plugins or new versions of Console, much like the recent Pop2 uses ClipOnly2 on the output, to give you the ability for really aggressive attacks.

You’d use something like ClipOnly2 in mastering specifically because it won’t touch the values of any unclipped samples. ClipSoftly is different: it will touch the values of ALL samples, reshaping the whole sound to make it bigger, fatter, tubier.

I hope you like it, and the way it’ll affect my plugins going forward :)

download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
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 December 4, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 9 Comments

Pop2

TL;DW: Pop2 adds control and punch to Pop.

Pop2.zip(628k)

Back in the day, I said I would get an Allen and Heath compressor to do Pop2. That is not what happened here, and Pop2 is not a hardware emulation (even though I’m demonstrating it against a Heritage Audio Successor using a sidechain filter on the hardware comp that Pop2 doesn’t even have)

What happened is this: Pop was the best testbed for some experiments I needed to do. I needed to split out attack and decay speeds (as much as I could, on this crazy algorithm!) and I needed to build ClipOnly2 into the output stage.

This is because there’s a trick you can do if you know how. If you compress in such a way that a huge spikey attack pokes out, and then you clip that attack, you can get and control a sort of distorted ‘splat’ on the attack that highlights it usefully. (I didn’t make this up: Paul Frindle talked about it publicly as a useful thing to do)

The result of these experiments is Pop2, a software compressor so intense that you have to shoot it out with a rackmount compressor which will set you back $1700… and even then, it’s not a given which wins. The hardware will give you more midrange sonority (that Successor is fully transformer balanced and a really nice piece of kit) and hangs on to decays in a characteristic way… but Pop2 stands up for itself damn well, plus you can run one on all 16 inserts of your hybrid analog/digital recording setup, plus there’s a bit of a price difference.

On a personal note I apologize for the delay and lack of plugin last week: I was at a hospital but not over myself or my lady, in this case it’s my best friend out here in Vermont. Suffice to say I am studio building like a madman because it is my way of coping with grief and loss, and I’ll rest at times too, but he would appreciate me turning to my lifework at such a time, as he’s been an inspiration to me in turn: and that’s enough of that for now. Just know: maybe sometimes go for your dreams and don’t wait, because you never know when your life or those near you will be just taken away.

I am proud to still be here helping you go for YOUR dreams, and hope that Pop2 helps you do that. Please help support my Patreon and I’ll continue to charge forth doing everything I can, and it also helps me be there for my friends and loved ones when I need to drop everything and drive or fly to somebody’s side (which we will hope does not become a constant refrain!)

Love you folks, talk to you later :)

download StarterKit.zip for just the basics
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 November 27, 2022
Author Chris
Comments 13 Comments

Chris

Baxandall2

Airwindows Audiophiles

ClipSoftly

Pop2

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

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