Airwindows

TapeDelay2

TL;DW: TapeDelay2 is a new implementation of a flexible tape echo.

Woot! This ought to come in handy.

TapeDelay2 gives you substantial changes over my original TapeDelay. It’s no longer trying to do the ‘Iron Oxide’ style tone shaping the original one did. In fact, it’s not even a delay in the same sense as its predecessor.

Instead, it’s a brand new, undersampled, Airwindows-bandpassed monster ready to make a whole pile of very convincing sounds. As plugin delays go, this covers a big range of purposes.

You’ve got a nice long delay time that’s still available at higher sample rates, thanks to the undersampling techniques. The delay line (and the regeneration) makes use of Airwindows bandpasses, but only on the undersampled content: meaning that if you’ve got it set to very nearly full range (resonance of zero) it’ll give the same subtle highpassing and lowpassing no matter what sample rate you’re at (a normal bandpass would have to roll off closer to the sample rate’s Nyquist frequency, in other words it would let through too many highs to do a proper tape emulation). You can tighten the bandwidth by increasing resonance. You can adjust the region you’re highlighting. And you can still adjust the frequency control even when set to full wide, which gives you more of a tilt EQ. It really turned out to have a lot of flexibility, and there’s two separate bandpasses so that you can shape the overall tone and also focus in on the regenerations if you like. Vintage sounds in the classic Airwindows way, meaning ‘no overprocessing, just high fidelity clean and simple processing’. Also, the dry/wet operates like my recent reverbs: 50% means full dry AND full wet, so you can bring in subtle echoes without altering the gain of your underlying track. Use it like a kind of reverb, with whatever tone and resonance works for you!

And lastly, just to top it off, Tape Flutter. This is a new implementation that I’ve never tried before. Instead of a simple vibrato, in TapeDelay2 the flutter keys off the amplitude of the underlying track, making it a lot more wavery and irregular. Subtle effects are easily achieved in most settings, and crank it up for more of a warbly dirty-tape quality. It should be irregular enough to sound like real tape wobble. It’s done by modulating the tape speed… because unlike any previous Airwindows tape effect, TapeDelay2 works by taking a full-length tape loop and literally speeding it up, rather than trying to change the length of the delay in any way. So both the warble, and any manipulations you make to the delay time, act like messing with the pitch of a physical tape machine with a set record and playback head… which turns out to be the best way to do this :)

This is one of the good ones. Hope ya like it!

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
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 August 1, 2021
Author Chris
Comments 7 Comments

Hull

TL;DW: Hull is an alternate form of highpass/lowpass filter.

Hull.zip(589k)

Funny thing happened on the way to making a new version of TapeDelay :)

This is the second time I’ve done a filter based on stuff the stock market folks have got up to, and both of ’em start with H. First there was Holt, and now this is Hull. It’s set up to work as either a lowpass or highpass filter: the Bright control is really a dry/wet. Bright hard left gives you darkening and the normal output of the filter, Bright hard right subtracts the output giving you a highpass.

This is another audio chainsaw/proof of concept. I feel it’ll be useful as part of other plugins, in a controlled setting, but you can play with it however you like. Be careful, as setting the Freq control very high (increasing the averaging the plugin runs on, and lowering the cutoff frequency) can produce LOTS of CPU munching. I’ve left it that way in case people find a need for it and can handle the CPU demands, but especially at high sample rates it’s a beast at super-high averaging windows.

Hull is a form of playing averaging filters against each other to produce an ‘accurate’ picture of underlying movement beneath noise. This is of course not true: it only appears to be giving optimal information, but it’s effectively synthesizing fake info to make the chart look more specific in its trajectories. It does a really good job of looking like it’s magically clearing away the randomness, but I don’t believe it really is, and you can hear it in the audio performance: it’s dirty, produces obvious artifacts and accentuates weird stuff.

But for a sound effects filter, this is great! So, you can use Hull for various purposes, knowing it has ‘its own sound’ and will really bring a tone to your filtering. It sounds like a grungy old school analog filter that’s maybe distorting and being overloaded by the power of the audio going through it. The lowpass and highpass forms have very distinct tones: lowpassing sounds resonant and sonorous, and reminds me of the oldest Emu samplers (I’m working on getting a Eurorack filter that uses the same chip, to further explore this since I don’t yet have an SP1200). Highpassing does the opposite: it sounds like high frequency boosts done using Hull have a particular airiness and lightness to them.

Taking it way down to the bass and demolishing your CPU in the process, a couple interesting things happen. Lowpassing gives you kicks with a LOT of punch, which let through a bunch of midrange in a way that accentuates impact. (There may be a way to implement this with much lower CPU if it’s a fixed frequency filter: the buffer size isn’t a problem, but allowing the adjustment means implementing it naively and doing things the hard way). Highpassing way down in the bass gives an equally distinctive sound which would translate over smaller speakers very effectively.

This was a good day at work! I feel like modified versions of this principle will lead to some very cool-sounding EQs, even to stuff on the ’emulation’ side of things: this is because I like the sonority and intensity of these filters. They CAN also be CPU-efficient, though this implementation is not (except at high frequencies, where it is fine).

Hope you like it!

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
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 July 25, 2021
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

BrightAmbience3

TL;DW: BrightAmbience3 adds undersampling for high sample rates, and better feedback.

BrightAmbience3.zip(645k)

A Chris from Airwindows’ work is never done… but we’re making some progress where it matters most :)

BrightAmbience is a very old plugin. The original was all about taking sounds coming in, and transforming them into lengths of extruded and very bright reverb. BrightAmbience2 transformed that, in turn, into a more adaptable creation that used inter-aural delays to create a subtle stereo effect like an aura around mono content.

BrightAmbience3 adds undersampling. Now high sample rate mixes retain a consistent tone and reverb length to what the CD-rate plugin would do… and it’s more CPU-efficient running at the elevated rates… and the subtle darkening in tone makes it worth a re-listen.

But now, on top of all that, we’ve got a new way to apply feedback at the ‘wider’ reverb settings, which allows you to feed THOSE back too. And that means, BrightAmbience3 has just taken on a new life for a variety of vibey, distinctly analog-feeling blurred delay effects. Even the really wide reverb settings will still feed back at full crank (though they just give you a sort of droney resonant quality) and the medium settings produce a variety of unusual sounds that are a little bit like when you have a crummy old antique echo effect, and it has no clarity, but when you turn up the feedback strong retro flavors begin to take over… you can’t get clean infinite regeneration that way, but tune it to taste and dial back the feedback control until you have enough echo for your purposes.

Or, ignore the feedback and just use it as BrightAmbience, but with a greater range of effect at higher sample rates, and a richer tone thanks to the undersampling.

I hope you like it. I’m soon to launch into the much awaited ‘Emu filter emulation’ project, though I’ve got some more undersampling projects to take on. Also, much work is underway to get new music recorded so you can start hearing something else for a change: ever since the updating every plugin to Mac M1 native operation (AU and VST both) there’s been no time for anything. But, patience and diligence will eventually produce all good things in their time :)

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
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 July 18, 2021
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Air2

TL;DW: Air2 is a different bright EQ with silk tone and high sample rate support.

Air2.zip(615k)

Energy2 came out so well that I thought I’d follow it with an undersampled version of Air!

Except, with a bunch of extra stuff which isn’t part of Energy, just ‘cos :)

Here’s what you get: Air2 has three treble-boost bands, Hiss, Glitter and Air. The first two are very like what’s in Energy2, but Air2 is NOT the same: it’s a different algorithm, not done the samw way Energy2’s ‘Rat’ band is done, and it has a broader, softer air band that’s less ‘raw harsh energy injection’ and more ‘bright and pretty’.

And then, they all run through a ‘Silk’ control… inspired by but NOT the same as the Neve Portico Silk circuit. That is a real hardware transformer biased into second harmonic creation by a DC current. Air2’s Silk control is the same thing as Single Ended Triode (which you can download and use already) but only applied to the highs out of Air2, so it’s the same general concept but is not a clone of the Portico preamp. Plus if they freak out I will rename it to ‘Sow’s Ear’: it’s part of a treble brightener and the same basic functionality and as far as I’m concerned, nothing is stopping me from asymmetrically distorting highs, and Silk is the best general term for what that does. Except with mine you can push it too far for effect, because of course you can :)

And finally, unlike Energy2, the Dry/Wet control for Air2 strikes a new balance between the Energy style of increasing the effect, and the traditional Dry/Wet control. New with Air2, you can now turn it to full-wet and get ONLY the output of the brightener bands. They’re not exactly filters but they act like it, and by adjusting them against each other you can produce insanely treble-boosted sounds and wipe out everything else using Dry/Wet. The way it works is, up to 75% (0.75) you still have full volume Dry. It won’t re-balance your track, just add whatever Air2 highs you’re looking for. Then, between 0.75 and 1 (full Wet) the dry goes away, so if you crank it up all the way you get the fullest extreme, but for most normal use it’s like Energy2, taking an unvarying dry signal (which is NOT undersampled) and adding however much of the effect you like.

I hope you like it :)

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
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 July 11, 2021
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Chris

TapeDelay2

Hull

BrightAmbience3

Air2

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club