Airwindows

Capacitor2

TL;DW: Capacitor2 is Capacitor with extra analog modeling and mojo.

Didn’t see this coming!

My researches led me to a webpage by the electronics company Murata, and an observation: for a particular line of capacitors they make, namely high dielectric ceramic caps made of barium titanate, there’s a concern. The capacitance drops sharply if you put the capacitor under voltage pressure. How much? As much as 50% for a little over six volts. It’s pretty linear. Thing is, the signal is ALSO a voltage. What if it tended to modulate the cutoff? As part of analog modeling?

I have plugins, the old Lowpass and Highpass, which frequency-modulate the cutoff based on the input signal. But they did it symmetrically… what about doing it the way the real-world capacitor would do it? What would you get, in the event that other capacitors had some of this behavior? It seemed like you might get a lot of even harmonics, and people tend to like that. Why not give it a try?

And that’s how something interesting got discovered.

Capacitor2 is Capacitor, already a popular plugin, but with this analog modeling built in. There’s a ‘NonLin’ control that lets you crank up the distortedness from very minimal, to quite extreme. It’s sensitive to input level (naturally) so that’s another reason to have it on a control.

And what you get is INTENSE analog coloration, and something unexpected: it emphasizes transients and brings out the articulateness of sounds in a really distinctive way. You may not have heard anything quite like this… or if you’ve been using analog gear, maybe you’re used to hearing it. I really didn’t plan for the result I got: if real-world caps have any of this behavior, it explains a lot. Literally all that’s happening is modulating the cutoff frequency of the rather Airwindows-y Capacitor algorithm. There’s no dynamics processing in there at all, but the result is incredibly dynamic. (you can even use it to boost narrow bandpasses for effect!)

This will be very useful going forward and there’s more work to be done. My work’s supported by Patreon, which means the more work IS likely to be done, the best I can, because Patreon is way steadier and less ‘transient’ than selling stuff retail. Mind you, Capacitor2 is exactly the sort of thing that would give me a really good month of sales, the kind that carries you through a whole season. And that won’t happen, because Capacitor2 is free and open source just like Capacitor was. So use it in good health. And if you want to jump on the Patreon, that’s appreciated too. :)

There are several open source projects underway adapting and porting my plugins: an LV2 project, and Rackwindows which has already brought a few plugins to VCV Rack. I hope they enjoy Capacitor2: I think it would be a hell of a good match for VCV Rack in particular, as it’s kind of like a ‘fixed filter bank’, but would adapt gracefully to CV control of its parameters (they’re all smoothed). Though, maybe for glitchy purposes it’d be good to UNsmooth them and let you run audio into the CVs!

Date July 26, 2020
Author Chris
Comments 9 Comments

Vinyl Dither Redux

TL;DW: Retro ‘groove crackle’ dither with fuller sound.

VinylDither

Today we have VinylDither, now with 24/16 bit switch and DeRez! And also a variety of previews to other new things, in the video, including an explanation of Golem for those who missed it the first time (if you did miss it, it’s like getting two plugins today).

VinylDither used to be known as Ten Nines: it’s a weird dither using techniques kind of like DSD (direct stream digital, or one-bit digital). I tuned it to spit out noise floor that resembles vinyl surface noise. It’s a little cooler-sounding than regular TPDF, and works like a normal dither (doesn’t gate, or do anything too insane). It’s so good tonally that you won’t get a very good ‘bit-crush’ effect out of it: I demonstrate it compared to regular bit crushing from DeRez itself, and also with a DC offset applied to get DeRez to gate. VinylDither doesn’t do any of that, it sounds just like the high-res only with a vinyl-style surface noise.

I’m demonstrating on the raw audio files for an upcoming sample set: I was changing bass strings on my Rick, which meant removing perfectly good Rotosounds to try out some tapewounds (which I ended up loving, by the way). So it seemed like I had better do a serious sampling session, in order for people to be able to use prog rock Rick bass sounds in their purest form. This is with a SansAmp VT Bass on the neck pickup, and a guitar amp on the bridge pickup (a Chris Squire Rick-O-Sound trick, if I’m not mistaken). When I’ve made my sample set I’ll put the raw files up on SoundCloud for if anyone wants to do their own 24/96 sample making. The demonstrations of Golem are because it’s my tool for taking a stereo track of two mics, or a mic and a DI, and summing them to mono with whatever balance or micro-delay you like: Golem is a known secret weapon tool that hit VST in 2018 and it’s good to mention again. It can be downloaded here: Golem.

I’ve also showed some of my work on the hardware club: spent some time figuring out how I can get CMOS chips and useful parts into the hands of people, so that’s moving along and I’ll probably be good and ready when I reach that Patreon goal.

If you drop by the Q&A on Monday at 11 AM EST, I can tell you about what I’ve learned lately regarding the additional secret weapon of John Bonham’s putting aluminum foil in his bass drums to ‘make them go off like cannons’. It is a real thing, but it doesn’t do that. It does something else, very well, and I’ll be using it going forward, both in my kick drum and my floor tom… so next time I find time to record rock music it’ll be sounding a hell of a lot more powerful than before. And that should be fun :)

This work is supported by Patreon. If I hit $2000 a month I start reselling CMOS chips and experimenter parts at cost to my patrons. Otherwise, I’ll just keep on keepin’ on :)

Date July 19, 2020
Author Chris
Comments 1 Comment

TPDF Dither Redux

TL;DW: I’ve revisited TPDFDither, to add a 16/24 bit switch and DeRez.

TPDFDither

This continues my Redux series of dither plugins. Now, TPDF! As I say in the video, this is not only 16/24 bit TPDF with a DeRez control (and a clamp for how loud it gets so it doesn’t blow up your ears at super low bit depths), it’s also the Airwindows TPDF algorithm. Which is to say it’s not exactly like everyone else’s TPDF algorithm, even though it adds exactly two noise sources each one bit in loudness.

That’s because when I made it, I added one and then subtracted the other and thought that gave me zero. But of course, it doesn’t… it gives me TPDF (triangular probability density function, or ‘the correct kind of dither when done by-the-book’ which decorrelates two moments of quantization noise blah blah blah technical :) )

But it also gives exactly half a bit, on average, of DC offset. This is enough to make measurements weird. It’s not enough to do any harm to anything (less than a least significant bit: it’s literally in the noise floor). But it is enough to have the noise floor sit across THREE bit values instead of only two. And that is enough to make it sound nice. (it’s possible there are other values, like 0.382… that would sound better still, but I’ve not done that experiment yet, and it’d be more complicated to implement… guess I know what I’ll be doing NEXT week)

This work is supported by Patreon, and thanks to that I’m able to buy a pump to empty my busted washing machine. After first buying a microphone, instead of a non-busted washing machine. Because of course I did :D

Date July 12, 2020
Author Chris
Comments No Comments

NJAD Redux

TL;DW: I’ve revisited Not Just Another Dither, to add a 16/24 bit switch and DeRez.

NotJustAnotherDither

It’s late and I’ve been cranking away on a whole pile of plugins here, because it turned out I had to revise Beam and Dark too. (re-download them from where you got ’em if you’d like the updates)

This is because I started doing the more ‘normal’ dither plugins, and found that my DeRez code was making them go insanely loud at far reaches of the DeRez control: I put in a clamp so the maximum roar of bitcrush is 12 db down, even when it’s one bit or less. This might adjust the loudness of extreme bitcrush in your projects: any normal use, or use as a ‘simulated old school sampler’, will be unaffected. I’ll be having other dithers come out that need this volume clamp more: so far, Beam and Dark and NJAD gate off to silence so there’s a limit to how loud they can go.

I’d like people’s opinions on whether Dark is a suitable replacement for NJAD, in Monitoring. Though they don’t work exactly the same, and though there are things about NJAD that are pleasing, I still feel that especially at 24 bit but even at 16 bit, Dark is simply better. You can also compare Beam (I’ve updated that with a volume clamp too, re-download it) but I doubt that is quite as good. Each plugin has identical DeRez code, so you can set them identically to compare.

This work is supported by Patreon, and thanks to that I’m able to do many things. Like blow a month’s income on a microphone. Do you like the mic audio this week? If you do, I have some ideas on how I can make a simultaneous recording of that and my lavalier mic (very clean, though more noisy) and then do a plugin to apply the kinds of second harmonic distortion and transformer goodness my fancy pants mic boasts of. I’ll still prefer the real mic… buuuut would you like me to take a whack at the ol’ faux Elam plugin? Apologies for not trying out a real Elam: that would be several years of income, ain’t happening :D also, I keep learning more about what you’d need if you can make a break for the big time, and you know I share all my information. See ya Monday, those who like to compare notes.

Date July 5, 2020
Author Chris
Comments 2 Comments

Chris

Capacitor2

Vinyl Dither Redux

TPDF Dither Redux

NJAD Redux

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

Patreon Promo Club