Airwindows

Gatelope

TL;DW: A special gate that applies filters.

Those who’ve been watching Airwindows know that I’m supposed to be taking it easy and cooling my jets just a bit ;) I’ve had a pretty strenuous Fall and have to dial it back so I don’t get sick. (shout-out to moge of Gearslutz who tipped me off to things about posture and pinched nerves: some of my woes seem to be clearing up thanks to heeding this advice!)

However, I’ve also made promises… and it’s difficult for me to entirely pause making plugins, when I have good ones in the pipeline :)

Gatelope was initially developed for Ola Sonmark, to solve the following problem: can you gate a tom mic in such a way that it rejects cymbal bleed, but lets the lows sustain longer, and then transitions into silence gracefully?

It just so happens that in developing that, I also wanted to do the opposite: reject low frequency rumble and sustain the highs more. I thought it might be useful for tightening up spot mics on kick drums. And the result… does both those things, and anywhere in between, and various other effects besides. It’s existed as a secret, Mac-only, AU-only weapon for long enough. I didn’t want to wait any longer, so enjoy Gatelope now (the Mac AU build contains an extra plugin, Gatelinked, which works like the VSTs: Gatelope in AU is ‘N to N’ and meant to be used on mono tracks, and the VSTs and Gatelinked are exactly the same, but linked stereo to prevent the stereo image from going to the side randomly)

If I seem a little out of sorts, it’ll get better and you can keep tabs on me as I’ll be doing Airwindows livestreams/AMA on Mondays at 11 AM EST from now on: that’s not so demanding as making 50+ plugins a year, and I enjoy helping people and answering questions. That’ll be on the same YouTube channel my plugin videos are on. All this is supported through Patreon, which I really appreciate: think of it like, if you would have bought one plugin from me at $50 during the last year, then please get on the Patreon to give $50 a year. You can stop if stuff comes up, nothing bad will happen, and you can do $100 or $150 a year if you’d have bought many plugins. The steadiness of it helps me, and having that resource lets me plan more things for Airwindows. I’ve got a lot of ideas, ask me at the livestream.

For now, have fun with Gatelope, and thank you! :)

Date December 2, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 10 Comments

Floor

TL;DW: Fake bottom octave for fun and profit!

Floor

So this is one of those weird ‘considered harmful’ plugins… the ‘Don’t do this’ plugins. I don’t really advocate for this one as I don’t entirely approve: it’s kind of like some of the loudenators in that respect, and indeed it has similar characteristics.

But, I don’t hide information, so here ya go, complete with the open source ;)

Floor does an odd thing that’s like trying to synthesize fake harmonics related to the real bass content, to make you think there’s a lower octave there when there isn’t. It might not be the most perfect implementation of this (I understand there’s a Waves plugin that does this type of processing and I think I must have modeled it on that) but it’s the Airwindows take on reverse-engineering that type of processing, while knowing nothing but the desired effect and the general category of what’s happening.

This means it’s now part of the open source toolkit and can find its way into other stuff: here’s hoping real bass continues to be a thing (honestly, so much of what I do with Airwindows serves to improve linearity in the tiny micro-modulations that help us hear extended bass as a satisfying, resonant thing) even with an expanded toolkit around these frequencies. A lot of my recent work around DubSub and BassKit has been about introducing extended bass frequencies in a desirable way. I could’ve tacked the Floor algorithm onto there, and I decided that wasn’t good to do.

Why would you want to do fake bass?

Because you can get more loudness out of it. (also, maybe you’re just doing something interesting with tonalities, or exploiting the algorithm to make a different sound…) Mostly, it’s just about making it seem like you can go louder with the same content. It’s not really the same, it’s altered, but it’s simulating/faking the effect of an extended bottom octave and restricting the ‘swing’ of those frequencies so they cover the smaller range taken up by a higher frequency, because they’re really NOT the extended frequencies anymore, just some rearranged energy trying to pretend it’s deep bass. (I’m not sure how Floor will work as a DC blocker for RawConsole5 fans: seems like it might have undesirable effects? How do you even fake DC energy?)

For all I know this will blow up with conversation and enthusiasm: you never can tell. If you’d like to see me doing more work on things like fake bass, join the Patreon and tell me here: there are plenty of places like Facebook and Twitter where I’m not really into spending all my time conversing, but I follow plugin forums more closely. I’m not sure whether there’s a comparable thing like fake treble, but you know if I do any experiments of that nature I’ll let you have them, whether or not the results are sensible :)

I’m not sure whether Floor is sensible, but it’s yours: have fun if this is your idea of fun. I’m going to go back to making bass to feed my homemade (4) 12″ subwoofer in my studio, maybe I’ll go find a better power amplifier for it at some point (I’m driving it off a real low budget one, though I did customize it somewhat). Talk to ya later :)

Date November 18, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 7 Comments

BassKit

TL;DW: Centered bass reinforcement with subs fill. Clean and controllable.

BassKit

As promised, here’s BassKit! This is much like DubSub or DubCenter, except it’s strictly mono bass and is designed to be super controllable. The controls are simplified and kind of optimized so only good-sounding results come out. You need to have good subwoofers (or use SubsOnly to test) to use the Sub output, otherwise you may not be able to hear what you’re doing as it’s much deeper and more filtered than you get with most DubSub patches (the filters are somewhat rearranged).

The Bass reinforcement works like if you were using the head bump in ToTape, except it’s mono-only so it will only reinforce usefully. Because BassKit is meant for mastering and 2-buss duties, and not the full range of madness available in DubSub/DubCenter, it uses the bass and sub augmentation ONLY as additions to dry: never ‘wet only’. You can exaggerate it, but the intention is to make it easy to add bass and subs in a sensible, controlled way. I hope it proves useful, and I know it will be more well-behaved than DubSub in case that one was too unmanageable for normal use :)

This work is supported by Patreon, and I thank everyone who’s been involved with that as it lets me devote my full attention to my work. I have plans to improve the DeEss I’ve just released: I thought it was the best ever, and found there were some great engineers who had specific needs (needing DeEss to more clearly isolate esses from the regular sound). Because of the great feedback, I think I figured out what to do to achieve this, and I’m going to work on it.

I’ve also noticed new visitors… from Japan! I am only an American in Vermont and cannot speak the language (though my software is open source and it’s permitted for other people to translate and redistribute it). I appreciate the attention even if all I can do is turn to Google and say ありがとう、私は助けようとする (thank you, I will try to help)

Date November 11, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 7 Comments

DeEss

TL;DW: DeEss is the best de-essing solution there is. A go-to utility plugin.

DeEss

Now it can be told: I’m just back from PatreCon! I’ll have more of that (probably just on my website and youtube, as it won’t be a product release) but let’s just say: what I’m doing with Airwindows has powerful motives. I want to give people the ability to do their music and production, I want to give both the popular and unpopular tools so you can express yourself regardless of your resources or whether you’re niche or mainstream or WHATEVER. It’s important enough to me that I don’t care what it costs me, and I mean to do it right: it’s the right thing, for the right reasons, with the right determination, and I’m setting it up (with the open source) so it can’t be taken away. You’ll be able to have stability in your production life, and pick out stuff you can count on that won’t go wrong on you, letting you have control of your musical world. In a very real sense you own that (heck, you own the source code).

Turns out, I chose well when I chose Patreon for handling this, my life work. To some people you could paint me in a nice (perhaps over-nice, hard to credit) light by saying ‘oh, Chris is kind of like Jack Conte the founder and CEO of Patreon’. It tells a story though it also implies I’m set up for some kind of epic success story and sounds like hype.

But for you guys, you kinda know about ME and not necessarily Patreon: you do that because I ask you to, but you maybe don’t know Jack about Jack, or why it would matter. You want plugins, and you’ve got to know how I am because I keep making them for you. However, I went to Patrecon (big gamble, wrecked my finances real good) because I wanted to hear what Jack Conte talks about in private, get a sense of what Patreon’s really like, maybe even talk to him and see if he hears me, gets what I’m about. It could have been a mistake for me: I could’ve gone and found they didn’t really care, just wanted my fees and were watching to see if I became big enough to get behind.

It wasn’t a mistake, it was one of the most brilliant ideas I ever had, and I ran with it by doing some of the most terrifying stuff I’ve ever done. I told Sam and Jack (Sam Yam is the OTHER co-founder) about how I got to go see my Dad before he died thanks to still running Airwindows. And I doubled down and thought out some ideas about what Patreon means in practice, and I went and pitched those same guys on these ideas, knowing that I am just a broke 50-year-old with no health care and no credentials for counseling Silicon Valley founders. Turns out I saw Jack’s keynote… his PRIVATE keynote, the one where he asked people not to record it this time because he was going to get extra real… and he was already leaning towards the direction I saw. And I took him further along that path.

They got it. Seriously, they got it.

I can’t tell you everything (and none of it involves me no longer needing you; nobody’s offering to make me a silicon valley guy nor was I asking to be one: that is NOT what this is about and I wasn’t asking Jack for money or even promo) but what I can tell you is, turns out Jack Conte is a guy like ME, and that means very specific things. And what he’s doing with Patreon in general is very akin to what I’m doing with Airwindows, and he is every bit as brave as I am. I believe it’s gonna work, and that it matters: it matters hugely. I’m going to do everything I can to help Jack after what I privately heard at PatreCon, and if you’re a musician or producer also on Patreon I want to help you, too, ‘cos we’re very much all in this together.

Okay. DeEss.

If you need the best DeEsser, and especially if you know how to use them, this is the one you want: full stop. It’s the best one, it’s simple and quick to use and now it’s entirely free. It’s MIT license open source, so now everybody can ‘steal’ it. There’s a guy making GUI skinning tech for plugins, and he has the code for it: you’ll be able to use it and make whatever GUI skin you want on it, pay the (GUI) guy to sell that, or GPL it and use his (and my) tech free.

The Airwindows DeEss works by tracking slew rates, not by filtering and frequencies. It keeps a string of recent slew rates, and if it sees high slews that keep going back and forth (flipping direction) that’s how it triggers. It doesn’t trigger on things like square wave or sawtooth waves, because those aren’t going back and forth fast enough to be an ess. It’s purely mechanical: the trigger for DeEss happens instantly and way more powerfully on real esses, making it extremely easy to set. It’s not fiddly, just crank up the effect so you can plainly hear where it hits and use that (don’t overtrigger, for the bad esses you’ll get a HUGE powerful trigger even when everything else is totally clear of de-essing)

Then you use the ducking control and the treble rolloff to tailor the kind of esses you do want. The tone thing lets you have darker esses that are still very audible, and the ducking control means you can retain the original sound but duck it as much as you like. It should be possible to template it: since it triggers so powerfully on real esses, if you’ve got a working setting it should always work. De-essing is now a solved problem, for good. Use good taste (avoid ‘lisping’ effects) and de-essing is easy.

I already mentioned Patreon, so I think we’re good. I use that to live. I hope you like DeEss :)

Date November 5, 2018
Author Chris
Comments 30 Comments

Chris

Gatelope

Floor

BassKit

DeEss

handsewn bespoke digital audio

Kinds Of Things

The Last Year

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