Console5
TL;DW: Richer, warmer Console system.
Welcome to the new best :)
Console5 uses some more ‘expensive’ math operations, where previous Consoles tried to do their thing while keeping the Channel component as low-CPU as they possibly could. This might mean a heavier CPU cost, or it might be not that much of a difference. It’s a change (the math here more closely resembles Density or PurestDrive).
What do you gain? Using this more advanced math means there are functions which can exactly ‘undistort’ what comes in (more on that property later: there’s a variation on Console that perfectly nulls when only one track is active). This brings an added level of bigness and signal purity. Then, Console5 applies a similar behavior to the slew factor, but backwards to what the amplitude factor is getting. Doing that takes Console5 away from perfect transparency (and subtlety) and gives it a big, beefy, large-console sound that still doesn’t radically alter individual tones… but throws in TONS of ‘glue’ and solidness compared to the raw digital mix.
This is not a thing you’d struggle to hear (listen for depth and space, not frequency changes). This is not a thing that’d get washed out in mp3 encoding (in fact, because of the way it restricts slews in Console5Buss, it’ll actually help encoding a teeny bit, because superhigh frequencies waste bandwidth better used on the mids). This is the new Console, and it should be a real revelation to mix through, no matter what style or genre you’re working in.
As seen in the video, if you’ve got a DAW that can enable/disable plugins on selected channels, you can audition it with one mouse click to switch. Console5 works like this: you want Console5Channel on every channel feeding the 2-buss (with all submixing and all post-plugin faders at unity gain), and Console5Buss first on the 2-buss. That’s all, just replace digital summing with this system. If you can do post-fader plugins, you can use the faders (otherwise, best use the trims on the Console5Channels, or any earlier gain trim). The point is to replace your digital summing network with the Console5 system.
If you have that mastered, you can start playing with stuff like putting things ‘inside’ Console: delays, reverbs, EQs. Plain digital EQ in particular benefits from being post-Console5Channel on the track. Gain stage everything so you’re not slamming Console5Buss more than about +3 dB: it should survive hot peaks but there’s no special benefit to clipping it, and Console5Buss will clip there. Ideally, you’ll frame a mix with Console5 in place, and you may find you don’t need to do nearly as much ‘twitchy DAW stuff’ to get things sounding acceptable. Console5 addresses the root of the problem in a way no other ‘console emulation’ does. (if they do, you’ll find they have exactly the same constraints: needing to keep unity gain between Channel and Buss plugins is a dead giveaway they are using the Airwindows design)
Console5 exists because people have supported my Patreon for more than a year. Without it, I’d have had to stop working. I’d like a solider foundation for expressing myself in this industry and the only way to do that in 2017-2018 is to show money, and Patreon’s experiments earlier this month showed me the folly of trying to subsist on tiny patron donations.
So, Console5 is free to all to use, and then if you earn more than me (minimum wage earns more than the vast majority of Patreons, including mine) I’d like you to ‘buy’ some of the plugins I give you, as if they were $50 to own forever. It’s tricky to keep up with what Patreon does fee-wise, but so long as they’re not adding patron fees, $4.16 a month makes $50 a year. There should be at least one plugin from Airwindows a year you find world-changing, otherwise don’t pay. $8.33 a month makes $100 a year, if there are two plugins like that, or if $100 a year to support Airwindows isn’t a hardship for you.
At $12.50, $16.66, and $20.83 a month ($150, $200, $250 a year) I will put your name/link up on the Airwindows site (music link, ideally) in the Five, Four, and Three Plugin Club areas. That’s high up on the left sidebar, and people might well go and check your music out knowing you’re helping out Airwindows which gives them so many free plugins. I think that’d confer some goodwill, and since I don’t actually withhold any plugins for high tiers of patronage, this is all I can do but it should mean something. Also, if you are $250 a year or better, I’ll put your name literally on my video (across where the Dock is in my screen capture, readably).
Thank you for helping me get this far! I guess the next step is world domination ;) or, at least, being able to talk to my industry (and Patreon) more on the level of a ‘success’. I’m happy just to bring plugins to my users. Since the outside world doesn’t care whether my users are happy and is only concerned with whether I’m taking their money, we will just try to do both: help me be heard, and I’ll keep giving you the tools you need (which cannot be taken away, won’t expire, work on a wide range of DAWs and computers, and will become open source one by one when I hit that goal…)
I hope you enjoy Console5. :)
(note: the original version used a different sort of slew handling that freaked out on waves like sawtooths, and it had to be rehacked on launch day. If you’d like a copy of the first fix—which is like the launch version but slightly moderated—you can download it from OriginalConsole5 but don’t have both it and the current version in your plugins folder at once. There’s also the first fix, which was brighter and harsher: it fixed the DC issue but lost a lot doing so. That one can be had at RevisedConsole5, for instance if you did a mix while Console was in flux, and need the temporary version for recalls. This is strictly for experimenters and for normal use the current Console5 should work best, and you should use that and not these.)