Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I work in 24 bit and then render to mp3 and 24 bit WAV. So, I do not see a need to dither there.
Would love to know if I am doing it wrong.
Best Airwindows Plugins by You
-
- KVRist
- 459 posts since 31 Dec, 2010 from Perth
-
- Banned
- 7624 posts since 13 Nov, 2015 from Norway
-
- KVRist
- 239 posts since 21 Apr, 2010
I use a small list of his plugs....and I use them on every mix :
BitShiftGain, NJAD Redux, Chrome Oxide, Tape (Redux), ToTape6,
Srsly, Wider, Capacitor2, BussColors 4, Interstage, Channel7,
Dyno, Mojo, Remap, Curve, Recurve , BlockParty, Spiral,
Air, GooveWear, Conditioner (because their names rhymes
),
PurestWarm, PurestDrive, HermeTrim, Iron Oxide, Fracture,
ClipOnly, Fathom5
BitShiftGain, NJAD Redux, Chrome Oxide, Tape (Redux), ToTape6,
Srsly, Wider, Capacitor2, BussColors 4, Interstage, Channel7,
Dyno, Mojo, Remap, Curve, Recurve , BlockParty, Spiral,
Air, GooveWear, Conditioner (because their names rhymes
), PurestWarm, PurestDrive, HermeTrim, Iron Oxide, Fracture,
ClipOnly, Fathom5
-
- KVRist
- 275 posts since 31 May, 2017
Some Favorites:
Capacitor2, Focus, Tape, NonlinearSpace, Pressure4, MV, Vibrato, Starchild, Slew2, Acceleration, AverMatrix, DeRez2, Distortion, IronOxide5/Classic, Baxandall, Melt, TapeDust, InterStage, Groovewear, Holt, Monitoring, PhaseNudge
Some tips:
- Put Capacitor2 behind MV to bandpass it, sounds much better, and try to mix the send fairly low.
- Some of his effect are "useless" full-on but is veeery good at low wet. Melt is a good example. Try around 0.15 Wet as a diffuser, not as a circus style chorus. Same with TapeDust - try ~0.08 "Dust" and ~0.2 Wet. Adds a beautiful grainy texture to the treble.
- You can probably replace Spiral/Mojo/Density/Dyno/Drive with Focus or Distortion as they contain all those algos and have antialiasing measures built in. Not completely the same but recommended if you feel Airwindows overload syndrome.
- NonlinearSpace is a dark reverb that sounds veery natural at small wet levels.
- Focus is great at waking up a sound. Like giving a sound coffee.
- IronOxideClassic is good as a subtle treatment of synths. Makes them slightly lo-fi (but not as obvious as IronOxide5) and easier to mix. I use this on everything.
- (Personal opinion) Don't bother with BitShiftGain unless you know you need it. PurestGain is more than enough. I see a lot of people spending so much time trying to incorporate these plugins in convoluted ways - just go with PurestGain and consider yourself covered.
- Learn Vibrato in depth. It's a great sounding Chorus/WowFlutter/Flanger/Ringmody Bitcrush thingy - much more flexible than it looks. IronOxide5/Classic+Vibrato is a great lo-fi trick.
- A fun chain to fluff out transients: ChromeOxide+Tape+PhaseNudge+TapeDust - I use this chain quite often on drum sounds. PhaseNudge at ~0.3 - 0.5 is a great tool for blurring transients in general.
- It is fun to create Airwindows FX chains! As single processors they are nice, but stacking many AW plugs really reveals what is good about them. That is when you start to hear the payoff from Chris' philosophy regarding minimal processing, internal dithering, no oversampling etc. Airwindows is more than the sum of its parts.
- Stuff like StarChild might seem too harsh and gimmicky in its raw form, but like with MV, it really shines once you start treating it as a small sound design component to be combined with other Airwindows plugs. Try Capacitor/NonlinearSpace/TapeDust/Melt etc after it.
- Pressure4 is an underrated compressor.
Capacitor2, Focus, Tape, NonlinearSpace, Pressure4, MV, Vibrato, Starchild, Slew2, Acceleration, AverMatrix, DeRez2, Distortion, IronOxide5/Classic, Baxandall, Melt, TapeDust, InterStage, Groovewear, Holt, Monitoring, PhaseNudge
Some tips:
- Put Capacitor2 behind MV to bandpass it, sounds much better, and try to mix the send fairly low.
- Some of his effect are "useless" full-on but is veeery good at low wet. Melt is a good example. Try around 0.15 Wet as a diffuser, not as a circus style chorus. Same with TapeDust - try ~0.08 "Dust" and ~0.2 Wet. Adds a beautiful grainy texture to the treble.
- You can probably replace Spiral/Mojo/Density/Dyno/Drive with Focus or Distortion as they contain all those algos and have antialiasing measures built in. Not completely the same but recommended if you feel Airwindows overload syndrome.
- NonlinearSpace is a dark reverb that sounds veery natural at small wet levels.
- Focus is great at waking up a sound. Like giving a sound coffee.
- IronOxideClassic is good as a subtle treatment of synths. Makes them slightly lo-fi (but not as obvious as IronOxide5) and easier to mix. I use this on everything.
- (Personal opinion) Don't bother with BitShiftGain unless you know you need it. PurestGain is more than enough. I see a lot of people spending so much time trying to incorporate these plugins in convoluted ways - just go with PurestGain and consider yourself covered.
- Learn Vibrato in depth. It's a great sounding Chorus/WowFlutter/Flanger/Ringmody Bitcrush thingy - much more flexible than it looks. IronOxide5/Classic+Vibrato is a great lo-fi trick.
- A fun chain to fluff out transients: ChromeOxide+Tape+PhaseNudge+TapeDust - I use this chain quite often on drum sounds. PhaseNudge at ~0.3 - 0.5 is a great tool for blurring transients in general.
- It is fun to create Airwindows FX chains! As single processors they are nice, but stacking many AW plugs really reveals what is good about them. That is when you start to hear the payoff from Chris' philosophy regarding minimal processing, internal dithering, no oversampling etc. Airwindows is more than the sum of its parts.
- Stuff like StarChild might seem too harsh and gimmicky in its raw form, but like with MV, it really shines once you start treating it as a small sound design component to be combined with other Airwindows plugs. Try Capacitor/NonlinearSpace/TapeDust/Melt etc after it.
- Pressure4 is an underrated compressor.
-
- KVRian
- 671 posts since 8 Jan, 2005 from Germany
ToTape5 is lovely 
Somehow i prefer it over ToTape6.
I've tested a few. My conclusion: There are simply to many plugins and the quality varies ... or let's say, that some plugins only work in certain scenarios or at a certain gain level for best results.
His no-userinterface-paradigm is cool, but only works if your plugins just have a few parameters. I'm a Cubase user and i dont like the generic plugin editor at all. Scalable minimalistic UI's like the Valhalla ones are great and allow a lot more fine control.
Chris should do a pro series of his best plugins with "real" UI's and minor updates ... i'm not a fan of plugins, that get a major update every two years, due to multiple versions in your plugin folder.
But i wont complain! He offers his stuff for free and seems to be a nice guy ... everything's fine
Somehow i prefer it over ToTape6.I've tested a few. My conclusion: There are simply to many plugins and the quality varies ... or let's say, that some plugins only work in certain scenarios or at a certain gain level for best results.
His no-userinterface-paradigm is cool, but only works if your plugins just have a few parameters. I'm a Cubase user and i dont like the generic plugin editor at all. Scalable minimalistic UI's like the Valhalla ones are great and allow a lot more fine control.
Chris should do a pro series of his best plugins with "real" UI's and minor updates ... i'm not a fan of plugins, that get a major update every two years, due to multiple versions in your plugin folder.
But i wont complain! He offers his stuff for free and seems to be a nice guy ... everything's fine
-
- KVRian
- 520 posts since 9 Aug, 2017
Vibrato - one of my favourite modulation fx.
Bandaxall - nice simple eq that can lift the high end of a source in a very pleasing way.
Buttercomp2 - A favourite compressor for glueing and giving an overall softening effect, works nice on inserts as well.
CStrip - really nice channelstrip, I hope for a new strip from Chris, I think some of his newer ideas it could make for a very good one. A 4 band eq on it would be great and perhaps a bit more to the compressor, different modes or before/after eq for example.
I use airwindows plugins in every mix. I don't have a need for much else than these and the stock plugins. Valhalla and a few instruments is enough for me.
Bandaxall - nice simple eq that can lift the high end of a source in a very pleasing way.
Buttercomp2 - A favourite compressor for glueing and giving an overall softening effect, works nice on inserts as well.
CStrip - really nice channelstrip, I hope for a new strip from Chris, I think some of his newer ideas it could make for a very good one. A 4 band eq on it would be great and perhaps a bit more to the compressor, different modes or before/after eq for example.
I use airwindows plugins in every mix. I don't have a need for much else than these and the stock plugins. Valhalla and a few instruments is enough for me.
-
- Banned
- 134 posts since 16 Mar, 2020
If you're are doing any processing with plugs or even just changing gain of your tracks, your 24 bit WAV would benefit from dither.
-
- Banned
- 7624 posts since 13 Nov, 2015 from Norway
Thanks for the tips. Very usefulcantaloupe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 06, 2020 11:59 am Some Favorites:
Capacitor2, Focus, Tape, NonlinearSpace, Pressure4, MV, Vibrato, Starchild, Slew2, Acceleration, AverMatrix, DeRez2, Distortion, IronOxide5/Classic, Baxandall, Melt, TapeDust, InterStage, Groovewear, Holt, Monitoring, PhaseNudge
Some tips:
- Put Capacitor2 behind MV to bandpass it, sounds much better, and try to mix the send fairly low.
- Some of his effect are "useless" full-on but is veeery good at low wet. Melt is a good example. Try around 0.15 Wet as a diffuser, not as a circus style chorus. Same with TapeDust - try ~0.08 "Dust" and ~0.2 Wet. Adds a beautiful grainy texture to the treble.
- You can probably replace Spiral/Mojo/Density/Dyno/Drive with Focus or Distortion as they contain all those algos and have antialiasing measures built in. Not completely the same but recommended if you feel Airwindows overload syndrome.
- NonlinearSpace is a dark reverb that sounds veery natural at small wet levels.
- Focus is great at waking up a sound. Like giving a sound coffee.
- IronOxideClassic is good as a subtle treatment of synths. Makes them slightly lo-fi (but not as obvious as IronOxide5) and easier to mix. I use this on everything.
- (Personal opinion) Don't bother with BitShiftGain unless you know you need it. PurestGain is more than enough. I see a lot of people spending so much time trying to incorporate these plugins in convoluted ways - just go with PurestGain and consider yourself covered.
- Learn Vibrato in depth. It's a great sounding Chorus/WowFlutter/Flanger/Ringmody Bitcrush thingy - much more flexible than it looks. IronOxide5/Classic+Vibrato is a great lo-fi trick.
- A fun chain to fluff out transients: ChromeOxide+Tape+PhaseNudge+TapeDust - I use this chain quite often on drum sounds. PhaseNudge at ~0.3 - 0.5 is a great tool for blurring transients in general.
- It is fun to create Airwindows FX chains! As single processors they are nice, but stacking many AW plugs really reveals what is good about them. That is when you start to hear the payoff from Chris' philosophy regarding minimal processing, internal dithering, no oversampling etc. Airwindows is more than the sum of its parts.
- Stuff like StarChild might seem too harsh and gimmicky in its raw form, but like with MV, it really shines once you start treating it as a small sound design component to be combined with other Airwindows plugs. Try Capacitor/NonlinearSpace/TapeDust/Melt etc after it.
- Pressure4 is an underrated compressor.
EnergyXT3 - LMMS - FL Studio | Roland SH201 - Waldorf Rocket | SoundCloud - Bandcamp
-
- Banned
- 133 posts since 26 May, 2020
You'll do better to just download the whole lot - there's a zip archive - and unpack it in your vst folder. You'll gradually discover what's good for you - this takes time. Although of course there are some standouts, and that's what this thread is for.YoddYarmonics wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:52 pm Im writing this post to minimize the need of downloading all of em to a minimum (although im aware this can happen one day anyway - see, im a bit of a free plugin hoarder oops)
-
- KVRist
- 271 posts since 28 Jun, 2017
Interstage (rolling off lowend/topend)
Capacitator 2 (re-shaping topend)
Slew2 (rolling off topend)
PhaseNudge (diffusing transients & loudness)
Desk4 (shaping lowend, subtle saturation)
Tape (subtle saturation, rolling off peaks)
ChromeOxide (SO good on drum transients)
TransDesk (really good on lowend)
I use these as part of my template. They all do little things but it adds up. There's not a lot from other manufacturers that does what these do. I used to really struggle with dealing with excess transients and topend ITB without completely killing the life of the track but AW makes that possible, if you use them right.
Pro tip: DDMF MetaPlugin is amazing to create set-and-go Airwindows chains.
And yeah, Vibrato is great for FM-type effects.
Capacitator 2 (re-shaping topend)
Slew2 (rolling off topend)
PhaseNudge (diffusing transients & loudness)
Desk4 (shaping lowend, subtle saturation)
Tape (subtle saturation, rolling off peaks)
ChromeOxide (SO good on drum transients)
TransDesk (really good on lowend)
I use these as part of my template. They all do little things but it adds up. There's not a lot from other manufacturers that does what these do. I used to really struggle with dealing with excess transients and topend ITB without completely killing the life of the track but AW makes that possible, if you use them right.
Pro tip: DDMF MetaPlugin is amazing to create set-and-go Airwindows chains.
And yeah, Vibrato is great for FM-type effects.
-
- KVRist
- 319 posts since 9 Sep, 2017
ADT was not mentioned? I use it often in the place of a Haas delay, and I made some presets.
It can make a DI signal sound more physical, and it can do some of the comb filter effects that come from delays.
Also good for some vocals.
It can make a DI signal sound more physical, and it can do some of the comb filter effects that come from delays.
Also good for some vocals.
