Airwindows kCathedral2: Free Mac/Windows/Linux/Pi AU/VST/Rack

[jinxtigr]

TL;DW: kCathedral2 is a giant reverby space modeled after the Bricasti Cathedral.

kCathedral2.zip(641k)

Here we go: this should do nicely.

This is still a 5x5 Householder matrix like the last time, but that's about the only similarity, and it's not at all the same matrix as last time. I am keeping that as kCathedral because I know full well that people find uses for things, but you can hear pretty plainly in my video on kCathedral2 that this is in another league (as they will all be, going forward).

How was that done? A lot of it was time spent generating possible reverb matrices. There's a wide array of ways to evaluate how those become reverbs, none of which existed when I made the original kCathedral. I knew what I wanted but I had no way to measure it… and no way to generate thousands, millions, billions of possible options and automate the process of throwing out the metallic or lame ones. And that changed, over months of work on the tools.

There's also new things that didn't exist in the more purist, uncompromising kCathedral. The new one uses one of my reverb delays differently, by turning it into a single solitary allpass (well, two, one per channel) and also adding the very subtlest of modulation to just that one allpass (not inside it, as a separate effect). None of this was present in the original, but even though it's only the tiniest amount, it's felt.

But most of all, this time around it's using a completely different approach to early reflections. The real Bricasti Cathedral uses early reflections so strong I mistook them for dry signal being let in. Original kCathedral used a 3x3 matrix, very gingerly, trying not to be obvious because I thought I was hearing dry energy off the Bricasti, therefore the early reflections had to be much quieter, right? kCathedral2 uses a 4x4 matrix… which means it's able to literally use a patch from ClearCoat/CloudCoat, except without regeneration (the sound literally bounces away into the cathedral and doesn't even enter the deep reverb field). That's early reflections that can stand alone as their own reverb.

It's subtle, but it's also where I was able to step away from the Bricasti sound and try to establish my own. I think you'll find that the deep room tone is about the same, and the depth of space, but I want those early reflections to be a lot more diffuse (but NOT allpassy), so I've scaled them up and spread them out. It should sound more like detail in the actual room rather than an obvious back wall, which I think will be more useful for how I'll be using it. And I've got a lot closer to that textural butter-sound of the real Bricasti, while retaining some of my own goals for the project.

Welcome to kCathedral2. Oops, I did it again (this time more like what I intended for the first time). Thanks to my Patreon patrons, who are literally the reason I can persist at goals like this, and without whom I might have to stop halfway and not get to stuff like this. 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 LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
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.
VCV Rack module

[bmanic]

This is indeed an improvement. You are still lacking the cohesion of the bricasti. Your reverb is ringing a lot more and has quite a bit more tonality to it's ringing. The bricasti seems quite a bit denser and much more even in terms of frequency response. Also a big difference is he way the bricasti covers up the whole stereo field, even when panned stuff gets introduced. It still "bleeds" more into the whole room whereas your kCathedral 2 is more point source and doesn't seem to bleed out into the full stereo field as much.

But you are definitely getting closer!

[jinxtigr]

I'm seeing a lot of bug reports from all across the map, including my own use, and it seems entirely unpredictable. Trying to track down what's going on with some very capable help but so far we got nothing. Be warned it's possible for this to crash stuff and if we ever track down what's causing it, all plugins affected will get fixed whether they're notable for unreliability or not: it has me wondering whether in trying to do this with almost entirely 5x5 householder matrix, I'm asking too much.

The stereo thing is intentional as I was hoping to use this for more synthetic, ambient stuff: if it's really objectionable that it doesn't immediately go stereo, I can make note of that for future reference. RIght now I'm more focussed on figuring out whether I can make it more DAW-friendly: I'm wondering whether it's simply demanding too much RAM or something, as memory pressure seems to be relevant even though Paul says it's not leaking memory or going outside array bounds.

[glokraw]

Using the linux version set at 0.10 to 0.14, it sounds great with the basic amp-sim sounds from CamelCrusher, and then sending that to a nice tremolo for some ambient movement is even better. I also really like the recent Solaris reverb, so added that on it's own, just enough to notice, and the blending is really nice.