TL;DW: Welcome to the Airwindows plugin for everybody else

Spoiler

For many years, I’ve built up a library of DSP effects, executed in a stripped-down, retro-friendly format that is impossibly light and efficient compared to how plugins usually are. It’s also completely overwhelming at nearly 400 plugins all with their own names (or iterations like Channel6, Channel7, Console8, Console9 and so on) and stuck on older formats like VST2, because for years I insisted that Steinberg might try to take away the legal right to put out VST2 plugins and I wasn’t going to risk that, being committed to supporting all possible machines.

Airwindows Consolidated fixes all those things, at a stroke. It’s just become the one true way for a lot of people to use the Airwindows plugin ecosystem, and it will be fully supported going forward as a format for all new plugins (at least, all new plugins that aren’t themselves a giant leap forward, more on that later). What do you get?

Airwindows Consolidated is CLAP native, and gives you all the things special to that format (as seen in the Manual, running as a CLAP plugin in Bitwig!) A lot of us feel this is the format of the future. Now it’s got all of Airwindows, native, and will continue to have the new plugins added.

Airwindows Consolidated is also VST3 native, so this is for the Cubase users and other folks who can’t get on with VST2 for whatever reason. It’s also for folks who can’t handle the ‘slider only’ minimalist look: there’s knobs! (the Rack version has knobs, jacks, and attentuators, because it’s a Rack module!). It’s also AU. It’s also LV2. Lots of native formats!

There’s also theming: it reads dark mode or light mode off your system setting, AND you can override that if you want. No more bright gray rectangles if you don’t like them. At a stroke, a lot of known issues are just gone. You can type in values in a text box (heck, I can’t even do that with my own VST2s in Reaper, only with the AUs).

Doesn’t stop there: Airwindows Consolidated has screen reader support. Why, I ask you, shouldn’t visually impaired musicians make AUDIO music? Airwindows Consolidated works with screen readers to properly read out all the text. So what’s this ‘all the text’, how hard could that be?

Airwindows Consolidated contains the entire Airwindopedia. Every plugin shows the entire Chris explanation given on release, in a sidebar. That’s close to a hundred and fifty thousand words, built in! And because you’re not going to read a hundred and fifty thousand words just to get started…

Airwindows Consolidated contains a whole menu system, which defaults to ‘Recommended’. That shows basically Airwindows’ Greatest Hits, the ones you’ll want to look at first. It’s a much smaller list, and isn’t always the most recent plugin in a series. For instance, Galactic2 is more specialized than the Recommended original Galactic. There’s also ‘Basic’, which is a set of plugins that are easily understood and used when you’re just getting started with mixing and music making, and ‘Recent’, which is just the newest stuff. And when you’re ready, there’s ‘All Plugins’, which opens up the menus to everything. (If you save a mix and then change the menus, it won’t take away your plugin just because the new menu setting isn’t listing it: you’re safe there)

This is all you need. It might be the only Airwindows plugin you ever download, because there’ll be a new build of it every week every time a new Airwindows plugin drops. Just re-download it and re-install. It has installers to make it easy for you to do that, and it’s an open source project so it’s hosted by Microsoft at their expense, not me and Paul. Downloading it costs us nothing, so go give it a try.

And who do you have to thank for this? Well, yes, it’s all nearly-400 Airwindows plugins. If those didn’t exist, neither would Airwindows Consolidated. But I wouldn’t have been able to do this on my own, even as an open source developer. So this is thanks to the inspired work of Baconpaul, of the Surge XT synthesizer project, who also made my VCV Rack module be a thing (and it is essentially the same as this: it should have all the same features and all the new plugins, each week). The whole Surge XT project deserves your attention and support, and there’s more than just Paul involved: for instance, EvilDragon has had lots of influence on the menu system, actively helped develop the categories, and at his request the entire Airwindows website now uses those same categories to help find stuff.

Airwindows Consolidated is out, and it’s gonna be at the top of my list of ways to download my plugins. This is a big deal. I hope you like how much easier this has made the whole world of Airwindows

https://www.airwindows.com/consolidated/

 

Sweet! Thanks for the news. I like Airwindows!

 

This is way more explanatory and easy to go for new users (they don't need to go through the most experimental and scientific tools if they want because of the 'favorites' bar). VST3 and Clap also very cool. Soon as Airwindows plugins follow a building block scheme, this can save a lot of time if you're thinking about which plugin to use on each situation. I just don't like the text GUI, it should have the option to hide to save space. Very nice

 

Haha, I'm far from a new Airwindows user and this text system is mad helpful compared to keeping a text file around. XD
It'd be nice if you were able to favorite plugins and make your own list, but I'm not complaining; this is a huge improvement.

Agreed. But I'm happy that there are knobs. Aesthetics aside, working quickly with the slider nodes was frustrating.

 

The video the above still is from, to save people going off to search for it:

 

Yeah, the video url script was being funky (and not good funky, like George Clinton funky,) and wouldn't add the video, only the address. I admittedly gave up trying to add it after a few tries since the video is at the top of the webpage that the link takes you to.
Useful post tho.

 

Discovered a lot of gems because of this bundle. Some plugins that i knew the existence started to make sense when organized and ranked by Chris.

Spoiler

ClearCoat and Dynamics are my new secret weapons

 

im gonna try seriously this stuff for the first time, please suggest just 4 plugins to start?
Anything is good, thanks

 

This is great!

Cheers for Airwindows for this. Like others, I'd like a FX stack kind of approach, but hey, they were already great, now they're better.

The integrated help makes these easier to use, as I tend to forget what the hell each slider was supposed to do...

 

Kplates A,B,C,D - Plate reverbs, Waves Abbey Road vibes, really sweet sounding
KCathedral2 - kinda close to Bricasti M7 Cathedral (Spaces) sound.
Mackity - sweet fuzzy distortion when cranked. I use it with drum machines, all those percussion, toms, snare sounds so good with it.
Acceleration2 - HF limiter, remove high end harshness without changing the dynamic. Works a lot like soothe on high sharpness & selectivity settings.
Mojo - it makes thing big. Sounds stupid right ? but try it. I use this a lot. I think it's a limiter of some sort. When you got track that already has FX baked into it but you think it should sound bigger but at the same level without changing its EQ balance.
Sweeten - pure 2nd harmonic. It warms thing up a bit, sweeten it. Super subtle I don't hear what it does, it feels that way.
ADClip8 - full combat mode for the Loudness War. 6-stage clipper. can easily achieve -2LUFS without sounding too broken (Apothes mode) or maybe you just want to get more RMS energy (Atten mode).
Neverland, Apicolypse, Elation - this is like one of his oldest ever plugins in "Character Series", it's Neve, API and LA2A style saturation respectively. I don't think it sounds like the real thing, but it sounds good on its own. Idk, I just like it, it sounds like Acustica's preamp section. or just the new Channel9 that has everything.

should give you good 4 plugins to start with

 

Last edited: May 8, 2024

It's a thing of beauty. Chris is a straight up hero in my books.

 

give this man a plugin pulitzer prize!!!

thanks stevie

 

Hard to say since I don't know what type of music you make. I know synth guys like crazy filters 'n stuff, so... filters? XD
For me, Monitoring2 (... or *maybe the first one? I don't remember off-hand,) lives on my Master for headphones crossfeed; it works out better for me than any of the other crossfeed plugins I've tried as far as translation, and I've tried most, if not all—but that's preference.
You can get some cool tone shaping from BussColors4, but you're gonna want to use the Dry/Wet to keep it in check.
PurestAir is a nice addition to Reverb or Delay sends, covering you if you need that Maag-style air boost.
Depending on the source (of course,) Hull2 can sound nice on EPs, Pianos, full drum breaks or a drum buss, despite having fixed EQ points.
I could go on, but those are a few that pop into my head.

 

kPlates (all of them) - I've been preaching about those series of plugins for a long time and my favorite plate reverb plugins
ClearCoat - Something like the Bricasti ambience, really good for melodic material or when you don't want a conventional room reverb
Dynamics - Airwindows take on the dynamic section of the SSL console.
Pockey2 - Akai simulation/bitcrusher
Busscolors/Channel9/Neverland - Those are dynamic convolution plugins from Airwindows. Channel9 is pretty dope for overdriving individual channels, like driving a preamp. Busscolors are various IR's from different brands and all come from the Character plugins as @Stevie Dude mentioned (like Neverland, which is also convolution based)
PlatinumSlew - AMAZING PLUGIN, but a dangerous one. If used on caution and carefully listeing it can tame the highs on the most analog/vintage way i know so far. Very musical, but can ruin your work if cranked, so pay attention.
Acceleration2 - A favorite at mastering, unlike Slew series this one is very clean and i very often use this one when i don't want the high edges jumping early at the final limiter.
IronOxide2 - My favorite dirty tape, prefer this one over Neold Warble, for example. And Warble is a very good plugin.

I also have an especific workflow with Airwindows Console plugins and Acustica Audio. It was a result of some (good) time of research, A/B testing and mainly, feel. Console plugins are not a favorite for most people because of the DAW fader and panning restrictions, but i can't live without em at the state they are now. If someone's interested i can share.

 

im interested! lets hear it. i know you have mentioned some of your acustica fav's in the past, and they are some of my fav's too. curious about what your workflow is like with the two combined.

 

High, I'm Lois from SacredVisionStudio and you can do this...

1. PuristGain is...a gain plugin, but is a 64bit word something (I'm not a code scientist) and as Chris explains...

"PurestGain takes the input audio and does the gain processing at ‘long double’ resolution. It then noise shapes the result back into the DAW audio buss, whether that’s a 32 bit buss for normal VST and AU, or a double-precision 64 bit VST buss, if available. The result is an ultra-high-precision gain plugin that refuses to lose any audio quality. It’s the plugin equivalent of using switched attenuators with precision resistors in a mastering console, rather than potentiometers".

It also does fades in a very precise manner.

I use it a lot. I've not golden ears but I've tested it by stacking a bunch of plugins like compressors and verbs as he does in his video explanation and when I used for gain staging as opposed to other plugins the sound doesn't loose it's original personality. It's just a gain plugin, I get it, but as I said, I use it as a nessessary utility in every project. It's a new and improved basic thing that I never thought of before but do now.

2. Those KPlates are wonderful and which I combine with other reverbs and just adore them.

3. Mackity, oh Mackity, where fore art though as a tiny little distortion plug emulating the input stage of a Mackie 1202? Cool as hell when I want a tiny sizzle. Push it and voila! I adore it when it's doing it's thing.

4. Chris's Biquad filters are cool as hell and color the Airwindows way with panache and grace...more like Grace Jones entering a room and all attention in the room is drawn her way. Painting by binary numbers.

 

Console plugins are very hard to set up across all the channels on a template with complex routing like mine. Mainly because you need to insert a "Channel" Plugin on every channel, and a "Buss" plugin on the 2buss. I don't really like doing this.

That being said, i already mentioned that i treat my ABCD braurized busses like sidecars. This way i can run 4 different consoles flavours on the same mix for each buss.
So i use one version of console for each buss. This way, the final 'summing' of the Console plugin happens on each submix, not on my 2buss. This gives me more freedom to process things that are going straight to the 2buss with faders. Like parallel processing, reverb, etc without needing a Console plugin inserted on those channels and the 2buss.

For instance, my drums have "ConsoleLA" Channel last on every insert track and "ConsoleLA Buss" first on the drum buss. If some of the parallel processing is going to that buss, i'd also insert a "Channel" plugin on that too. Easy, right? And with the newer versions of Console you will get a internal fader and pan pots, so it can replace your DAW faders without loosing much (earlier versions didn't had the faders, so it was trickier to adjust the gain with the DAW faders untouched aka unity gain. And if you want (like me) you don't need to process all the subgroups with Console. So, way more freedom.

And the magic: it was mentioned that Busscolors is convolution based. Chris recommends putting it right after the "Buss" plugin to add especific brands character to the processing. But i replace Busscolors with Acustica Audio plugins right after the "Buss" plugin, which are also convolution based but with a fancier sound. And it sounds perfect for my ears, it has that forgiving feel that analog gear have, where you don't need to trick yourself to build a sound because the sound is already there.

ConsoleLA is a QuadEight emulation, so i put AA Brown (custom 8 and 9 pres) which is also QuadEight and i got my Pure Class A 70's sidecar running on my drums. Another cool option and already tested is Console8lite and AlexB SSL 9000K if you're reaching for a more HiFi pop vibe. ConsoleMC and Taupe for MCI "Hotel California" sound that i love on melodies. Endless possibilities, you can explore and build your sound with different Acustica and Console plugins. Console8lite is always a nice starting point since is the most neutral and not trying to emulate nothing especifical. If you're going for big console emulations, like Neve, API, SSL, i recommend this one.

 

You can get really sidetracked of what you were doing by reading the very honest documentation attached .

But they sound marvelous and they have a wonderful software philosophy behind them. Having them on a single interface is really a plus to dive in deep cause I unistalled previous iterations of airwindows cause all the noise they added in my allready crowded plugin list. But now they are going to stay.

ClearCoat is the type of minitool I've searching for to give spatial presence to sounds and it delivers it fast and easy.

 

Another similar bonus? Any host(s) you use doesn't have to scan 5,098,114 plugins all over again whenever they're updated. I'd estimate that I've lost years of my life updating Plugin Doctor or Gig Performer or my DAWs while these were scanned.

 

Are there any big reviews of all airwin plugins in one place?