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Airwindows releases "Airwindows Consolidated" - ALL of his 350+ plugins in one (FREE as always) | Mac/Windows/Linux CLAP/VST3/AU/LV2


Solidos

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  • Solidos changed the title to Airwindows releases "Airwindows Consolidated" - ALL of his 350+ plugins in one (FREE as always) | Mac/Windows/Linux CLAP/VST3/AU/LV2
  • 3 weeks later...

How do these plugins compare to paid plugins in terms of quality? And how is there ease of use?

Because I really don't have the expertise to assess mixing and mastering plugins, I largely turn to friends of mine who have expertise in audio engineering, or at least some depth. But they always seem to recommend the same paid stuff -- like Fab Filter, Valhalla, United Audio, etc. What do the more knowledgeable mixers think of Airwindows? Are they as good as pro effects and are they well designed / simple enough to use? 

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4 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

How do these plugins compare to paid plugins in terms of quality? And how is there ease of use?

Because I really don't have the expertise to assess mixing and mastering plugins, I largely turn to friends of mine who have expertise in audio engineering, or at least some depth. But they always seem to recommend the same paid stuff -- like Fab Filter, Valhalla, United Audio, etc. What do the more knowledgeable mixers think of Airwindows? Are they as good as pro effects and are they well designed / simple enough to use? 

They are very good, but they have the strange problem of having no GUI(or they did have) and tiny user interfaces, so instead of looking at a pretty plugin or digital picture of a piece oh hardware with lots of lights flashing, you had to listen to what it does and decide if it made an improvement to the sound of the audio. I think this put a lot of people off. plus they were free so had to be rubbish, Some people said.

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7 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

How do these plugins compare to paid plugins in terms of quality? And how is there ease of use?

Because I really don't have the expertise to assess mixing and mastering plugins, I largely turn to friends of mine who have expertise in audio engineering, or at least some depth. But they always seem to recommend the same paid stuff -- like Fab Filter, Valhalla, United Audio, etc. What do the more knowledgeable mixers think of Airwindows? Are they as good as pro effects and are they well designed / simple enough to use? 

They sound good but very different user experience than other plugins.

A whole lot of knobs where you have to read the manual to figure out what it should control.  A whole lot ot plugins doing esoteric things.  

But some are pretty straight forward.

Haven't tried this new front end but seems like a good idea, but they should let you hide all the ones you don't want to see given so many of them do similar things or random esoteric stuff.

Historically they are also light on the CPU as they have no GUI to speak of taking up resources.

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Posted (edited)
12 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

They sound good but very different user experience than other plugins.

A whole lot of knobs where you have to read the manual to figure out what it should control.  A whole lot ot plugins doing esoteric things.  

But some are pretty straight forward.

Haven't tried this new front end but seems like a good idea, but they should let you hide all the ones you don't want to see given so many of them do similar things or random esoteric stuff.

Historically they are also light on the CPU as they have no GUI to speak of taking up resources.

I think it's with age and a career managing corporate websites and working with software developers that entails thinking about and working with user experience experts that has made me far more aware than I once was of the significance of workflow and ease of use to the point where I'd rather pay for something I find intuitive with a workflow that suits me than struggle with something I find unintuituve. That is one of the huge downsides of small software/sample/plugin developers is that it's very rare that one person can be excellent at creating an algorithm behind an effects plugin and also be excellent at designing GUIs, user experience,  and usability. That, of course, makes it especially tough on solopreneurs like this guy, because they also have to play the role of fundraiser. 

I tip my hat to those who can do all of that at a high level, because it's  quite rare. 

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5 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

I'd rather pay for something I find intuitive with a workflow that suits me than struggle with something I find unintuituve.

+1
As much as you mix with your ears, the experience and flow is very important and what makes things fun too.

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13 minutes ago, RSMcGuitar said:

+1
As much as you mix with your ears, the experience and flow is very important and what makes things fun too.

Agreed. How many people would say this works as well

image.thumb.png.fca9d47da70f035c903e12e844b46036.png

as this ?
image.thumb.png.c9565bc68c59be5335cdbf315a28c4a2.png

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Yeah, the vast majority of his plugins are very easy to use.  There are usually only a few controls, and I don't see how a GUI would change much with how simple most of them are. My favorites are the ones that do distortion/saturation like Inflamer, MultiBandDistortion, Bass Drive, NCSeventeen, Loud, Huge, Density, Mackity, Distortion, Focus, Creature, PurestDrive, and Edge. Reverb stuff like Galactic, PocketVerbs, and Nonlinear Space. A bunch of the weirder ones like CloudCoat and Distance2.

If anything I like so many of them because of how weird they can get. Considering they're all free, just play around with some. I'm sure you'll find at least one of them to be fun. 

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  • 5 weeks later...

The HIT RECORD METER looks interesting, but I don't think it's part of this plugin.
How is the Standalone Airwindows Consolidated? Don't see a  "Load Audio"  or "import" etc.

Edited by sadicus
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