Chris Johnson (the developer behind Airwindows) has announced that Console 4 is now available for free download and that it has also been ported to Windows (32-bit & 64-bit VST plugin format).
It’s hard to decide what’s the bigger news here – the fact that Console 4 is now free to download and use, or the announcement that all Airwindows plugins will be ported to Windows in near future (and also be offered as free downloads). But let’s start from the top.
See also: Best FREE Saturation VST Plugins!Console 4 is a virtual summing console that consists of two different plugins – Console Channel and Console Buss. The Channel plugin is meant for use on individual tracks in a mix, whereas the Buss plugin should be placed on the master channel. After applying Console 4 to a project, the result is a more compact and thicker sounding mix, which is something that you’d expect to get when passing each individual track in your project through an analog mixing console and recording the summed stereo signal on the output.
Better yet, the plugin is extremely easy to use. Both the Channel and Buss versions feature just a single control – a Trim knob which is intended for setting the proper gain staging. In addition, Console 4 is very easy on the CPU, using just 1% of available resources with four instances running at the same time (on an i7 processor in MuLab 6 Free 64-bit).
Both plugins come without a GUI (as you can see in our MuLab 6 screenshot above) and Airwindows has an excellent explanation for this: “In mix, nobody can hear your screen”. In other words, the developer is focusing on the sound and stability of his plugins, instead of spending time designing nice looking skins and fixing GUI related bugs. And that totally makes sense, even for someone as obsessed with nice looking GUIs as myself.
Up until recently, Console 4 was a Mac OS exclusive (same as the rest of the Airwindows product lineup). That has now changed completely, as Console 4 is also available as a 32-bit and 64-bit VST plugin for Windows, in addition to the 32-bit & 64-bit AU plugin versions for Mac OS.
Which takes us to the next part of the article and that is the announcement that Chris Johnson will be porting all previously released Airwindows plugins to Windows VST plugin format (32-bit and 64-bit), as well as that they will all go donationware. More precisely, the plugins will be free to download and use, with optional donations via Patreon ($800 monthly goal). That is huge news. Airwindows plugins have been around since 2007 and they’ve quickly become known as some of the best effects you can use on Mac OS. Now Windows users are finally getting the chance to run Airwindows software in their DAWs.
Here’s hoping that Variety Of Sound will port their old VST plugins to 64-bit as well. Either way, this is an amazing time for us music producers and sound designers. The sound quality we can achieve in our bedrooms using nothing but a computer and an audio interface (and a lot of practice) is amazing. Thanks to all the generous developers out there!
Console 4 is available for free download via Airwindows (632 KB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/AU plugin format for Windows & Mac OS).
7 Comments
Animus
onSweet. I like mixing and matching different console plugins in a mix.
“Here’s hoping that Variety Of Sound will port their old VST plugins to 64-bit as well.”
Agreed!
Animus
ontested it on various material with pre & post analysis… a very interesting console indeed. Reacts differently to different sources, which is nice.
Anthony
onWonderful! Chris is a great guy and his plugins are superb and high quality. He fully deserves success in this bold venture against the normal audio business paradigms.
fred
oni will be giving Console 4 a shot this weekend.
Nice to see the comment about Variety of Sound – i started out with those and seriously missed them when i went 64bit DAW.
i got the plugin mania bug and have gone through about all non-UAD offerings out there.
but i still pined for my VoS.
so i installed jBridge – works great, and ya know…
the VoS stuff generally kicks EVERYthing else to the curb.
my new favorite channel strip is NastyVCS.
looking forward to Console 4 and donating.
cabr576
onHi, this was written by Chris in another post:
So if you had to process a drumbuss and you are running a LOT of tracks into it that will blend:
Tracks-ConsoleChannel
Drumbuss- ConsoleBuss – FX – ConsoleChannel (‘decode’ the distortion, process, re-‘encode’)
2-buss- ConsoleBuss
That’s two levels. But if you’re doing a drum buss and a lot of the inputs will not be making sound at the same time- especially sequenced stuff, like if you had a separate kick and snare and they didn’t overlap and that was your buss- there’s no point giving each one the Channel because it’d work out to be a slightly degraded version of the dry signal, so you should do
Tracks- (route to drumbuss)
Drumbuss- FX – ConsoleChannel (like it was itself a track)
2-Buss- ConsoleBuss
If you’re not running FX on busses, you can do anything you want with them to make your level adjustments for groups easier:
Tracks- ConsoleChannel
…any crazy combination of busses that only alter the gains of groups of tracks heading to the final 2-buss…
2-Buss- ConsoleBuss
I was assuming people were just grouping, and forgot about the tendency to put processing everywhere (though you might well find that you don’t need to run as much processing to get a mix, with Console)
When in doubt, don’t put ConsoleBuss anywhere except on the 2-buss, and check that every sound is at least running through one instance of ConsoleChannel somewhere. It’s really meant to have ConsoleChannel running directly into ConsoleBuss every time, like two ends of a wire. You can do weird things with grouping without changing that, but anything applied inside that ‘wire’ is going to give unpredictable results in subtle ways.
cabr576
on1. Using Console4Channel plugin on each channel/track combined with using Console4Buss plugin on the buss into which they’re fed is critical otherwise the effect doesn’t work as intended. Think of Console4Channel as an “encoder” and Console4Buss as a “decoder” in a sense. Used together they do some magic trickery to the summing of the mixer (you can read the blog posts on Airwindows.com of an earlier version, Console2, for more info about how it works).
2. Console4Channel is intended to be at the end of the channel/track, after any other effects (with the exception that subtle effects on a channel/track after Console4Channel can sometimes sound good and enhance the effect that Console makes). Do not hit the input of the plugin hard. Start with levels reading significantly below 0dBfs (check this with Console4Channel bypassed just in case, or before you insert Console4Channel).
3. Console4Buss goes at the start of the buss (before any other processing) into which those channels/tracks feed.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks for the comment, great info!