Isolator3

Airwindopedia.txt

@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ Dynamics: Pop2, Pressure5, Dynamics, Pop, DigitalBlack, Logical4, VariMu, Butter
 
 Effects: Dubly2, GalacticVibe, CloudCoat, Fracture2, Dubly, Pafnuty2, PitchNasty, Trianglizer, ShortBuss, GuitarConditioner, Aura, TremoSquare, Tremolo, GlitchShifter, Gringer, Exciter, Energy2, Energy, Facet, Fracture, PowerSag2, PowerSag, Preponderant, Nikola
 
-Filter: Parametric, Stonefire, Baxandall2, Pear2, Capacitor2, Distance3, Pear, ResEQ2, SubTight, CStrip2, Weight, Isolator2, Kalman, Holt2, Holt, ToneSlant, AverMatrix, Average, MackEQ, Hull2, Baxandall, Hull, EQ, Capacitor, Isolator, TapeFat, ResEQ, Lowpass2, Highpass2, Distance, Distance2, Lowpass, Highpass
+Filter: Parametric, Stonefire, Isolator3, Baxandall2, Pear2, Capacitor2, Distance3, Pear, ResEQ2, SubTight, CStrip2, Weight, Isolator2, Kalman, Holt2, Holt, ToneSlant, AverMatrix, Average, MackEQ, Hull2, Baxandall, Hull, EQ, Capacitor, Isolator, TapeFat, ResEQ, Lowpass2, Highpass2, Distance, Distance2, Lowpass, Highpass
 
 Lo-Fi: Flutter2, DeRez3, Pockey2, CrunchyGrooveWear, GrooveWear, Pockey, Flutter, DeRez2, BitGlitter, DeRez, TapeBias, ChromeOxide, Cojones, Vibrato, Bite, Deckwrecka, DustBunny
 
@@ -2653,6 +2653,18 @@ Except I can beat those in one very Airwindows detail: if you are using it as a
 
 Isolator2 is Isolator, my very steep lowpass or highpass or shelf filter, but now it’s got smoothed coefficients so you can automate it and make it move better. Also, it’s even steeper. Also, it now has the power to give you added resonance! So you can put an edge on your filter/isolator sweeps, for a really narrow high-resonance sound that’s very striking as a ‘synth filter’ tone.
 
+############ Isolator3 is Isolator2, but on one slider, with a band-narrower control.
+
+Isolator3 is basically a request. I got asked for an isolator filter 'on one knob', which I've seen around but I've not used myself. Basically it means middle is full-range, to the left you're lowpassing and to the right you're highpassing.
+
+Turns out you need to run it as two filters because it's impossible to 'switch' the biquads inside it, from one role to the other. So you constantly run two filters one of which you can't hear the effect of.
+
+Except then there's the Q control, which does not actually control the Q of the filters. They're still steep, stacked-up filters without special resonances of their own. But when you turn up the Q slider, the cutoffs approach each other, turn into something like a bandpass on the fly. Full up, it should act a little like a resonance. To go back to full range, turn Q back down to zero and Iso to 0.5 (the middle).
+
+Lastly, this is lots and lots of filter stages all of which are smoothed for better modulation… but it's made of biquad filters, which don't like being modulated, and then it's two types of filter run into each other. I've put in safety clipping because it turns out that if you yank the control around real crazy, it's easy to get Isolator to glitch out. The glitches aren't always useful sounding but now and then it emits really weird synthetic burps and frills and so I've just made sure it can't blow up the output too bad, and then left it to its own devices. So, use Isolator3 with smooth intentional motions for traditional effects, yank it around madly if you want it to spit digits and sparks at you, have fun is the most important instruction.
+
+Hope it works as I got COVID returning from my vacation and it is heavily still with me so I've lost a bunch of steps. Not ideas, it's just that this is a good time for me to work through the backlog a bit. May or may not livestream in the upcoming week and if I do I won't be talking for eight hours at a stretch: probably won't need to go to the hospital but will check with a doctor. I'm in my space, Chris's 'hunting for ideas mountaintop' and it's no biggie for me to hole up for a few weeks. See ya again next week with something else from the backlog! :)
+
 ############ Kalman is not a real filter!
 
 So… come with me, if you will, on this journey.
@@ -4527,11 +4539,11 @@ Tape Drive is your boost (or pad). 0.5 is unity gain. Boost if you want lots of
 
 Flutter is like Flutter2, but is NOT exactly the same. It's updated, even since Flutter2, for the purpose of letting the '3D tape' emulation (letting tape bend laterally as well as stretch) be more accurate. It's also toned down a bit so 0.5 gives you a reasonable, real-world flutter effect. The two channels will use their randomness to try and chase each other a little, much like how TPDFWide does the same thing to be LESS correlated. Turns out with default settings this is really, really good at getting a spacious tape realism without letting the imaging go too weird. You can also bypass the whole thing by setting Flutter to zero: if you're running at low sample rate, consider doing that if you're running lots of ToTape and losing the extreme highs. I might not run Flutter on multitracks, just the buss.
 
-Bias is usually set to slight overbiasing. It's like GoldenSlew, but it's simplified and it's being run between Dubly encode and decode, so it's acting differently from the standalone GoldenSlew. Underbiasing also works but is a different algorithm that's probably not going to be people's first choice, but you can do it. Slight overbiasing is your best weapoon against unpleasant tizzy highs.
+Bias is usually set to slight overbiasing. It's like GoldenSlew, but it's simplified and it's being run between Dubly encode and decode, so it's acting differently from the standalone GoldenSlew. Underbiasing also works but is a different algorithm that's probably not going to be people's first choice, but you can do it. Slight overbiasing is your best weapon against unpleasant tizzy highs.
 
 Head Bump is like DubSub2, but it too is updated even more to get more out of ToTape7. There's a highpass built in at 0.5 setting that balances the bump against the rest of the audio, making it so if you stack up the plugin it doesn't get too messy, modeled after references of real tape machines doing multiple generations. Anywhere you set the head bump frequency should get reasonable results with Head Bump at 0.5. If you pull it back OR boost it, you begin to drop the highpass as you do that, meaning it will either crossfade over to the original digital bass (with extended subs) as you reduce the bump, or it'll start adding even more exaggerated bump to the original bass as you crank. So, it's a special voicing for doing all of the things, with 0.5 as the 'peak realism' and most restrictive setting. Ouside that, just pick whether you want less 'tape bass', or 'mega bass' by combining the source and the bump.
 
-Said bump still does the thing from DubSub2 where it's also giving a mild notch at double the frequency, which is characteristic of pretty much all real tape machines. You get to pick the frequency, because why would you be tied to a given machine when they're all different frequencies already, and when the heart of the effect is not getting the frequencyu right, but the unusual Airwindows head bump algorithm that'll work just fine however you voice it?
+Said bump still does the thing from DubSub2 where it's also giving a mild notch at double the frequency, which is characteristic of pretty much all real tape machines. You get to pick the frequency, because why would you be tied to a given machine when they're all different frequencies already, and when the heart of the effect is not getting the frequency right, but the unusual Airwindows head bump algorithm that'll work just fine however you voice it?
 
 And Dubly Decode helps you get even smoother, more compressed sound out of the tape saturation, and lets you dial it in by both amount and frequency. Be aware that it's a really gentle treble-slope, so making subtle changes to frequency will have an effect on the character of the sound but won't produce wild effects. Basically, if Dubly mostly balances but Enc is crossing over lower than Dec, there will be a sort of lower midrange hype that comes through: if Dec is lower than Enc, it's going to be drying up that energy and making it a bit tighter. They're supposed to cancel out, but half the reason classic records all sound different from each other is that this system in real life required a lot of fussy tuning, and some people set it up by ear and ended up with distinct tone qualities for their studios when they did. It's not so much 'EQ' qualities as texture. Experiment with it to see if you have preferences.
 

what.txt

@@ -208,7 +208,8 @@ IronOxide5 is the old school, heavily colored Airwindows tape emulation.[coll=]
 IronOxideClassic is the purer, simpler, early form of Iron Oxide before all the features.[coll=]
 IronOxideClassic2 is my bandpassy tape sim, updated for high sample rate and aliasing control.[coll=Latest]
 Isolator is a steep highpass or lowpass filter, like you might find in a speaker crossover.[coll=]
-Isolator2 is Isolator, but with control smoothing and a new resonance booster.[coll=Basic,Recommended,Latest]
+Isolator2 is Isolator, but with control smoothing and a new resonance booster.[coll=]
+Isolator3 is Isolator2, but on one slider, with a band-narrower control.[coll=Basic,Recommended,Latest]
 Kalman is not a real filter![coll=]
 kCathedral is a giant reverby space.[coll=]
 kCathedral2 is a giant reverby space modeled after the Bricasti Cathedral.[coll=]