5 FREE Mastering VST/AU Plugins Released By Airwindows!

Airwindows has released five free mastering plugins: Density, Lowpass, Highpass, Average and ToneSlant, all of which were previously released for Mac only, but are now made freely available in VST/AU formats for Mac, as well as 32-bit and 64-bit VST plugin format for Windows.

Density is a saturation plugin with “the simplest, most continuous saturation curve you can have”. With high “Density” settings, several saturation stages are basically stacked up on top of each other in the signal flow. There’s also a built-in High-pass filter, Output Level and Dry/Wet crossfader controls.

Lowpass and Highpass are mixing EQs based on low order IIR (infinite impulse response) filters with a simpler design than far more complex EQ algorithms. A happy accident occurred during the development of both EQ bands, each having a seemingly targeted “presence” on the low and high frequency domain.

Average is a very special kind of low-pass filter based on a unique concept that implements something called an “averaged sample block” resulting in a cancellation node that has a dramatic, continuous effect on adjacent samples similar to a flanger effect or, in my opinion, the inverse effect that a highly resonant four-stage all-pass or “phaser” filter might have on high frequencies beyond 4 kHz.

ToneSlant is a completely new plugin that uses a unique FIR (finite impulse response) filter in order to have a desired effect on the cancellation node similar but also different than the “averaged sample block” concept, applying the tail end of the sample block in a way that behaves like a very gentle hi-shelving EQ.

The plugins are available for free download via Airwindows (ZIP archive, AU/VST format for Mac and 32 & 64-bit VST plugin format for Windows).