Airy
The image of a single point of light through a lens is never a point. It is the Airy pattern, a bright core ringed by faint haloes. Airy makes that phenomenon audible as stereo width.
- Fill only the width a band is missing, automatically
- Keep the mono sum bit-intact at any width
- Turn a mono source into a real stereo one
- Keep the low end centred while the rest opens
- Free to use, with no account or activation
Widen it, then fold it to mono
Airy works on the Side channel only. Widen as far as you like, then hit MONO: the source comes back untouched.
MONO folds the output the way a phone speaker would, BYPASS takes the plugin out of the sound and the picture, MIX doses it. Try MONO and BYPASS together: there is no difference left to hear.
Read the note: How to widen a mix without breaking mono compatibility.
WIDE OPEN · Wider. Mono untouched.
Width at 100, diffusion at 0.9, generate at 80: Airy wide open on a group that already had some width. The Side channel comes up; the Mid does not move by a tenth of a decibel. Hit MONO, then BYPASS: folded, the processed and the bypassed signal are the same signal.
WIDE OPEN · A kit that fills the room, a kick that stays put
The same setting on a drum loop. The width goes to the room, the cymbals and the snare's tail; the kick and the body of the snare live in the Mid, which Airy never writes to, so the centre of the kit does not blur. MONO proves it: the punch is identical.
WIDE OPEN · From a line to a wall
A mono synth line, opened all the way: GENERATE at 80 builds the sides it never had. This is the use most wideners are bought for, and the one where they usually cost you the mono mix. Here the fold-down is free: what you gain in stereo you do not pay for anywhere else.
GENERATE 40 · Nothing in the sides, then something
The arpeggio is strictly mono: left minus right is digital silence, so there is no width to stretch. GENERATE builds a Side channel from the signal's own spectrum. At 40 % it is a halo around a source that stays where it was.
GENERATE 100 · All the way, and still mono-safe
Same source, GENERATE at its maximum: the Side channel comes up 8 dB higher and the arpeggio fills the room. Now hit MONO. Everything Airy built folds away and the source comes back exactly, because it never wrote anything to the Mid.
WIDE OPEN · One guitar, double-tracked width
A single guitar take, spread the way a double-track would spread it, without the second take and without the comb filtering a delay-based widener leaves when the two sides meet again in mono.
It widens the way the ear actually hears width: the engine measures the width your signal already has in every band, and only adds what is missing to reach the target you paint on the stereo field map.
The Airy pattern is what coherence looks like: a coherent point source draws one sharp spot, and the figure spreads as coherence falls. Stereo width is that same quantity, inter-channel coherence, so the figure on screen is a true readout of what the engine measures and moves.
It touches the Side channel only, so the mono sum is preserved by construction. Zero latency. Free, with no activation and no account.
- PERCEPTUAL engine — measures each band's width (inter-channel coherence) and fills only the deficit · zero latency
- Stereo field map — paint your target width directly on the map: your signal's energy, frequency by frequency, under the contour you draw
- Mono-safe by construction — Side-only processing; the mono sum stays bit-intact at any width
- GENERATE — true mono-to-stereo synthesis (mono→stereo inserts supported in Pro Tools)
- DIFFUSION — the character of the added width, focused ↔ airy
- MONO BELOW — true elliptical bass-mono · CORR POS — vinyl/broadcast-safe correlation bound
- RIDE — width follows the signal or an external sidechain, with a filtered detection key
- Two assignable LFOs — transport-locked sync · randomize and lock · A/B
- Real Bessel-J1 Airy scene · LASER and ARGENT themes · second SPECTRAL engine for the diffracted texture
- Price Free
- License Free — no activation
- Formats VST3 · AU · AAX
- Systems macOS 10.15+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
- Hosts Any VST3 / AU host · Pro Tools 2023+ (AAX)