Smash Happy Audio — User Manual
Mastering-grade high-end enhancement and saturation — air, de-harshing, transient sheen, and a clipper built to be pushed, all in one always-on signal chain.
Airwaves is the high-end companion in the Smash Happy Audio mastering line — Groundwaves handles the bottom, Airwaves handles the top: air, sheen, controlled saturation, and a musical ceiling. It's built to be pushed hard without becoming harsh, largely because de-harshing and clipping are always working alongside the enhancement, not bolted on as an afterthought.
The signal runs through a fixed nine-stage chain in this order: Air, Smooth Happy, To The Stars, Width + Edge Happy, Clip + Peak Happy, Output Gain, Spark Happy, and a final always-on two-stage ceiling.
Four sections run left to right: AIR, CLIP, WIDTH, and OUTPUT, each with its own knobs, meters, and LEDs. The ENGAGED/BYPASSED button in the top rail is the master switch for the whole chain — everything else stays live underneath it.
A triple Baxandall high-shelf stack at 700 Hz, 10 kHz, and 16 kHz, paired with harmonic saturation and automatic RMS gain compensation so pushing Air hard doesn't just make the mix louder. This is the one knob Airwaves wants you to push — the whole chain is built to keep up with it.
Six fully independent de-harshing bands, each with its own detector and a short lookahead so gain reduction arrives just ahead of the peak that triggered it rather than reacting after the fact. Switch it to run before or after Air — the two are designed to work together, so the harder you push Air, the more Smooth Happy has to do.
A parallel high-frequency enhancer working above 8 kHz, with mid/side pinking shelves and upward expansion for analog-style sheen and a sense of dimension "in the box" — a subtler, more textural lift than Air's shelf boost.
A straightforward mid/side widener. 100% is unity; below narrows, above opens — zero phase compromise either way.
Isolates high-frequency side-channel transients above 6 kHz and expands just their attack — cymbals, picks, and air open up in the stereo field while the centre stays completely untouched.
A 16x oversampled clipper with a narrow, genuinely usable range — 0 is 0 dBFS, 10 is a −3 dB threshold. Peak Happy tracks both RMS and peak envelopes to measure the real crest factor of your material and sets the clip margin accordingly, so dense, already-compressed genres aren't forced to pin the knob at 10 to get an effect.
Output is a linear trim, −12 to +6 dB. Spark Happy sits after it — a post-output transient upward expander (max +0.6 dB) that lifts attacks only, leaving sustain untouched. The chain finishes with an always-on two-stage true-peak ceiling — there's no bypass for it, since Airwaves is built to never hand your DAW an over.
Steps back your last change. Related edits in quick succession group into one undo step.
A/B compare: first press stores your current settings as the alternate; press again to flip and compare.
| Formats | Audio Unit, VST3 |
| Platform | macOS, Apple Silicon |
| Signal chain | Air → Smooth Happy → To The Stars → Width/Edge Happy → Clip/Peak Happy → Output → Spark Happy → Ceiling |
| Smooth Happy bands | 6 independent, 2.8/3.6/4.5/5.5/6.8/8.2 kHz |
| Clip range | 0 dBFS to −3 dBFS threshold, 16x oversampled |
| Output trim | −12 to +6 dB |
| Ceiling | Always-on two-stage true-peak limiting |
| Channel configuration | Stereo in / stereo out |
Make sure Smooth Happy is engaged and its Strength is up — it's designed specifically to keep pace with Air. Try switching it to run before Air rather than after if harshness is appearing before the boost.
Peak Happy sets the working margin based on your material's actual crest factor — on dense, already-loud material the full clip range may sit well below what 10 does on quieter, more dynamic sources. That's the intended behaviour, not a bug.
Edge Happy only expands the transient attack of high-frequency side content — it's deliberately restrained. For overall width, start with the Width knob and use Edge Happy as a finishing touch on top.