The Mac download is signed and notarized by Apple: macOS opens the
app and loads the plugins without asking you to let them through first.
Starts quicker with many third-party modules: what the modules folder
holds is remembered from the last run, so a start reads only the module
files that are new or changed. With a large folder the last patch could
take half a minute to come back after the computer had been left a while.
Unison on the VCO and the Wavetable: Voices (up to 16), Detune,
Blend and Spread, with new L and R outputs that spread the voices across
the stereo field: supersaws and wide pads from one module. Its Mode
sets the voices apart: detuned (free, or all starting together at each
key for a zap, or evenly apart), stacked in harmonics or octaves, a
Shepard tone that sounds the same in every octave, or a chord (octave,
fifth, major, minor, sevenths, sus, add9, overtones) from one key; its
Bias leans the detune, widens a stack, moves Shepard's centre or tilts
a chord towards its low or high notes.
VCO: a Ratio knob syncs it to itself, for sync sweeps from one
oscillator.
ADSR: Delay before the attack, Hold at the top, and a curve
of its own for each segment (A, D and R Curve). Its panel draws the
envelope, a dot following it as it plays, and you drag its corners to set
the times and the sustain.
Limiter (Level): a stereo brickwall limiter that looks ahead, with
Gain, Ceiling, Release and Out, and its gain reduction as a CV.
New modules: Ensemble (up to eight detuned copies, spread wide),
Flanger, PhaseDist (a sound bending its own phase), Crush
(sample rate and bits), Gate (a noise gate with a sidechain),
Transient (attacks and tails louder or softer), Disperser
(chained all-passes, for zaps and chirps), Formant (two vowel
formants), Crossover (lows and highs apart, adding up flat),
TranceGate (a 16-step rhythmic gate on the master clock),
GraphicEQ (31 bands, a third of an octave each, drawn as bars across
its panel) and TapeStop
(the sound slowing to a halt and spinning back up).
Out sends to FX 2 and FX 3 too, and In takes from them:
three separate effect chains in the FX area.
Shape (LFOs): a curve of points played as an LFO, once from each key
(an envelope of any shape) or as a remap of what comes in, drawn on its
panel: drag a point to move it, the middle of a line to bend it, and
double-click to add a point or to take one away. Start and Length
loop a section of the curve, and Hold loops it while the key is held,
then plays on to the end as you let go.
VCA: stereo. Its jacks are L, R and CV in, L and R
out, both sides by the same gain (without a cable in R, R is L).
Imported patches use one VCA where they used a pair.
New module: Pan (Mixers) places a mono signal between left and right,
or sets a stereo pair's balance, by one of three laws: Power (the
loudness stays the same across), Balance (the far side turns down)
and Linear. Width makes a stereo pair narrower or wider and
Mid sets what its sides share. A cable into a knob acts at any
speed, an LFO's or audio's.
New module: Crossfade (Mixers) fades from one stereo pair to
another with one knob, by a Linear or an equal-power law: a wet/dry
control for any effect, or a morph between two sounds.
New module: Dynamics (Level) squeezes a sound from both sides:
loud parts down above one threshold, quiet parts and tails up below
another (or further down, as an expander), with a sidechain input and
its gain change as a CV.
New module: PitchShift (Effects) plays a sound up to two octaves
higher or lower without changing its length; Smooth keeps tones
clean where grains cross, Jitter detunes each grain for a chorused
double.
New module: Convolver (Effects) puts a sound through an impulse
response from your samples folder: rooms, halls, cabinets, filters, or
any sample for strange textures, with no delay of its own. Trim, fade,
stretch and reverse the impulse while it plays; pre-delay, tone and
feedback.
New module: Distortion (Shapers) with six shapes: Overdrive,
Saturate, Foldback, Sine, Hard Clip and Quantize,
and Bias, Spread (the sides distorted differently, for width),
Dynamics (quiet parts stay quiet however hard it's driven) and a
DC Filter. Its shapes are smoothed between samples, so they alias
less.
Imported patches use one Pan, Crossfade, Dynamics,
PitchShift, Convolver or Distortion where they used several
VCAs or a stand-in module (a compressor, a pitch delay, a plate reverb,
the Drive); a distortion keeps its own shape, and a convolver's impulse
comes into your samples folder with the patch.
Wavetable: its picture shows the table where it plays in full detail,
so frames that differ only in their fine steps or sharp edges look apart
as Pos moves.
VCO and Wavetable: a Hz knob adds a frequency in hertz, the
same on every note, and Mult multiplies the pitch's frequency (2 an
octave up, 3 a twelfth, 0 leaving Hz alone): harmonics, inharmonic bells
and metal, or a fixed pitch.
Wavetable: Limit plays no harmonic above a frequency you set: a
duller, rounder table on every note.
Noise: a fourth output, Out, whose colour is the new Slope
knob: from violet through white and pink to brown, and anywhere between.
Sampler: a Hz knob shifts its frequency by the same hertz on
every note, and an FM input: an oscillator there gives clangy,
metallic versions of the sample.
Noise: pitched noise, Step and Smooth: a new random level each
cycle of the played pitch, held or glided, for the tuned, gritty noise
of old sound chips (with a V/Oct input, Tune and KBT).
New module: PitchTrack (Utilities) follows the pitch of a sound,
one note at a time, as a V/Oct voltage with a gate: sing or play into
the plugin and a synth follows.
Delay: Duck keeps the echoes down while the input plays.
Pan places the echoes (never the dry sound), and a new Mode,
Cross, swaps the echoes' sides each time, so panned echoes bounce
between the speakers. Imported delays with ping-pong use it, and their
dry sound is no longer panned with the echoes.
Flanger: Scroll, an endless barber-pole sweep, rising or falling.
Plate: Early adds the first reflections before the tail.
Crush: ADC and DAC smooth the sound going in and coming out,
as a good converter would, and Dither keeps quiet tails from
breaking into steps.
FLAC and AIFF files play wherever a WAV does too: the Sampler's and
Grains' samples and the Wavetable's own tables.
MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files play wherever a WAV does: the Sampler's and
Grains' samples (a file, or the files in a folder) and the Wavetable's own
tables.
Support for .pch patches (Experimental)
Legacy FltClassic: keyboard tracking now follows its KBT setting (100 %
is a semitone a key), before it tracked four times too steeply.
In Bitwig (and other CLAP hosts), a setting changed in the plugin's
window no longer jumps back to its previous value now and then, nor
stays on the old one.
Improved multitouch for Windows (Tested on Surface Pro)
LayerOut and LayerIn (In/Out): send audio and signals from one
layer to another. A LayerOut sends L, R, CV, CV 2 and Gate under its
name (Send 1, Send 2 …; double-click to rename it); a LayerIn picks a
layer, then one of the LayerOuts there by name, and plays what it sends,
in every voice. One LayerOut can feed any number of LayerIns. From a
layer with a lower number it arrives in the same block; from a higher
one, its own layer or the master, a block (128 samples) late, as its
panel shows; loops between layers are fine. In a poly layer the audio
of every voice is sent, the CVs and Gate of the newest note. Notes go
across as V/Oct on CV, velocity on CV 2 and the gate on Gate.
EQ: dynamic bands. A bell or a shelf can move its gain with how
loud its own frequencies are: give it a Range (down to tame a
harsh or boomy spot only when it's there, as a de-esser does, or up to
lift it) and a Threshold, in the strip under the curve. Attack
and Release on the panel set how fast. A sound in the new Key
input decides instead, in each band: a kick can duck a bass's low end.
The curve moves as it plays. Patches from before sound as they did.
EQ: the spectrum behind the curve is of the sound coming in, before
the EQ, so you see what you're shaping (it showed the sound after it).
Multiband: the screen draws the gain reduction as the curve the
sound actually gets, easing from one band to the next across each
crossover, where it drew a flat block per band with a hard step at
each crossover. The sound itself hasn't changed.
Layers: play several patches at once. The layers icon in the
title bar (Ctrl + L) opens the layer section under the view: add as
many layers as you like, load a patch into each, set its level, mute
it, and give it a MIDI channel of its own to play it from its own
keyboard or DAW track. Over all the layers sits
the master, a patch for effects: the layers' mix goes through it
(Out 2, 3 and 4 go past it), with Bypass to compare. Layers 2 to 8 have
their own macros as DAW parameters (Layer 2 Macro 1 etc.). On the desktop
and the iPad; the iPhone stays one patch at a time.
Project files: save every layer and the master in one file, and
load it again, from the layer section (or drop it on the window).
Every module has its documentation: what it does, its jacks and
knobs, technical details and tips. Click the ? beside a module in
the module browser, the right-click menu or the list under a module's
name, or right-click a module and choose What it does. On iPhone
and iPad the ? and the × beside a tapped module's name are big
enough for a finger.
Modules from other makers can bring their own documentation; the rest
get a page of their jacks and knobs.
Expr has more functions: asin, acos, atan, sinh, cosh,
log10, and random numbers: noise (from −1 to 1, a new one each time
it's read) and rand(a, b) (from a to b). Each voice draws its own.
Its documentation page lists everything a formula can use.
Expr formulas can have several lines (Shift+Enter, or ;). Each
line sets one of four outputs, y1 to y4, or a name of your own
that keeps its value from one sample to the next, so a formula can
count, switch and remember: n = (n + rose(x1)) % 4. rose(x) and
fell(x) tell when a gate goes high or low, and mem[i] is a table
of 256 values. A formula of one line plays as before.
Utilities, a new group in Add module, with five small modules:
Math (add, subtract, multiply, min, max), Compare (gates and
triggers as one voltage crosses another), Counter (counts clocks,
divides them), Flip (a flip-flop) and Pulse (a gate of set
length after a delay, and triggers on a gate's edges).
An LFO with Sync on Clock keeps moving while your DAW is stopped, at the
DAW's tempo and its Division, and falls in with the song when you press
play. It stood still until the DAW played.
The legacy NoteRcv, CtrlRcv and NoteZone modules work: NoteRcv's gate
opens for its note, CtrlRcv gives its controller's value, and NoteZone
passes the notes in its range on, transposed, on another channel.
Compiled modules from the Community Library or the SDK can send MIDI
out of the plugin, as Note Out does.
On iPhone and iPad, modules of other makers, compiled or Faust, don't
play (iOS runs only what comes in the app), so Settings has no Modules
folder there, and Add module no Faust or Third Party group. Your own
modules made of modules and your Wavetable tables stay in the Files
app's Modules folder.
Audio in, and more outputs. The plugin takes a stereo input and a
stereo sidechain: the In module's new Source picks Main In or Side
In (in either area), and the legacy 2-In and 4-In hear them too, so a
patch can be an effect on a track. It has four stereo outputs (Main,
Out 2, 3, 4): the Out module's Dest sends to Out 2, 3 or 4, and the
legacy 4-Out's outputs 3/4 go to Out 2. They're mixed into Main as
before until you turn on Split outs (Play view, Engine); then your
DAW routes them.
The app takes sound from an audio input: choose it in Settings, Audio
& MIDI (none by default).
At the 96 kHz engine the plugin reports 31 samples of latency (16
before), so what it plays from its input stays in time with the track.
Lighter on the CPU. Every patch takes less of a core, and a
patch's voices play on several cores at once (Multicore in the Play
view's Engine, on unless you turn it off; Windows and Linux): a 32-voice
patch takes about a third of the time it did. It sounds exactly the
same either way.
MIDI out. A patch can play other instruments: the new Note Out
sends notes (without cables, the keys you play, each voice its own),
and CC Out sends four controllers from control voltages. The legacy
NoteSend, CtrlSend, PCSend and Automate send their MIDI now too. Your
DAW routes it to another track. Notes still on go off when the patch
changes or Run stops.
A stereo module dropped into a chain goes in on both sides, left to
left and right to right (it went in on one side only, the right of a
legacy Compress into its left); a mono one after the left.
An input's attenuator ring shows only while you point at the input,
pick a cable into it or set its amount, so it no longer covers the
names beside the inputs.
Tape: a tape echo with three play heads, wow and flutter, and
tape that saturates and darkens as the repeats go round. Turning
Time slides the pitch, as tape does.
Rotary: an organ's rotating speaker, a treble horn and a bass
drum spinning at their own speeds, heard by two microphones. Switch
it fast with Speed or a gate, and the rotors take their time to
speed up and slow down.
FreqShift: shifts every frequency by the same number of hertz,
up or down, from slow beating to clangour, with Up and Down outputs,
stereo spread and feedback for endless sweeps.
EQ: an equaliser played on its screen: double-click the curve
to add a point (up to eight), drag it for frequency and level,
turn the wheel over it for its width, double-click it to take it
away. Each point can be a bell, a shelf, a cut, a notch or a band
pass, chosen on the strip under the curve, over a live spectrum.
Drive: tube, tape, diode and fuzz saturation, kept clean of
aliasing, more distorted without getting louder.
Multiband: a compressor of up to six bands, played on its
screen: double-click to split a band, drag the lines between them,
drag a band's threshold up and down, and watch each band turned
down as it plays. Each band has its own ratio and gain, can be
bypassed or soloed, and a Key input can drive them.
Function: a rise and fall generator for envelopes, looping
LFOs and slewing, with end-of-rise and end-of-cycle outputs.
Chaos: smooth, never-repeating modulation from four strange
attractors, from slow drifts to audio rate, drawn on its screen.
The VCO and the Wavetable have no FM knob any more: the FM cable's own
amount sets how deep it goes, as on every other input. Comb and Notch
have no FM input: patch into Freq instead, and its ring shows the
sweep. Patches made before play as they did.
Drop a module that has no cables yet onto one in a chain, and it goes
in between: that module's output feeds it, and it feeds what the
output fed. No cables to undo and redo by hand.
An input with cables in it has two handles: drag the ring around
it up or down to set how much comes in, or drag from the jack itself
to patch what comes in on to another input. Shift + drag sets the
amount from anywhere on the input.
Dragging the ring around a knob's small jack, or around an input, now
sets every cable plugged in there at once, as one attenuator. A knob's
or input's menu still sets each cable on its own.
The license panel shows just your license's number and date.
Double-click an empty spot in the patch to add a module there, as a
right-click does.
Add module's Third Party group can fold away every maker's modules at
once, and show them all again (Collapse all, Expand all).
Pointing at a jack lights the cables plugged into it.
New keys: Tab switches between Play and Patch, Ctrl + 1 to 8 picks a
variation, Ctrl + K shows or hides the keyboard, Ctrl + N the notes,
Ctrl + W the cables. Ctrl + 0 fits the patch in the view. Ctrl + S
saves the patch over its file, Ctrl + Shift + S opens Save. The user
guide lists every key.
A few envelope, compressor and noise gate times read one digit
differently in the module's display (for example 1.33m instead of
1.34m). They sound the same.
How to install
Unzip the download. It holds the plugin as VST3 and as CLAP; install either or both:
Windows: the .vst3 into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, the .clap into C:\Program Files\Common Files\CLAP.
macOS: into /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3 and /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/CLAP.
Linux: into ~/.vst3 and ~/.clap.
Then rescan plugins in your DAW. Without a license it runs as the demo; to activate it, see your account after buying.
