Changelog & Downloads

1.3.0

New Features

• New Ducker (every slot + Master) — Frequency-selective ducker available on every slot and on the Master, with a parallel broadband path running on the same envelope. Spectral side: Spectral (0–100%) cuts a band set by Freq (20 Hz–20 kHz) and Q (0.3–10). Broadband side: Amount (0–100%) scales a wideband gain reduction on the same envelope. Shared envelope: Attack (0.1–100 ms), Release (10–2000 ms), Threshold (−60..0 dB), Range (−60..−3 dB max reduction at full engagement), a Stereo Link toggle (one envelope across L/R vs per-channel), and optional Lookahead up to 10 ms (Master only, to keep per-slot latency at zero) so transients duck the moment they hit the output. Ducking applies to wet signal only — the dry path is untouched, matching the convention in ducking delays and reverbs. With Spectral and Amount both at zero, the Ducker is fully transparent and existing presets load identically to before.
  
  Mode (Level / Transient). Two ducker behaviors, selectable per-Ducker via the L/T glyph at the head of the cluster. Level (default) is a classic level-tracking sidechain compressor — ducking depth follows the trigger's loudness. Best for percussive sources (kick triggering reverb pump, drum bus pumping a synth pad). Transient fires a one-shot duck-and-recover cycle on each transient onset above Threshold, regardless of whether the trigger is still loud. Sustained pads, held chords, and looped drones get a clean duck-and-recover on each onset rather than pinning at maximum reduction for as long as the source rings. Hold (0–1000 ms) sets the time at ducked level between Attack and Release in Transient mode (no effect in Level mode).
  
  Trigger Source selector (Duck Trig). Per-Ducker selector showing a glyph for the active source. Slots 1–4: R Routed In (the slot's audio input — default, matches pre-1.3.0 behavior), S Self (the slot's own wet output — useful for a reverb tail taming its own peaks), M Main Input, plus numbered glyphs for any earlier slot's wet output. Master: M Main Input (default), S Self (the wet bus), plus 1/2/3/4 for any individual slot's wet output. Hover any glyph for a tooltip showing the current selection on top and the full legend below. No slot can be triggered from a later slot, so feedback loops are impossible.
• New UI Scale — New UI Scale submenu in the logo right-click menu (75% / 100% / 125% / 150% / 175% / 200%) lets you make the entire editor uniformly larger or smaller. Sits on top of the existing dynamic resize: pick a scale tier, then drag the editor corner as usual. Scale is per-user (remembered alongside Theme and Shape), not per-project, so opening an older DAW project on a different monitor doesn't override your preferred size. Scale clamps to the display so the resize handle stays reachable.
• New Expandable Master + draggable divider — Click Out in the signal flow diagram to expand the Master panel full-width, the same way clicking slots 1–4 expands those (re-click to collapse, click another slot or Out to swap). A thin hairline in the gap between slot 4 and Master is now draggable to widen Master at the slots' expense or vice versa; double-click resets to the symmetric default. Useful when the Master strip is busy and you want more room, or when you want to audition four slots side-by-side at different proportions. Width is remembered per-user. The default layout was also tightened so all five columns (4 slots + Master) render at equal width with consistent gaps.

Improvements

• Improved Saturator mode redesign — The Shape knob now does something meaningful in every mode instead of only Chebyshev. Soft Clip: Shape sweeps knee hardness from gentle rounding to hard clipping. Cubic: rebuilt around odd harmonics; Shape adds higher odd harmonics for a buzzier, more aggressive character; 2× oversampled to suppress aliasing. ArcTangent: Shape sweeps frequency emphasis — 0 = warm (saturate lows), 1 = bright (saturate highs). Asymmetric: Shape controls asymmetry — 0 = fully symmetric (odd harmonics only), 1 = maximum pos/neg difference (adds even harmonics). Chebyshev unchanged. Transfer-curve and harmonic-bar visualizations updated to match. Output levels rebalanced across modes.
• Improved Spectral Delay tail clarity — At high feedback with many bands (especially 16), the wet tail used to converge to a near-sinusoidal ring within a few seconds. The feedback path now preserves the full spectral fingerprint of the first pass instead of narrowing each cycle, so high-feedback tails stay broadband and decay naturally. Behavior at low/moderate feedback (≤ ~80%) is essentially unchanged. Presets that relied on the old tonal collapse at extreme feedback will sound less ringy.
• Improved Section dividers across all 23 module UIs — Every module UI now paints thin dividers at the boundary between functional sections (Mix / Timing / Character / Tone / Structure / Modulation / Diffusion) in the module's accent colour. Related controls read as a single visual group without taking any extra space. Section assignments share a common vocabulary across modules, so "Mix" always sits in the same conceptual position whether you're on Chorus or Cloud Reverb.
• Improved Demo & Free modes feature-frozen at the pre-Ducker line — Spectrus's two unlicensed-listening modes (Demo with periodic fade, Free with Pro modules replaced by Passthrough) both lock their feature set at what Spectrus shipped just before the Ducker landed. Ducker is the first Pro feature crossing that line: in Demo, the Duck controls render show-disabled with a small PRO badge above the cluster; in Free, the Ducker is bypassed. Future post-Stutterus effect modules will follow the same policy. Version numbers continue tracking the main line so bug fixes flow into Demo and Free automatically. Nothing changes for licensed Pro users.
• Improved Master Dry default corrected to 0.0 — Master Dry is the unprocessed input passed straight through to the output mixer, alongside the wet signal from the four slots. It shipped at 0.5 from 1.0.0 as a safety default so a fresh instance always made audible sound, but that meant unprocessed signal bled through at the master regardless of each slot's local wet/dry setting. The default is now 0.0 — Master Dry sits silent by default, and you reach for it (or each slot's local Dry) intentionally. Module wet/dry defaults and every factory preset have been recalibrated against the new baseline so individual presets sit at the same perceived loudness as before.
• Improved Random Mix wet/dry safety clamp — With the new Master Dry baseline, four slots stacked at preset-authored wet/dry was loud enough to be a hazard rather than a feature. Every random slot now loads at Wet = 0.32 / Dry = 0.16 as a quiet starting point — taste the four-slot blend, then dial up from there. Slot Lock and Mix Lock both override the clamp: a locked slot keeps its existing wet/dry untouched, and a Mix Lock on Wet or Dry holds the frozen value through Random Mix. Manual single-preset loads still recall their authored values exactly — only the four-at-once Random Mix path applies the clamp.

Bug Fixes

• Fix Mid-session license activation no longer drops audio across loaded instances — Activating or clearing a license while multiple Spectrus instances were loaded could produce a brief burst of clicks and dropouts across every instance during the activation file write. License entry and clear are now silent regardless of instance count.
• Fix License activation no longer requires a slot reload — Entering a Pro license while running in Free mode now swaps the audio-side modules immediately. Previously, slots holding a Pro module substituted with Passthrough stayed silent until the user re-picked the module, toggled demo mode, or loaded a preset.
• Fix Preset save/load gaps closed for several parameter groups — Master Ducker, master wet filters, per-slot Air/Body, per-slot Ducker, and per-slot Mute/Solo were tracked internally but never saved into preset files. They now round-trip correctly. Older .spectrus presets continue to load identically — missing fields default to bypassed/transparent values. Random Mix also resets the per-slot color params (Air, Body, Duck Spectral, Duck Amount) alongside the existing output-filter reset for a clean palette.
• Fix Echo tempo sync now respects host time signature — Whole-note / quarter / dotted divisions were computed against quarter-note-relative beats, so a 1/4 division in 3/4 evaluated to 75% of a quarter note and switching the host time signature silently changed delay length. Replaced with Tape Delay's whole-note-relative convention. See the Heads-up below.
• Fix Tape Delay tempo sync guarded against zero / negative host BPM — Hosts reporting BPM = 0 or −1 (some use −1 to signal "no transport") could collapse the synced delay to ~10 ms. Tape Delay now falls back to 120 BPM in those cases.
• Fix Ducker Lookahead no longer glitches CLAP hosts on knob moves — In CLAP hosts, moving the Ducker's Lookahead knob caused the host to repeatedly re-initialize Spectrus, producing audible clicks and dropouts. The first time you engage Lookahead in a session, Spectrus now reports its full 10 ms latency budget up front; subsequent knob moves don't change the reported latency, so they're click-free. Projects saved with Lookahead at 0 still report 0 latency on load. VST3 hosts were unaffected.
• Fix Random Mix no longer crashes after Stutterus capture + sample delete — When a Stutterus slot was used for live capture and the underlying sample was subsequently deleted, Random Mix could crash the host. Fixed.
• Fix Rare visualization-driven crash hardened (Stutterus + Tape Delay) — Both the Stutterus waveform/capture readout and the Tape Delay wow/flutter readout could in rare cases trigger a host crash when the visualization read its source buffer at the same instant the audio engine was updating it. Hardened on both modules.
• Fix Mix Lock no longer causes glitches when a host automates module choice — With Mix Lock active, host automation of a slot's module-choice parameter could trigger off-thread writes audible as a short glitch. The Mix Lock carryover now only fires safely from the UI thread, so automation passes cleanly.
• Fix UI Scale clamps to the display so the resize handle stays reachable — Picking a UI scale that made the editor larger than the screen could push the bottom-right resize handle off-screen with no way to drag it back. Scale now clamps to the visible display area, and your saved scale is preserved for restore on a larger display.
• Fix UI Scale persists across editor close / reopen — Fresh-session windows could open at the default size even though the UI Scale menu still showed the saved value. The saved scale now applies correctly on reopen.
• Fix Preset menu opens at the editor's UI Scale — Previously rendered at native resolution while the rest of the editor scaled; the popup now inherits the user scale.
• Fix Offline bounce / freeze no longer glitches on the first large block — Hosts that pass an unusually large audio block during offline bounce or freeze could cause a brief glitch on the first such block. Internal buffers are now pre-sized for the larger case.

Heads-up

• Heads-up Master Dry default is now 0.0; multi-slot mixes built against the old 0.5 default will sound different — A fresh instance now starts at Master Dry = 0.0 instead of 0.5. Factory presets all carry explicit Master Dry values so loading a preset is unaffected. Existing DAW projects continue to recall whatever Master Dry value they were saved with. If you manually built multi-slot blends from scratch against the old default and have them in muscle memory, set Master Dry to taste on new instances, or start from a factory preset.
• Heads-up Echo in tempo-sync mode on non-4/4 sessions will change delay length — The previous math evaluated divisions against quarter-note-relative beats, so a 1/4 division in 3/4 produced 75% of a quarter note; switching the host time signature could silently change delay length. The corrected whole-note-relative convention matches Tape Delay and is the musically expected behavior, but anyone with Echo sync-mode presets dialed in against the old math on 3/4, 6/8, 5/4 etc. sessions will hear a different delay length on load. Free-time mode (non-synced) is unaffected.

1.2.0

New Features

• New Stutterus (new module) -- Tempo-synced glitch / slice repeater, in the Delay category. The 23rd effect and the 16th Pro module. Captures live input at every division boundary and loops the slice for the division window, optionally stacked with a manually captured or loaded sample layer for dual-source mangling. 17-step tempo division (8 bars down to 1/16 dotted), per-trigger probability gate, per-slice random reverse + pitch-jitter (±12 st) + timing jitter + decay shape, bit-crusher, dual envelope modes (Standard / Reverse-Swell). Sample layer adds a drag-drop waveform display with capture-from-live, scrub-region trimming, equal-power crossfade against the live layer, per-slice stereo spread for captured and imported sample, and a slow Drift LFO (Sine / Triangle / Random S&H / Saw) detuning the sample layer up to ±15 cents independently of the live layer. Sample audio is path-referenced only in presets -- no embedded audio blobs -- and persisted samples round-trip across save/load with a "Sample not found - drop to replace" fallback if the source file moves.
• New Stutterus Tape Stop/Start -- Probability-gated tape-machine mode that replaces the normal stutter trigger with a continuous rate ramp on the slice. Tape % sets the per-trigger chance; the Balance dial picks Stop vs Start (left = always start, right = always stop, center = 50/50); Tape Speed controls ramp duration (1x / 2x / 4x of the current division); Tape Depth controls how far the ramp deflects from unity rate (0% = no ramp, 100% = full Start-from-deep / Stop-to-silence). Curve is exponential, flywheel physics: fast initial change, gradual coast to the floor.
• New Stutterus Tape Wobble -- Lighter-touch tape variant selectable via the Tape Mode switch. Single asymmetric dip-and-return inside one division (quadratic fall over 25%, square-root rise over 75%, cassette-drag physics, not a clean sine). Reuses Tape % for probability and Tape Depth for dip floor. Tape Speed controls dip width (1x = ~70% of the division, 4x about 17%, vibrato territory); Balance is disabled in Wobble mode (no direction to roll). Stays rhythmically locked to the grid- the rate is back at unity by the next trigger boundary.

Improvements

• Improved Mix Lock (new feature) -- Right-click any continuous knob or Mute/Solo button and pick Lock Control to freeze it. Locked controls ignore preset recall, Random Mix, knob drag, scroll wheel, double-click reset, and per-module Randomize buttons until you right-click and toggle the lock off, or use "init" in the preset menu, or "Slot Init" in the slot context menu. Locked knobs render desaturated with a small padlock badge. Locked Mute/Solo buttons keep their active red / amber color with the same badge. Tooltip on hover reads Locked. Right-click to unlock. Lock state is session-only -- it does not persist across DAW project saves or reopens. Presets never carry lock state. What's covered: master strip + per-slot shared tone/filter + per-slot Mute/Solo (per-param freeze); per-slot wet/dry mix (carries across module swap within the slot); per-module DSP knobs (decay, feedback, grain size, damping, etc. -- goes dormant on module swap-out, re-engages on swap-back). Note: DAW automation and MIDI CC freely move locked controls -- Mix Lock protects against Spectrus's own write paths, not external ones. Init in the Preset Selector main menu wipes every lock -- use as the global reset-everything button.
• Improved Preset menu + navigation unified -- The Factory / User preset submenus and the next/prev navigation buttons now share a single underlying tree. Menu order and navigation order can no longer drift from each other -- if the menu shows preset B after preset A, next/prev will traverse them in that same order. Fixes a class of long-standing drift bugs caused by the menu and nav running separate (and occasionally diverging) sort logic, and makes cross-platform ordering deterministic (no more reliance on filesystem iteration order between Windows / macOS / Linux).
• Improved User preset folders are now WYSIWYG -- The top level of your user preset menu is now flat-alphabetical with the folder names you gave. Previously, folders whose names prefix-matched a built-in module (e.g. Chorus/, Plate/) were auto-bucketed under Modulation / Reverb / etc. section headers, while folders that didn't match landed under "Uncategorized." Now every folder appears as itself, sorted alphabetically; nested sub-folder structure is preserved exactly as organized on disk.
• Improved Folders render above direct presets within each submenu -- A folder that contains both a root-level .spectrus file and a sub-folder of more presets will now show the sub-folder(s) first and the root-level preset(s) below them.
• Improved Deleted user presets no longer haunt the menu -- The tree builder filters out files that no longer exist on disk before rendering, so presets you've deleted externally disappear from both the menu and next/prev on the next rescan instead of lingering as stale entries.

Bug Fixes

• Fix Factory presets no longer live on disk -- Factory presets are embedded directly in the plugin and read at runtime. User presets in Documents/Spectrus/Presets/ are unchanged.
• Fix Scan button picks up new user presets -- Clicking Scan in the preset navigator refreshes the user preset list to include any presets added to your Documents/Spectrus/Presets/ folder since the plugin loaded.
• Fix Logo menu click-through -- The right-click context menu on the Spectrus logo (About / License / Theme / Updates) could occasionally vanish the moment it opened, with the cursor's first menu item silently selected. Fixed by triggering the menu on mouseUp instead of mouseDown and anchoring the popup to the logo component rather than pinning it under the cursor.

1.1.1

Fixes

• Fixed macOS: Universal Binary -- AU/VST3/CLAP now ship as Intel + Apple Silicon, so Intel Macs and Rosetta-backed hosts can load the plugin
• Fixed macOS: Deployment Target -- Minimum OS lowered to macOS 11 (Big Sur); the 1.1.0 build inadvertently required macOS 26 and failed to load on earlier versions
• Fixed Factory preset manifest determinism -- The preset manifest generator now produces identical output regardless of build host. Previously, platform-dependent path sort order and line-ending-sensitive content hashing could assign mismatched internal identifiers to duplicate-named preset files, producing duplicate numbered folders (e.g., Shimmer 1, Shimmer 2) in the Factory directory on some systems

1.1.0

New Features

• New Cloud Reverb Factory Presets -- 52 new factory presets across 6 categories (Bright, Dark, Ethereal, Organic, Spatial, Textural)
• New Cloud Reverb FDN Reverb Tail -- New Tail and Tail Decay controls add a lush Householder FDN reverb layer beneath the granular engine; blend between pure granular and rich, non-metallic reverb tails with independent decay time
• New Per-Slot Air & Body Controls -- Each effect slot now has dedicated Air (high-frequency sparkle) and Body (low-frequency warmth) knobs for per-effect tonal shaping
• New Stereo Input on All Effects -- Every effect now has a Stereo In knob that blends between classic mono-summed input and true stereo processing, giving you control over how stereo width feeds into each module
• New Glacier Reverb Smoother Control -- New knob adds extra diffusion in the feedback path for smoother, more organic reflections independent of the Diffusion knob
• New Ember Reverb Stereo FDN -- Stereo input is now distributed across Ember's 16-delay FDN for spatially accurate reverb; hard-panned inputs produce wide, immersive results instead of collapsing to mono
• New Opt-in Update Notifications -- Optional, privacy-respecting update checks (no personal data sent); enable or dismiss from the logo menu on first launch

Improvements

• Improved Dark & Light Theme System -- Full dark/light color theme support with four container shape presets (Sharp, Rounded, Pill, Circle); toggle via logo right-click menu; all UI elements update instantly on switch
• Improved Visualizer Phosphor Persistence -- All 22 visualizers now use a buffered rendering technique where previous frames fade gradually, creating ghostly motion trails unique to each effect; fade rate is audio-reactive and tuned per module
• Improved Per-Module Accent Colors -- Each effect's rotary slider arcs now use the module's signature accent color, matching the signal flow diagram palette
• Improved Glacier Reverb Diffusion Rework -- Diffusion knob is now significantly more audible; increased input diffuser delay times and connected the knob to feedback path diffusion for smoother reflections across all characters
• Improved Ember Reverb Harmonic Saturation -- Harmonic characters (Warm, Vintage, Bright, Dark, Lo-Fi) are now more pronounced and lively with intelligent feedback protection to prevent runaway at high decay settings
• Improved Renamed Polish/Weight to Air/Body -- Uses industry-standard terminology; all existing presets remain fully compatible
• Improved Plate Reverb Quality -- Fixed low-frequency distortion at high decay settings with in-loop soft saturation and improved low-damping filter to better match real plate physics
• Improved Ember Reverb Small Rooms -- Tightened small-space delays and scaled diffuser ranges by room size; small, tight rooms are now achievable at low Room Size settings

Bug Fixes

• Fix Velvet Hall & Velvet Room seed presets -- Random seed parameters now correctly apply when loading presets instead of carrying over from the previous preset
• Fix Velvet Hall & Velvet Room seed labels -- UI seed labels now update immediately on preset load
• Fix Bloom factory preset seeds -- 92 of 93 Bloom presets were missing seed fields, which could cause stale seed values to carry over between presets
• Fix Ember Reverb damping controls -- All four damping knobs (Hi Freq, High Damp, Low Freq, Low Damp) were producing no audible effect due to incorrect coefficient math; now working as intended
• Fix Saturator Chebyshev mode -- Rewrote the algorithm to eliminate wavefolding artifacts and raspy distortion; Shape knob now smoothly controls even/odd harmonic balance with clean results
• Fix Plate Reverb reflection artifacts -- Fixed persistent artifacts after large parameter sweeps by ensuring delay buffers fully rebuild on reset

1.0.0 -- March 26, 2026

Initial release: 21 studio-quality effects, 4-slot modular routing, 900+ factory presets.