Orra Pump Pro User Manual
Version 1.0.0 • © 2026 Orra Audio LLC
1. Welcome
Orra Pump Pro is a drawable, tempo-synced modulation engine with four layers. Each layer is a complete rhythmic modulator of its own: you place and bend control points on a large screen to draw exactly the curve you want, and that curve becomes a looping modulator with its own clock, trigger and target. The four layers run in series, so a filter chop can feed a volume duck that feeds a reverb throw, or one at a time, so four different grooves sit on four tabs and you switch between them from the tabs or from an automation lane.
The shape drives one target of your choice out of fourteen: a resonant filter (low-, high-, band-pass or notch), volume for tremolo and rhythmic gating, pan for auto-panning, or the wet amount of one of eight built-in effects, Reverb, Delay, Saturation, Distortion, Width, Bitcrush, Chorus and Phaser. The same pump shape that ducks a bass line becomes a reverb throw, a delay throw, a drive pulse, a width breath or a rhythmic crush, depending only on where you point it.
Each target carries its own settings, and they live in the TARGET card itself: select the target, press EDIT and the card turns into that target's controls, press DONE when you are finished. A CHANNEL selector aims the effect at the full stereo signal, the mid, or the side, so you can filter only the centre, or crush only the stereo edges. The Reverb and Delay carry a LOW CUT that keeps the low end out of a throw.
The Reverb carries six algorithms on an ALGO menu, Classic, Room, Plate, Hall, Chamber and Spring, and the Saturation six flavours on a TYPE menu, Clean, Warm, Transistor, Console, VCA and Tape. Both menus are level matched, so moving through them changes the character and not the loudness, and the reverb crossfades between algorithms so you can sweep the menu while the music plays.
The curve can run as a free-running LFO, lock tightly to the host tempo at any note division, or be triggered from a sidechain, playing once per hit (one-shot) or restarting a loop on every hit. A drawable swing grid lets you shuffle the shape without moving the audio.
Orra Pump Pro is a separate plugin from Orra Pump, with its own licence, its own presets folder and its own sessions.
2. System Requirements
Formats
VST3, Audio Unit (AU) and AAX (Pro Tools). Listed under Modulation in your host.
macOS
10.13 or later, and macOS 11 or later on Apple Silicon. Universal 2.
Windows
VST3 and AAX, 64-bit.
Channels
Mono or stereo, input and output matched, with an optional mono or stereo sidechain input bus. On a mono instance the Mid and Side channel modes fold down gracefully.
Latency
Zero. Orra Pump Pro adds no latency and reports none to the host, so it is safe to track and monitor through in real time. The Reverb and Delay targets do report a tail length, so an offline bounce keeps their decay.
Licence
One licence key activates the plugin on the machines your purchase allows. A 14-day demo can be started from the plugin without a key. Activating in one instance unlocks every open instance within about a second, and offline bounces always render.
UI scale
75 to 200 %, and never restored larger than the display it reopens on.
3. How Drawn Modulation Works
It is worth thirty seconds on the core idea, because the rest of the plugin follows from it.
The shape you draw is a curve from left to right across one cycle, with a value between 0 (bottom) and 1 (top) at every point. A playhead sweeps across that curve, and the value under the playhead is the modulation signal. How fast the playhead moves is set by the clock, a free RATE in Hz, a tempo-locked note division, or a sidechain trigger. What the modulation does is set by the TARGET.
DEPTH scales how strongly the curve pushes the target. For the filter targets, the CUTOFF knob in the edit view sets the floor, the most-closed point, and the curve opens the filter upward from there by DEPTH; at DEPTH 0 you get a static filter parked at CUTOFF, and at full DEPTH the curve sweeps it all the way open. For Volume, the curve scales level; for Pan, it moves the signal across the stereo field. For the eight effect targets, the curve times DEPTH is the effect's wet amount, so the shape you drew is the shape of the effect fading in and out.
Two final stages shape where the effect lands. The CHANNEL selector decides which part of the stereo image is processed, and MIX blends the processed signal back against the dry. Because the groove is drawn into the shape itself, a tempo-locked Orra Pump Pro stays perfectly in time with your project with no extra setup.
Send and Insert
The Reverb and Delay both have a MODE switch, because there are two useful ways for a curve to drive a tail. In Send, the curve gates what goes into the effect and the dry always passes, so the tail keeps ringing after the curve has closed, which is the classic throw: open the curve on the last eighth of the bar and that one word or snare hit gets thrown into the reverb while everything else stays dry. In Insert, the effect is fed all the time and the curve fades its output in and out instead, so the tail is shaped by the curve rather than fired by it.
Lane targets and field targets
The CHANNEL selector applies to any target that processes one channel at a time: the four filters, Volume, Saturation, Distortion and Bitcrush. Pick Mid or Side and the signal is encoded to mid and side, the chosen component is processed on its own, and the pair is decoded back to left and right.
The targets that work on the stereo field as a whole, Reverb, Delay, Width, Chorus and Phaser, cannot be aimed at one component, so the CHANNEL selector greys out for them, exactly as it always has for Pan.
4. The Four Layers
Everything in the previous chapter describes one layer, and Orra Pump Pro has four of them. Each layer has its own curve, its own SHAPE, TARGET and CLOCK settings, its own grid and swing, and its own target controls.
The LAYERS row above the screen holds four tabs. Click a tab to edit that layer; drag a tab sideways to reorder the chain. Every layer parameter is automatable under its own name, so your host sees L1 Depth, L2 Target and so on.
ALL, in series
The layers run in the order of the tabs, so a filter layer can feed a volume layer that feeds a reverb throw. Each tab's LED is that layer's on and off switch, so a layer can be muted without losing what you drew.
SEQ, one at a time
The four tabs become the Active Layer control. Click a tab to switch to it, which is recorded as automation in touch or latch mode and picked up by the host as the last touched parameter, or Alt-click to edit a layer without switching to it.
XFADE sets the crossfade between layers, 0 to 2000 ms, and a Reverb or Delay layer's tail rings out after the switch instead of being cut off.
Follow, Keeps the edited layer on the playing one in SEQ, so what you are looking at is what you are hearing.
Ghost, Draws the other layers’ curves faintly behind the one being edited.
Copy / Paste / Clear, Move a whole layer between tabs, or blank one out.
5. Interface Tour
The header
The wordmark on the left opens the licence and info panel. In the centre, the preset group: the LAYER | SCENE switch sets the scope, < and > step through the browser’s current list, the name button opens the browser, SAVE stores the current layer or scene, and RESET blanks the layer you are editing. On the right, the UI scale menu and the circular ? tooltip toggle.
The LAYERS row
Four tabs above the screen. Click to edit, drag to reorder, and in SEQ the tabs are the Active Layer control. Each tab carries its own LED. FOLLOW, GHOST and XFADE sit alongside them.
The screen
The drawable curve for the layer being edited, with the live overlays: the playheads, the smoothed trace, the effective-output ghost and, in the trigger modes, the trigger meter. GHOST draws the other layers behind it.
The riser
SNAP, GRID, SWING, SW GRID and SW TYPE, plus the note division and the trigger source.
The cards
SHAPE holds TARGET, CHANNEL, DEPTH, SMOOTH and MIX. TARGET shows the selected target and turns into its own controls when you press EDIT. CLOCK holds the rate, division, trigger, phase and stereo offset. OUTPUT holds GAIN, AUTO and LIMIT.
The window reopens exactly as it was left: the layer, the scope switch, SNAP, the tips and the edit view are all saved with the session.
6. The Controls
Every layer carries its own set. All knobs and selectors are automatable; knobs double-click to default and double-click the value to type.
SHAPE
What the drawn curve drives. Press EDIT on the TARGET card for the selected target’s own controls, and DONE to come back.
Which part of the stereo field is processed. Applies to the lane targets: the four filters, Volume, Saturation, Distortion and Bitcrush. Greys out for Pan, Reverb, Delay, Width, Chorus and Phaser.
How strongly the curve drives the destination. At 0 % the destination is static; at 100 % the curve has full range.
Slews the modulation to round off sharp corners and prevent clicks, especially on Volume and Pan.
Dry and wet blend of the processed signal against the input.
CLOCK
With SYNC on the knob steps the note divisions, so the synced rate can be automated. With SYNC off it is the free-running rate in Hz.
Locks the cycle to the host tempo at the chosen note division.
How the playhead is driven: continuously, once per sidechain hit, or looping with a restart on each hit.
The detector level a sidechain hit has to cross to fire the curve, in the two trigger modes.
Slides both playheads along the curve together.
Offsets the right-channel playhead from the left, which is the source of the stereo movement.
The Edit View
Press EDIT on the TARGET card and the card itself turns into the selected target's own controls: a row of compact knobs above a row of selectors and switches. Press DONE, in the same corner EDIT was in, and the TARGET and CHANNEL selectors and the live readout come back, with every control left exactly where you set it.
Nothing slides over the window and nothing is dimmed out, so the shape, the curve screen and the clock stay live and reachable while you work. Switching TARGET swaps the controls without leaving the edit view, and picking Volume or Pan, which have no controls of their own, returns the card to the selectors. RESET and loading a preset do the same.
Everything in an edit view is a normal parameter: automatable, saved with the session, and stored in presets.
7. The Targets
The shape drives one target of your choice out of fourteen. Each target carries its own settings, and they live in the TARGET card itself: select the target, press EDIT and the card turns into that target's controls, press DONE when you are finished.
Filters
Low Pass, A resonant low-pass. CUTOFF sets the floor and the curve sweeps it upward by DEPTH, the classic drawn filter sweep.
High Pass, A resonant high-pass, swept the same way. Good for risers and for thinning a part on the off-beats.
Band Pass, A resonant band-pass, for wah and telephone sweeps.
Notch, A notch that travels across the spectrum, phaser-like at low resonance.
Volume and pan
Volume, The curve scales level: tremolo, sidechain-style pumping and hard rhythmic gating. No controls of its own, so EDIT greys out.
Pan, The curve moves the signal across the stereo field for auto-panning. No controls of its own, and CHANNEL greys out because a pan always repositions the whole image.
Reverb
Six reverb algorithms, whose wet amount the curve drives.
Size of the modelled space, which sets how long the tail rings on for. What counts as long depends on the algorithm, from under two seconds on Room to nearly thirty on a full-size Hall.
How fast the high end dies away in the tail, so higher is darker and shorter.
Stereo spread of the reverb tail, from mono at zero to fully wide at 100 %.
Gap between the dry sound and the start of the tail.
Which reverb engine. All six are level matched, and the reverb crossfades between them, so the menu can be swept while the music plays.
Send feeds the reverb through the curve so tails ring out after it closes. Insert fades the whole reverb in and out instead.
A slot fader in the card’s header that keeps the low end out of a throw. At 20 Hz it is fully out of circuit.
Delay
A stereo delay with its own tempo sync, independent of the curve's clock.
Locks the delay time to the host tempo at a note division. Off hands it to the TIME knob.
Note length of one repeat while the delay’s own SYNC is on, with dotted (D) and triplet (T) values. Shown in place of TIME.
Length of one repeat while the delay’s own SYNC is off. Shown in place of DIVISION.
How much of each repeat is fed back in, so higher gives more repeats before they fade.
Low-pass inside the feedback loop, so every repeat comes back darker than the one before it.
Bounces the repeats between left and right instead of leaving them where they started.
Send feeds the delay through the curve so repeats ring out after it closes. Insert fades the whole delay in and out instead.
A high-pass inside the feedback loop, so every repeat loses a little more low end than the one before it, the way a tape echo thins out.
Saturation
Six level-matched saturations: the drive changes the tone, not the volume.
How hard the signal is pushed into the shaper, level matched so only the tone changes.
Tilts the signal going into the shaper, negative for a darker drive and positive for a brighter one. It changes what gets distorted, not just what you hear.
Which curve the drive is pushed through. All six are level matched across the whole DRIVE range, so cycling the menu is an A/B of character rather than of loudness.
Every type is transparent, or close to it, at DRIVE 0, and they separate as you push. The order from brightest to gentlest at a moderate drive is Tape, Transistor, Clean and Warm together, Console, then VCA.
Clean, A symmetric soft clip: odd harmonics only, the plainest of the six and the one to reach for when you want density without a colour.
Warm, Clean with a slight asymmetry, which is what adds the low even harmonic the others do not have. It is the only type that is anti-aliased by construction, so it stays clean on bright material with no added latency.
Transistor, Harder than Clean at the same drive, with more upper odd harmonics. Good for edge on a bass or a synth line.
Console, Splits the signal into a low and a high band and drives each on its own peaks, so neither rides the other down. The gentlest harmonics of the bright types, and it reads as glue on a full mix rather than as distortion.
VCA, A soft divide with a fixed knee, so quiet material stays essentially untouched and only the loudest peaks are rounded. The most polite of the six.
Tape, The most aggressive, with a head-loss filter in front of the curve, so TONE changes what is distorted as well as what comes out. Squashes transients the hardest.
Distortion
The harder relative of Saturation, also level matched across its drive range.
Hard Clip squares the peaks off. Foldback folds them back for a rougher, more metallic sound.
How hard the signal is pushed into the clipper, level matched so only the tone changes.
Low-pass after the clipper, which tames the fizz the distortion adds up top.
Width
A mid/side width control the curve opens and closes.
Stereo width the curve opens up to, where 100 % leaves the field alone and 200 % doubles the sides. Below 100 % the curve narrows the image instead.
Bitcrush
Bit depth reduction and sample-and-hold, switched in by the curve.
Word length the signal is quantised to, so fewer bits means coarser steps and more grit.
Sample and hold factor, so 4 holds every fourth sample and drops the effective sample rate to a quarter.
Chorus
A stereo chorus with its own sweep, faded in and out by the curve.
Speed of the chorus sweep, slow for a gentle drift and fast for a wobble.
How far the chorus sweeps its delay time, which sets how obvious the detune is.
Centre delay the chorus sweeps around, short for a tight shimmer and long for a doubler.
Feeds the chorus output back in, and a negative value flips the polarity for a hollower sound.
Phaser
A notch sweep with feedback, faded in and out by the curve.
Speed of the phaser sweep, slow for a long swoosh and fast for a warble.
How far the notches travel across the spectrum on each sweep.
Frequency the notches sweep around, low for body and high for air.
Feeds the phaser output back in, which sharpens the notches into a resonant whistle.
Send or Insert
Reverb and Delay each have a MODE switch. In Send the curve gates what goes into the effect and the dry always passes, so the tail keeps ringing after the curve has closed, which is a throw. In Insert the effect is fed all the time and the curve fades its output in and out.
8. The Output Card
Gain (−24 to +12 dB), Output trim, applied after AUTO so it is a deliberate offset on top of the match.
Auto (level match), A measured, held makeup gain that brings the pumped signal back to the level of the dry one. It is taken over whole cycles of the slowest layer and re-measured when a preset or scene is loaded. The readout shows MEASURING and then the value it settled on. It holds one value; it does not ride the pump.
Limit (on / off), A zero-latency safety limiter with a fixed ceiling of −0.1 dBFS and a fast release, out of circuit while off.
The OUTPUT card is a mix position, not part of a sound. It is never changed by a scene or a layer preset, so loading a scene will not move your output level.
9. Presets & Scenes
Layer preset, One layer’s sound: its curve, SHAPE, TARGET and CLOCK settings, its grid and swing, and its target controls. Loads into the layer you are editing.
Scene, All four layers at once, plus the mode, the order and the crossfade.
The header group
The preset group sits in the middle of the header. LAYER | SCENE sets the scope. < and > step to the previous and next entry in the browser's current list, wrapping round at each end, so you can audition a whole genre without opening anything. The name button shows what is loaded and opens the browser. SAVE stores the current layer or scene as a user preset you can name, and RESET blanks the layer you are editing.
The browser
The browser opens over the whole window: categories down the left, the list in the middle, and details on the right. Click an entry to load and hear it, or walk the list with the up and down arrow keys, which audition as they go. Type in the search box to filter by name, category or description; all the words you type have to match. Escape or a click outside the plate closes it.
Categories, All, Favorites, Factory and User, then one category per genre or job: Pump, Gate, Stutter, Filter, Throw, Drive, Stereo and Follow for the classic layer shapes, and UK Garage, House, Techno, Drum And Bass, Hip Hop, Trance, Dubstep, Amapiano, Afro House, Tech House, Bassline, Trap, Future Bass, Latin, Disco, Synthwave, Dub, Dub Techno, Ambient, Cinematic, Build Ups and Club for the rest.
Favourites, Star any entry, factory or user, and it appears under Favorites. The list is kept next to your presets, so it survives an update.
Footer buttons, SAVE AS stores the current layer or scene under a new name. OVERWRITE, RENAME and DELETE act on the selected user entry and ask first; factory entries cannot be changed. REFRESH rescans the folder, and SHOW FOLDER reveals it.
Naming, SAVE AS and RENAME open a small window of their own for the name, so the space bar reaches the name box instead of starting the host’s transport.
User preset folder, ~/Library/Application Support/Orra Audio/Orra Pump Pro/Presets, with a Layers and a Scenes folder inside. A layer preset is one .orrapumppreset file and a scene one .orrapumpscene file, so you can back them up, copy them between machines or share them by hand. On Windows the folder is under AppData/Roaming.
The factory layer presets are also exposed to the host as programs, so a DAW's own preset menu and program-change automation walk the same list, loading into the selected layer.
Start from a scene, then take it apart
The fastest way into a new sound is to step through a genre's scenes on SCENE until something is close, then switch to LAYER and look at what each tab is doing. A scene already has the clock, the depth, the order and each target's controls set, which is the fiddly part. Change the target on one layer, redraw one shape, or swap a layer for a factory layer preset, and it is yours.
The factory bank
105 layer presets and 91 scenes, drawn as played phrases: neighbouring hits differ in level, a pluck sits next to a held note, off-beats are swung and single hits are pushed or laid back, and the kick's slot is usually left empty. Nothing in the bank is one cell repeated eight times. Every scene is built around one of those phrases on a Volume layer, with the other layers playing along: a side-channel chop on a different part of the bar, a slow level arc over four bars, a reverb or delay throw on the last hit, a filter flick into the bar line, drive on the accents only.
The classic single shapes: sidechain ducks, trance and stutter gates, filter sweeps and wahs, reverb and delay throws, drive pulses, width and pan moves, and sidechain-triggered follow envelopes.
Shuffled two-step chops, chord stutters, four-to-the-floor ducks with a skipping off-beat, log-drum style bass pumps and filter house builds.
Rolling sixteenth ducks, dub delay throws, gated trance chords, Jersey, footwork, breaks and electro chops.
Half-time bass wobbles, reese chops, 808 ducks, triplet hats on the side channel and supersaw swells.
Log-drum bounces, tresillo and dembow ducks, spring and tape-style throws.
Slow gated pads, breathing widths, risers and accelerating rolls into a drop.
The reference scene is Oh My (UK Garage), a chord stutter drawn by hand. If you want to know what the rest of the bank is trying to sound like, load that one first.
10. The Curve Editor
Drawing the shape
Add a point, Click anywhere on empty screen to drop a new control point.
Move a point, Drag it. The first and last points are pinned to the left and right edges and move vertically only; points in between stay ordered between their neighbours.
Bend a segment, Each segment has a small mid-handle. Drag it up or down to bow the line concave or convex: straight lines, smooth ramps, exponential curves, anything in between.
Delete a point, Double-click or right-click it. The two end points cannot be removed.
Grid, snap & swing
Faint grid lines divide the cycle into beats and subdivisions. GRID on the riser sets how many lines that is, from 4 to 64 across one pass of the curve. The powers of two give straight feels; the 6, 12, 24 and 48 entries give you a triplet grid without having to change the note division. While SYNC is on, each entry in the menu also shows what one cell is worth as a note, so you are picking a musical value rather than counting lines.
Turn on SNAP and points you add or drag lock to the nearest grid line, which makes it easy to place modulation exactly on the beat. SNAP only affects points as you place or move them: switching it on does not rearrange a shape you have already drawn.
The swing grid
SWING slides the off-beat lines off the beat, and they appear as dotted ghost lines that slide as you raise it. Snapping follows the dotted lines, so a shape you draw on the swung grid carries the groove with it.
Which lines move is set by SW GRID, and that is a separate choice from GRID. This is the useful part: set GRID to 8 and SW GRID to 16 and you draw on straight eighths while still being able to snap to swung sixteenths. When the swing grid is finer than the main grid, the extra off-beats it contributes are drawn dimmer than the main lines, so you can see the targets you are aiming at. Snapping always goes to the union of the two grids.
SW TYPE sets which way the lines move. Late is the classic shuffle with the off-beat delayed. Early moves it the same distance the other way, for a pushed feel. Gallop works in groups of four, sending the first off-beat late and the second early so each group reads long-short short-long; it needs groups of four to exist, so on a swing grid that is not a multiple of four it behaves as Late.
Whatever you set here, swing never moves the audio. It moves grid lines and snap targets, and the groove ends up baked into where your points sit, exactly as if you had placed them there by hand. It also never moves a point you have already placed: raise SWING on a finished shape and the lines move out from under your points, which is your cue to drag the off-beat ones back onto them.
Swing amounts
Pump's percentage is a straight 0 to 100 scale across the whole range. Most DAWs instead print where the off-beat sits inside its pair, which starts at 50 %. The ratio is the same number in every program, so it is the one to match by.
What one grid cell equals
One cell is the cycle divided by GRID, so the same grid count means different note values at different divisions. At GRID 16, with SYNC on:
This is worth reading the other way round when you are matching a DAW's groove. A DAW-style 1/16 swing wants a 1 Bar cycle with SW GRID 16, or a 2 Bars cycle with SW GRID 32. Either way one swing cell is a sixteenth, and the dotted lines land where your DAW's swung sixteenths land.
The live overlays
Four overlays turn the screen into a live picture of what the bottom-row controls are doing, so you can see the effect of a knob before you even hear it.
The playheads, A cyan line and dot track the live read position across your curve. Raise STEREO and a second, violet playhead splits off from it, the right channel reading the curve at an offset, which is the source of the stereo movement. PHASE slides both along together.
The smoothed trace, A cyan line showing your shape after the SMOOTH slew rounds its corners and adds a little lag, the actual modulation that comes out. The cyan playhead dot rides this line, not the drawn curve. Turn SMOOTH up and the trace visibly softens away from your gold shape; it appears only when smoothing is doing something at the current rate, since faster rates round more.
The effective-output ghost, A dashed gold line shows the value actually sent to the target once DEPTH, and for filters the CUTOFF floor, is applied. As you lower DEPTH it collapses toward the base; as you raise CUTOFF its floor lifts. It sits on your drawn shape when there is nothing to show and separates when there is.
The trigger meter, In the sidechain trigger modes, a slim meter down the left edge shows the live detector level with a gold THRESH mark across it. It brightens the instant the level crosses the mark and fires the curve, so you can set the threshold by eye.
11. Triggering & Sync
Each layer's playhead can be driven three ways, chosen with the TRIGGER selector on the CLOCK card. The first runs continuously; the other two wait for a sidechain hit.
Loop
The default. The curve loops continuously. With SYNC on, the loop is locked to the host transport: one cycle spans the chosen note division and the curve stays aligned to the bar, so it always starts in the same place relative to your project. With SYNC off, the curve free-runs at the RATE knob's Hz. The loop also runs while the transport is stopped, so you can hear and tune it without playing.
The RATE knob under SYNC
With SYNC on, the RATE knob is not idle: it steps through the same note divisions as the riser's selector, showing the division name in its value box, and the two stay in step because they are the same setting. That means you can automate the synced rate from a knob, or ride it live to halve and double the speed of a gate mid-phrase. Turn SYNC off and the knob goes back to free Hz where it left off.
One-Shot
The curve becomes a one-shot envelope. Each time the trigger source crosses THRESH, the playhead jumps to the start, plays through the shape once at the set rate, and then holds the curve's end value until the next hit. Draw a shape that rises and falls and you have a per-hit filter, volume or effect envelope, a pluck, a swell, a gated stab, fired by a kick, a snare, or the track's own transients.
Loop (Trig)
A retriggered loop. The curve loops continuously as in Loop mode, but every sidechain hit restarts it from the beginning, so the modulation re-locks to the groove on each trigger rather than to the bar. Useful when you want a free rate that still snaps back into phase with the performance.
The trigger source
In the two sidechain modes, the source selector on the riser chooses what the detector listens to.
Internal, The plugin’s own input. The curve fires from the main signal’s transients, so a drum loop can trigger its own filter envelope with no routing at all.
External (DAW), The host’s sidechain bus. Route any track to Orra Pump Pro’s sidechain input and its hits fire the curve, the classic way to key one track’s rhythm onto another.
Set the threshold while watching the trigger meter on the left of the screen: lower THRESH until the meter crosses the mark and fires reliably on the hits you want, but not on the ones you do not.
12. Tooltips & Languages
The circular ? button at the far right of the header toggles hover tooltips. With tips on, hover any knob, selector, button or the screen itself and a short line tells you what it does. Every control in the plugin has one, including all of the target edit views and the preset browser.
Right-click the ? button and a menu lets you read those tooltips in one of seven languages: English, Dutch, Japanese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German and French. The choice is saved with the session, so each project reopens in the language you set it to. It is not part of a preset, so loading a preset never changes it.
Only the tooltips translate; the control names on the faceplate stay in English, so a screenshot or a tutorial matches whatever language you are reading in.
13. Tips & Workflow
Cutoff is the floor, depth is the sweep
If the CUTOFF knob seems to do little, your DEPTH is probably high. At full depth the curve drives the filter and CUTOFF sets only the lowest point of the sweep. For a full-spectrum sweep, set CUTOFF low. To keep a bright filter that only dips a little, raise CUTOFF and lower DEPTH. Watch the dashed ghost line to see exactly where the sweep sits.
Draw the throw, do not draw the tail
For the Reverb and Delay targets in Send mode, what you are drawing is the window the sound goes into the effect through, not the shape of the tail. A short bump on the last eighth of the bar throws that one hit into the reverb and lets it ring over the bar line; drawing a long slow fall instead just feeds the effect for longer. If you want the tail itself to swell and duck, switch MODE to Insert.
Draw on the grid, then add swing
Turn on SNAP and draw your points on the beat first. It is far easier to get a tight, musical rhythm when points lock to the grid. Then dial up SWING and watch the off-beat lines slide; re-place the off-beat points on the dotted lines to give the shape a shuffle without redrawing it. If the shape is on eighths but you want a sixteenth shuffle, leave GRID at 8 and set SW GRID to 16: the dotted sixteenths appear between your existing lines and you can drag points onto them.
Bar-length divisions assume 4/4
The bar-length divisions are counted in quarter notes, not in host bars: 1 Bar is always four quarter notes, 2 Bars eight, 4 Bars sixteen. In 4/4 that is the same thing. In 3/4 or 6/8 it is not, and a bar-length cycle will slowly rotate against your bars. Pick a division that divides your bar evenly instead. A 3/4 or 6/8 bar is three quarter notes, so 1/4 gives you three cycles to the bar and stays locked, while 1 Bar is a quarter note too long and walks forward by one beat every bar.
Use Side for width, Mid for focus
The CHANNEL selector is the secret weapon on the lane targets. A low-pass on Side filters only the stereo edges, narrowing the image rhythmically; Volume on Side is a rhythmic width wobble; Bitcrush on Side leaves a clean centre with a crushed halo around it. Mid keeps the centre, vocal, kick or bass, steady while you move everything around it. On a mono track these fold down sensibly, so the same preset still works.
Tremolo and gating without a filter
Set TARGET to Volume and the curve becomes a tempo-locked tremolo. Draw smooth humps for a gentle pulse, or square steps with SNAP for a hard rhythmic gate. Add a little SMOOTH to round the edges and keep it click-free.
Stereo movement from one knob
Raise STEREO to split the left and right playheads. On a filter target this sweeps the two channels out of phase for a wide, swirling motion; on Volume it becomes a stereo tremolo; combined with a panning shape it ping-pongs. Watch the violet playhead to see how far the right channel is lagging.
Build it in ALL, perform it in SEQ
The two modes are not either/or. Stack a chop, a throw and a width move on three tabs in ALL to make one groove, then switch to SEQ, put a second groove’s layers on the tabs you are not using, and automate the active layer to move between them at the section change. With FOLLOW on, the screen follows the automation, so you can watch what is playing during the pass.
Let AUTO set the level, then leave it
Switch AUTO on while the loop is playing and give it a few bars: it needs whole cycles of the slowest layer to measure. It then holds that one value, and the GAIN knob sits on top of it. If you change the shape a lot, switch AUTO off and on again to measure afresh. Loading a preset or a scene does that for you.
14. Technical Specifications
Formats
- • VST3, Audio Unit (AU), AAX
- • macOS 10.13 or later, 11 or later on Apple Silicon
- • Windows 10 or later, 64-bit
- • Universal 2, listed under Modulation
Audio
- • Mono or stereo, input and output matched
- • Optional mono or stereo sidechain bus
- • Zero latency, none reported
- • Reverb and Delay report a tail for offline bounces
Modulation
- • Four layers, reorderable
- • ALL (series) and SEQ (one at a time)
- • XFADE 0 to 2000 ms
- • Fourteen destinations for the curve
- • GRID 4 to 64, with a separate swing grid
Presets
- • 105 factory layer presets
- • 91 factory scenes
- • 22 styles
- • Favourites, search, rename, delete
- • Exposed to the host as programs