The producer-feedback round: stable note tracking, the NOTE pitch source with
Key lock and Follow bends, unsure-means-neutral fallbacks, Anvil's Enhance
mode, MAIN and ADVANCED pages, Ballast on Grid by default, and Crucible's
sure-note slice names with a song key.
Adds docs/pitch.md for the shared pitch source, updates every changed
plugin's README and changelog, the release table, the editor previews, the
website bullets, and the status in docs/ideas.md.
Producers find most plugins confusing: the note readout flickers on real
basses, and Anvil did not do what they expected. Record the causes (one
shared fast-reacting tracker behind nine plugins, wrong guesses acted on,
DSP-named controls, hidden MIDI routing), principles for the next round and
an order of work.
- Threshold, Ratio and Soft/Hard knee: each band cuts like a small compressor.
- Mark the feedback item released in docs/ideas.md and update the release table.
Tester feedback asked for a threshold and a ratio. Each band now cuts like a
small compressor: Threshold (dB above the local floor) replaces Selectivity,
Ratio scales the cut per dB above it (inf:1 is the old behaviour), and a
Soft/Hard knee switch sets the curve. A small graph shows bump height in, cut
out. Mix and Output move to the slider panel so the detection panel fits.
common-ui gains rotary_text for knobs with custom value text.
One note tracker reads the input and Lathe, Temper and Knurl follow it as
modules, in any of six orders, each on or off. Every module gets the
tracker's events delayed by the latency of the modules in front of it.
- One module alone matches its standalone plugin sample for sample in
every order.
- With Knurl's sub-octave pattern in front, Lathe in Forge follows the
played note; a standalone Lathe after Knurl reads it an octave low.
- About 72 ms latency against about 206 ms for the three in a row.
The module pages reuse the standalone editors. Register Forge in the
catalog, CI, README, docs and website, and drop the built Ballast from
the site's idea list.
Add a Tracked trait and a Lookahead harness to common-dsp. Each engine is
now its tracker plus a module that follows note events aligned with its
input, so the same module can run behind a shared tracker.
Lathe and Temper output is bit-exact against the old engines. Knurl's
interpolation now reads one newer sample inside the module, so its
latency is one sample longer; the output matches within float rounding.
Each editor exposes body() and toggles() besides show(), so another
editor can draw a module's page.
Ballast gives every part of a bassline one gain that brings it to the target
loudness, with no compression inside a part. Parts start at note starts,
detected from the audio or taken from MIDI, or on the host's beat grid, so a
patch change on the same note counts too.
- Loudness is K-weighted over each part's first 100 ms, in 10 ms blocks with
a relative gate, and every part is weighted from rest so the last part does
not ring into it.
- The audio path is delayed by the tracker's lookahead, the window and a
5 ms glide, so each gain is in place on its part's first sample.
- Learn takes the next part's loudness as the target. Amount, Range, Measure
from (leave the sub out), Gate, Output, Bypass.
- Editor shows the last 32 parts in and out, the target, and the spread of
the last 16 parts.
- Registered in the catalog, workflows, editor-check, README, chain and
development docs, and the website copy.
Quench splits the signal with a Linkwitz-Riley crossover and lets the sub
pass unclipped. The top is clipped symmetrically at the ceiling minus the
sub's held peak, so it does not pump at the sub's rate and the sum stays
under the ceiling. What the clip removes is high-passed at the split, so its
products stay out of the low band. Two correction passes and an oversampled
hard clip hold the ceiling; a safety clip catches the downsampler's ringing.
- Controls: Drive, Ceiling, Split, Hold, Soft, Bypass.
- Listen to Quench, a plain clipper at the same settings, or the delta.
- Editor meter compares how much the low band changed for Quench and for a
plain clip, with a scope of the output, the sub and the top's room.
- Measured: sub level +0.04 dB against -2.2 dB for a plain clip, low-band
products -35 dB against -16 dB, at 0.5-1.2 dB less RMS.
- Registered in the catalog, workflows, editor-check, README, chain and
development docs, and the website copy.
- Anvil 0.3.0: Ghost harmonics, Phone listen, Kick lock and the offset
audition. Anvil now has a Kick sidechain input.
- Weld 0.3.0: delay spread display.
- Braze 0.1.0: first release.
- Mark the released items in docs/ideas.md and add Braze to the release
table.
Anvil gets a sidechain input named Kick. With Kick lock on, kicks are
found on the undelayed sidechain, so with the lookahead each hit ducks
the sub (Duck, Release) when the delayed kick plays and restarts the sub
at Phase, shifted by Offset (-30 to +30 ms, also before the kick).
The Audition steps the offset from -30 to +30 ms, 4 kicks each, and
measures how kick and sub sum below 150 Hz after each hit; Keep takes the
offset heard. On a 55 Hz kick burst against a 55 Hz sub the sum peaks at
0 ms (+2.4 dB) and nearly again one period away (+/-20 ms), so the bars
check the choice by ear rather than make it.
Adds a detuned copy of the bass whose beating stays on the tempo grid on
every note. The chosen harmonic k beats once per Rate note value, and
harmonic n beats n/k times as fast, so every harmonic is on the grid.
- The copy is read from a delay line whose delay falls one period of the
tracked note per beat cycle (r = 1 + B/(k f0)) and jumps back exactly
one period, crossfaded over 6 ms. On a periodic note the jump has no
seam: the output matches the ideal sum within 0.003 on harmonics 1-4.
- The delay follows the host's beat position, shifted by the lookahead,
so beat peaks land on the grid; free-running when stopped.
- Low cut: LR4 high-pass on the copy, the bass split by the same
crossover, so the sub does not beat and keeps its level.
- Depth, Width, Phase, Gate, Output, Snap, Bypass. Pitch from audio
(about 67 ms lookahead) or MIDI.
- Editor: one bar of the beat per harmonic with the grid and a playhead.
- Catalog, workflows, editor-check, docs, signal chain and site copy.
Ghost adds the sub's harmonics 2–10 above Ghost from, so phones hear the
note. The band above the split is measured per harmonic and only missing
harmonics are filled, so added ones cannot cancel the patch's own. The sub
level does not change. Phone monitors the output in mono, 400 Hz–7 kHz.
scripts/fatness.py measures momentary bass fatness of rendered files with
the final model from Schmedeke's dissertation (section 5.4.3, adjusted R²
.773): two logistic terms on the C-weighted level and the MPEG-7 harmonic
ratio below 200 Hz, over 50 ms windows, after normalising to -23 LUFS
(BS.1770 integrated, gated).
The thesis does not state the dB(C) of its reference, so --offset maps
dBFS to dB(C) (default 100). On the seven Devath references, drops read
4-6, breakdowns near 0, and kick gaps show as 50 ms dips; SPL<200 medians
of 67-69 dB(C) suggest the offset may be 2-5 dB low.
Also corrects docs/ideas.md, which quoted the thesis's preliminary linear
model instead of the final one.
Adds a Research findings section with sourced numbers (Schmedeke fatness
model, virtual bass weighting, group-delay audibility, timbral tension,
coupled controls, layer coherence, heard timing of layered hits, loopback
FM, beat rates of detuned layers) and where each goes in the suite.
New problems 19-21, new ideas Braze, Arc and the fatness lane, additions
to Anvil, Weld, Crucible, Forge and Loupe, and a research track in the
build order. Also updates stale release notes for Patina and Planish.
Weld's allpass sections add group delay between 500 Hz and 4 kHz, where
listeners hear it best. Liski et al. (2021) measured a threshold of about
0.64 ms for a positive group-delay peak on clicks. Weld now reports how much
its delay varies over that range and, above the threshold, suggests
comparing attacks in SUM and SUM DRY.
Common fits from Weld's own tests spread 0.82-1.03 ms, so the line is a
neutral note, not a warning: sustained bass hides much more than a click.
- Fit::group_delay (analytic, per section) and Fit::smear_ms in weld-core.
- Report::smear_ms, filled by the analyzer from the applied fit.
- Tests against the numeric phase slope and the analog 4Q/w0 peak.
- Display only; the audio path does not change.
- Crucible 0.3.0: Keep takes.
- Patina 0.4.0: Tone guard and the Bass line preset.
- Planish 0.1.0 is already at its first version.
- Update the current version in every plugin guide; several still named an
older release.
Upward and downward compression in four bands whose edges are harmonic
numbers of the tracked note (default 1, 2-4, 5-16, 17 and up), so the
same setting squashes the same harmonics on every note. A fixed-band
OTT puts harmonic 2 of F1 and of C2 in different bands.
- Three Linkwitz-Riley splits at sqrt(k(k+1)) x f0 with allpass
compensation; at Depth 0 the bands sum within 0.05 dB.
- Band level is the RMS over one period of the note, so heavy settings
do not ripple at f0: a 40 Hz sine at Drive +12 dB, Time 10 % gets no
harmonics above -110 dB.
- At Depth 100 % on a saw, harmonics 1-12 change by the same amount on
F1, C2 and G2 (within 0.2 dB).
- Depth, Drive (on the detector only), Upward, Downward, Time, a gain
per band; edges Low 1-8, Mid 2-16, High 3-48 with four splits.
- Pitch from audio with about 67 ms lookahead, or from MIDI.
- Editor: harmonic ruler with draggable edges, level and gain per band.
- Catalog, workflows, editor-check, docs, signal chain and site copy.
Patina detects the played note (30-500 Hz) and remembers, over about
4 s, how high each spectral bump is at a fixed frequency and relative
to the note. Bumps that follow the note (a boosted harmonic the patch
is built on) get less cut; bumps fixed in Hz (formants, room modes)
are cut as before. On a saw line F1-F2 with harmonic 6 boosted, the
cut on that harmonic drops from 5.78 dB to 0.44 dB at 100 %, while a
fixed formant at 1.5 kHz stays at 5.78 dB. One held note is cut as
normal, since the two cases cannot be told apart.
- New parameter tone-guard (0-100 %, default 0), appended at the end;
0 % is the old behaviour and old settings load unchanged.
- New Bass line preset.
- Editor: Tone guard control, NOTE readout and a strip over the
spectrum where cuts are held back.
- No added latency, no allocation on the audio thread; patina-core now
depends on common-dsp.
With Keep takes on (default), each capture is written to
<folder>/takes/ as a WAV named by time, tempo and length, so a take
is not lost when the next capture replaces it. Files are never
overwritten: a clash gets a numbered suffix. Saving runs off the UI
thread and the status line shows the path or the error.
docs/chain.md gives the plugin order for a bass track and the bus, the
latency each plugin adds, and the measured octave error of downstream
note trackers after Knurl: from C2 up the tracker reads an octave low
about 85 % of the time, and timing jitter adds 5-25 false note starts
per second. Knurl and Anvil guides point there and recommend MIDI as
the pitch source after Knurl.
docs/ideas.md gains the production-flow audit, next steps for every
released plugin, new ideas (Forge, Planish, Quench, Scribe, Bevel,
Peen) and a build order.
The io.storyboard.* IDs were a leftover from Motif Storyboard and named
old functions (motif, sub-anchor, layer-align) instead of the products.
Every plugin now uses io.narl.bass-foundry.<product>, and IDs are frozen
from here on, even across renames.
Hosts see the new IDs as different plugins: delete the old .clap files,
rescan, and add the plugins again in existing projects. Rivet session
JSON and Patina parameter IDs are unchanged.
- Rivet 0.5.0, Patina 0.3.0; Anvil, Crucible, Lathe, Temper, Weld and
Knurl 0.2.0.
- Docs, changelogs and the release table describe the change.
- Website: upgrade note in the Install section.
Knurl follows the played note and treats every cycle of the wave on its
own: a repeating level pattern over 1-16 cycles makes subharmonics in tune
with every note, random level and timing per cycle add rattle, and a noise
burst per cycle, highpassed at a multiple of f0, adds grit. Amounts are
counted in cycles, so the texture is the same on F1 and on C2.
- Cycle clock from the shared note tracker, restarted at each note; the
audio is delayed by the lookahead plus 4.2 ms of timing-jitter headroom.
- Per-cycle randomness from a hash of the cycle number: Same every note
or Free.
- Patterns Off, Double, Triple, Fry (default), Gallop, Stutter or drawn;
grit switchable per step. Pattern persisted as knurl-pattern.
- Editor: last eight cycles overlaid, pattern bars with the playing step.
- Tests match the prototype: Double gives f0/2 at -8.19 dB, Triple f0/3
at -10.68 dB, equal on F1 and C2, no added clicks, bit-exact when off,
no allocation on the audio thread.
Weld hears the other bass layer through the sidechain and fits polarity
plus up to four RBJ allpass sections to the measured cross-spectrum, so
the layers sum instead of cancelling. No latency; the layer on its own
keeps its sound.
- Worker thread: Welch cross-spectrum and coherence, Nelder-Mead fit with
1/f weighting, a per-band loss penalty and model selection by share of
the achievable gain; GCC-PHAT lag detection flags a late layer.
- Audio thread: allocation-free chain with a 40 ms warm-up and 40 ms
crossfade per new fit; mono blocks go to the worker through a lock-free
queue.
- Follow / Learn / Hold; the fit is persisted and restored without a
crossfade.
- Editor: per-band loss and recovery against a perfect alignment, phase
before and after, recovered dB, time offset and status.
- Tests for flat magnitude, crossfade, fit targets, Follow hysteresis,
Learn, silence, realtime allocation and the persisted fit in the host.
Set the CLAP vendor of all seven plugins to "Bass Foundry" and name the
combined preview ZIP bass-foundry-windows-x86_64.zip. CLAP IDs and saved
state stay unchanged.
Bring development.md and releases.md up to date with all seven products,
the shared crates, the test types, the steps to add a product and the
published releases. Add texture problems and seven texture plugin ideas
to ideas.md.
Weld will phase-align a bass layer to another layer it hears through the
sidechain. This first build only checks that FL Studio delivers the
sidechain to a CLAP aux port: it passes the main layer through unchanged,
meters the sidechain and offers Layer/Sum/Sum dry listening. No latency.
Lathe places EQ bands on harmonics 1-32 of the played note, so a cut on
harmonic 3 stays on harmonic 3 on every note. Temper normalises each
note's level before an oversampled shaper and tunes its floor, push and
bright filters to the note, so every note distorts the same.
The note tracker moves from Anvil into common-dsp, together with a
state-variable filter, 4x oversampler and harmonic meter. Anvil's
behaviour and editor render are unchanged.
docs/ideas.md collects all plugin ideas and their status.
Two new CLAP effects aimed at riddim and dubstep production, plus shared
crates so all four plugins keep one look and reuse DSP.
Anvil 0.1.0 (io.storyboard.sub-anchor):
- Replaces the band below Split with a clean mono sine. Every note gets
the same peak level and restarts at the same phase, so switch-ups keep
their weight and kick hits line up.
- Pitch and note starts come from the audio (YIN, 80 ms lookahead
reported to the host) or from MIDI notes sent to the effect.
- Dynamics, Drive, Octave, Glide, Phase, Gate and Keep; Solo sub monitor,
note readout, level meters and a low-band oscilloscope.
Crucible 0.1.0 (io.storyboard.resampler):
- Records its input continuously in a lock-free ring with host transport
markers. Capture takes the newest 1-16 complete bars on the bar grid,
following tempo changes, or the newest audio when stopped.
- Grid (straight and triplet) or transient slicing, manual cuts, slice
audition without audio-thread allocation.
- Export writes the loop, trimmed, declicked and normalised slices named
and tagged with their root note, and an optional 2048-sample wavetable
for Serum and Vital.
Shared:
- common-ui holds the palette, fonts, knobs and panels taken from Patina;
Patina renders identically. Rotary knobs at their minimum no longer
tessellate a zero-length arc into NaN vertices.
- common-dsp holds biquads, a Linkwitz-Riley crossover, YIN, note helpers
and a float WAV writer with sampler root and Serum frame chunks.
- Catalog, CI matrix, release tags, editor previews and docs cover both
plugins; a script test keeps the catalog and workflows in step.
Rivet 0.4.0 tells a motif as a story. A timeline of blocks with roles
(statement, answer, departure, return, rest) replaces tasks, pins and
branches. Rivet writes each block from a motif and joins the seams with
a cut, breath, pickup or approach.
- Motifs of 1-8 bars in a bin of 16; storyboards up to 32 bars.
- Meters 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/8 and 12/8 for import, writing,
audition and export. Phrygian, harmonic minor and Mixolydian scales.
- Per-block options, Another take and Keep; templates for new boards.
- Editor rebuilt: motif bin, timeline, large piano roll, inspector,
tabs for generation, harmony and sound roles, 32-step undo/redo.
- Sessions from 0.1-0.3 open as a storyboard from their source motif.
Every Rust job restores the stable toolchain, Cargo registry and its own
target directories from the runner cache. Keys combine the ISO week and
all Cargo.lock files, so dependencies are reused across pushes while
stale build output and old toolchains expire weekly. Release jobs keep
separate entries per plugin.
Patina 0.2.0. The old detector compared raw FFT bins with a one-octave
dB mean, so every harmonic of a tonal sound looked like a resonance and
real harsh bumps were barely touched. The new detector:
- averages power over each log band and smooths it over time
- joins harmonic tops into an envelope, smoothed by Sharpness
- compares it with a robust, tilt-aware local line fit that ignores
empty regions and cannot be lifted by the bump itself
Six overlapping controls become Depth, Sharpness and Selectivity; focus
points now read "up cuts more, down protects". The analysis window is
halved to 2048 samples (about 43 ms delay). Behaviour tests cover plain
harmonic tones, resonant bumps, narrow rings, level independence,
flicker on noise and high sample rates.
Both editors get a dark metallic look with #FF0160 as the single
accent colour; screenshots and docs are updated. Projects saved with
Patina 0.1 load the new controls at their defaults.
nvrl