01 · AUTO
The audio picks the harmony.
AUTO listens, finds the strongest tones and makes them the notes Spectortion targets. Drag the detection zone like an EQ band. Built for voices and synths, and for drums, full mixes and noise on purpose.
Spectral distortion plug-in · VST3 · AU
Distortion that only ever lands in tune.
Spectortion distorts only the harmonics that belong to your notes, whether you play them, click them or let it pick them out of the audio. The rest of the spectrum stays clean. Then it runs the result through again. And again.
- out-of-key distortion after 8 passes*
- 60× less
- passes on one continuous knob
- 0–16 passes
- notes it can target at once
- 16 notes
- latency in Realtime mode
- 0 samples
*Compared with ordinary distortion on the same source at the same drive. The gap keeps widening with more passes.
The problem
Every distortion adds harmonics. Most of them are in the wrong key.
Push a chord into a normal saturator and the notes start multiplying against each other. Out come sum and difference tones that belong to no key, and the next hour goes to carving them back out.
Your saturator isn’t evil. It just doesn’t know what key you’re in.
| made from | lands at | nearest note | off by |
|---|---|---|---|
| C3 − A2 | 20.8 Hz | E0 | +18 ct |
| E3 − C3 | 34.0 Hz | C♯1 | −33 ct |
| 2·C3 − A2 | 151.6 Hz | D♯3 | −44 ct |
| A2 + C3 | 240.8 Hz | B3 | −44 ct |
| C3 + E3 | 295.6 Hz | D4 | +12 ct |
| A2 + C3 + E3 | 405.6 Hz | G♯4 | −41 ct |
None of them belong to A minor. All of them arrived when you turned the knob up for “warmth”.
How it works
Keep only what belongs to the chord.
Spectortion drives the whole signal through a real waveshaper, so it reacts the way saturation should. Then it keeps the new harmonics only where they fit your notes, and sets everything else aside.
Nothing is filtered before the distortion or after it. It is sorted. That is how it goes heavy without turning to mud.
notes → a map of their harmonics
audio → distort → keep what fits
the rest → your call
repeat → up to 16 timesChoose the notes
Play MIDI, click the keyboard, press LEARN, or let AUTO pick them out of the audio.
Map their harmonics
A narrow window opens on every harmonic of every note. You decide how wide, how high and how low.
Distort everything
The full signal hits one of six waveshapers. Nothing is split or filtered first.
Keep what fits
Distortion inside the windows stays. Everything outside them is held back.
Decide on the rest
Discard it, fold it back in, snap it to the nearest harmonic, or feed it into the next pass.
Go again
The result becomes the input of the next pass.
Iterations
Then it does it again.
Each pass distorts what the last one left behind, so harmonics grow out of harmonics and the sound moves further from its source. It also gets more in key, not less: every pass narrows onto the partials that survived.
Iterations runs continuously from 0 to 16, so it automates as smoothly as Drive. The level stays put while the character changes. Focus sets how hard each pass tightens.
pass1.0/ 16
out-of-key energy vs. ordinary distortion
1.0×
60× less · pass 8
Illustration based on the measured figure: about 60× less out-of-key energy than ordinary distortion after eight passes, and still falling.
Hands on
Play the mask.
Pick notes and push the controls. Grey is what a normal saturator adds. Colour is what Spectortion keeps. Amber is the out-of-key part it holds back.
notes A2 C3 E3
kept in key —
out-of-key vs ordinary —
A simplified model running in your browser, not the plug-in. “Ordinary” runs a real tanh saturator on the chord. “Spectortion” plays only the harmonics it would keep. The plug-in does this in far finer detail, over up to 16 passes, inside your DAW.
The plug-in
One screen. Every decision exposed.
No macros hiding the interesting part. Every control has a tooltip that says exactly what it does. Shift-drag for fine moves, double-click to reset.
Analyser
Watch it work: input against output, the regions taking distortion, and a comb that shows how hard each harmonic is ringing.
Six pages, in signal order
Everything happens in the order your audio does.
02 · SPECTORTION
The engine itself.
Drive, Iterations and harmonic targeting, with Chaos, Shimmer and Pull To Key for character, all around a live analyser.
03 · FX
Eight effects. Any order.
Unison, Reverb, EQ, Phaser, Spectral Gate, Delay, Compressor and Distortion. Drag to reorder and place each before, after or across the engine. Reverb, Delay and Unison can work on the chord’s harmonics only.
04 · ARP
An arpeggiator that plays nothing.
It steps which notes get distorted, so the harmonics walk your chord while the audio keeps playing. Glide slides the whole series and lands in tune.
05 · EXPERIMENTAL
Thirteen stages and a sculptor.
Spectral mirror, partial delay, memory bloom, phase braid, an overtone mod matrix and more. The Harmonic Sculptor writes the exact series you ask for. Off by default. Handle with curiosity.
06 · SIDECHAIN
Let another track decide.
Mask Key lets a side input choose which harmonics get distorted, so a bass line can steer a pad. Or send an envelope to Drive, Iterations, Shimmer and more, keyed from a bus or from the track itself.
What’s inside
The controls other distortions don’t have.
Width · Min/Max Harm
Harmonic targeting
Decide which harmonics take the hit. Narrow windows ring and cut, wide ones feel natural. Reach up to the 128th harmonic, tilt the series, weight even against odd.
Sub Gen
Below the note
Target subharmonics down to a sixteenth of the fundamental. Sub Gen builds them when the source has none, and they hold up in mono.
Pull To Key
Pull it into key
Instead of cutting what doesn’t fit, move it onto the nearest harmonic of your chord. Noise and off-pitch material arrive in tune.
Shimmer
An octave that can’t clash
Copies every partial an octave up, in tune by design. Glassy at low settings, choral at high ones.
Chaos
Movement you can repeat
Lets the harmonic windows drift over time and frequency. Small amounts breathe, large amounts boil, and every bounce comes out the same.
Pressure · Harm Comp
Dynamics per harmonic
Each harmonic gets its own compressor, so no single overtone takes over the note. Harm Comp evens out the whole series.
EQ Mode Pre / Post
Choose where it bites
Pre decides which frequencies get driven: pull the lows down and the bass never feeds the distortion. Post shapes what comes out.
Spectral Interpolation
Blend by frequency
Pull chosen frequencies part-way back to the dry sound: clean lows, driven highs, a smooth slope between. No comb filtering, which a Mix knob can’t promise.
Up close
Built for the late session.
In the session
Six places to start.
A polite exciter at one setting, a chord-melting monster at another. Dial one of these in, then push it.
Harmonic exciter
Brightness without harshness. It adds only the harmonics the note already implies.
Drive 4 · Iterations 1.5 · Harmonic Width 35 ct · Max Harmonic 24 · Tilt −6 dB/oct
Distort the highs, spare the lows
The engine only ever sees the top two octaves. The low end stays exactly as it was.
EQ Mode Pre · 60, 160 and 400 Hz down hard · 6.3 and 14 kHz up
Bass weight without mud
Low harmonics only, tilted down and filtered on the way out. Weight you can feel, not a haze to fix.
Min Harmonic 1 · Max Harmonic 6 · Width 55 ct · Tilt −8 · EQ Post, top bands down · Master Filter 50 %
Turn noise into harmony
Feed it cymbals, rain or a room recording and play chords into it. It sings.
Master Filter 100 % · Width 45 ct · All Distort 60 % · Drive 10
Let the drums pick the chord
AUTO finds the strongest tones in a loop, inharmonic ones included, and makes them the harmony. Hits turn metallic. Lower Stability and the harmony chases the groove.
AUTO on · Mode Experimental · Peaks 3 · Stability 70 % · Hold 250 ms
The walking formant
The ARP steps the harmonics, not a synth, so nothing retriggers. The whole series slides and keeps landing on chord tones.
ARP · Glide 100 % · wide chord · Gate 100 %
Latency modes
From live stage to mastering desk.
Realtime runs at zero latency, for tracking and live sets. Hybrid, the default, is the full spectral engine. Linear Phase HQ leaves every original partial with the phase it arrived with, for mixing and mastering.
The latency Spectortion reports is exactly what it delays, in every mode, so your DAW keeps everything aligned. A few spectral stages need Hybrid or HQ.
Zero samples. We checked. Then a test checked us.
| Mode | Eco | Normal | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Realtime (zero latency) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Hybrid | 1024 | 2048 | 4096 |
| Linear Phase HQ | 2048 | 4096 | 8192 |
At 48 kHz: Hybrid 21.3 / 42.7 / 85.3 ms, Linear Phase HQ 42.7 / 85.3 / 170.7 ms. Your DAW compensates automatically, and bypass stays aligned.
18 factory presets
Walk the bank like a ramp, not a lottery.
Grouped by what they do, gentlest first, from Clean Harmonics to Full Spectrum Rage. KEEP NOTES auditions the bank against your own chord.
Init
- Init
Subtle
- Clean Harmonics
- Subtle Harmonic Warmth
- Bass Reinforce
Harmonic
- Iterative Shine
- Harmonic Glass
- Master Filter Pad
- Resonant Lattice
Heavy
- Chord Melt
- Focused Crusher
- Metallic Bloom
- Full Spectrum Rage
Spectral
- Spectral Pressure
- Top End Only
- Added Layer
FX Chain
- FX Split Room
- FX Gate Clean
- FX Ensemble Sweep
Design principles
No hidden magic.
Safe to push
Limit to 0 dB guarantees nothing leaves above 0 dBFS, however far you push it.
No loudness tricks
No hidden make-up gain. Drive 1 is clean, and Auto Gain matches levels so louder never fools you.
Random only on request
Same audio, same settings, same result. Chaos is repeatable, and RANDOMISE rolls the sound by an amount you set, with its own undo.
Same start, every play
Reset on Play clears the engine when the transport starts, so every playback begins from the same place.
Glitch-free changes
Switch quality or latency mode while audio is running. Nothing clicks.
Presets respect your session
Loading a preset never changes latency, quality, tuning or your safety settings.
Specifications
Fits the studio you already have.
- Formats
- VST3 on Windows, macOS and Linux · Audio Unit on macOS · no AAX
- Windows
- Windows 10 or later, 64-bit
- macOS
- macOS 10.13 or later, universal (Apple silicon and Intel)
- Linux
- 64-bit, VST3
- Audio
- Mono and stereo · 44.1 to 192 kHz
- MIDI & tuning
- MIDI in sets the notes · A4 from 380 to 500 Hz · Scala (.scl) tunings
- CPU
- Follows Iterations: halve the passes, roughly halve the cost
- Presets
- 18 factory presets · user presets as plain files you can share
Get Spectortion
Try all of it for 14 days.
The trial is the full plug-in: every page, every mode, every preset. When you buy, activate in the same installation and keep working.
- VST3 and AU in one licence
- Activate on up to 3 computers
- Runs offline after activation
- 18 factory presets included
Launch price coming soon
One licence. Every feature, no tiers.
Downloads open at launch. Leave your email below and you’ll hear first.
Questions
Asked, answered.
Do I need to send it MIDI?
No. Click notes on the plug-in’s keyboard, press LEARN and let it listen, or switch on AUTO and let the audio choose. MIDI is simply the most precise option.
I turned it on and nothing changed. Is it broken?
Most likely no notes are selected. Spectortion only keeps distortion that fits your notes, so with none selected it adds nothing. Pick a note, or raise All Distort to work across the whole spectrum.
Isn’t this just EQ, then distortion, then EQ?
No. Filtering before distortion changes what the distortion produces, and filtering after throws away material that has already interacted. Spectortion does neither. It sorts the distortion inside every pass, which is why more passes sound more in key, not muddier.
Does it work on drums, noise and full mixes?
Yes, deliberately. AUTO finds tones in anything, and its Experimental mode goes after the inharmonic content of drums, metal and noise. Transient Preserve keeps the attacks sharp.
Can another track decide what gets distorted?
Yes. Set Mask Key to Sidechain and the side input chooses which notes get distorted. For the envelope, choose This Track to make it react to itself with no routing, and Invert to open the effect in the gaps instead of closing it.
Can I use it live? How heavy is it?
Yes. Realtime mode runs at zero latency, and the FX chain adds none in any mode. For the lightest load, use Eco quality and fewer Iterations.
Do I need to be online?
Once, to activate. After that the licence is checked on your machine at every launch, so a session on a plane or behind a firewall is fine. It renews itself quietly in the background when it can.
Can it make my mix worse?
Gloriously. Turn Delta to 100 % and you’ll hear exactly how much, and exactly where.
Contact
Say something. In any key.
Support, press, artist collaborations, dealers, bug reports and love letters. Preset trades very welcome.