DreamDeep · Free multi-effect
DriftDream
DriftDream is a multi-effect drift processor. It chains a delay, a granular engine, five reverbs and a resonant filter in any order you like. Two audio-rate LFOs and an envelope follower can move almost every control while a 3D galaxy drawn from your sound flies past as you play. It can add a touch of space to a vocal or turn a single note into a vast, evolving soundscape. It is free to everyone on the DreamDeep list.
The chain
Engines that feed each other
In most effect chains every processor works on its own. DriftDream's four engines are built to feed each other. Delay echoes can be broken into grains. Grain clouds can be washed through a cavernous reverb. The filter can sculpt everything that comes out. Click the arrows at the top of any engine to move it along the chain and the same settings become a completely different sound.
Every engine has its own on switch, its own Level control for the signal going in and its own Mix control for the balance of dry and processed sound. Any stage can be blended in gently or taken out altogether.
Delay then reverb
Every echo gets a reverb tail of its own. The result is clean, spacious and classic.
Reverb then delay
The whole reverb wash is echoed as one, building into something dense and dramatic.
Granular then delay
The delay catches the grains and repeats them, turning a simple part into stuttering, complex rhythms.
Filter then reverb
The filter shapes the sound before it reaches the reverb for a focused, tonal space. Put a sweeping filter first and the sweep swirls through every tail.
The engines
Delay, granular and filter
Each engine is a serious processor in its own right, with far more depth than its size suggests. Hover over any control and a tooltip explains what it does.
Delay
A stereo delay with one to four taps and times from 0.1 milliseconds to five seconds. The taps are spaced at prime-numbered intervals so the echo patterns never settle into a repeating cycle. Press SYNC to lock the delay to your DAW's tempo, from 1/32 triplets up to five bars. Press STRAIGHT as well and the taps fall on even halves, triplets or quarters for precise rhythmic echoes. Smear blurs the repeats into a wash, Sparkle lifts every echo with presence and air and at the very shortest times the delay becomes a pitched, metallic resonator.
Granular
The Granular engine breaks your sound into tiny grains and rebuilds it, anywhere from subtle doubling to complete disintegration. Choose small, medium or large grains, shift them up to two octaves either way and use Spray and Density to go from a few scattered fragments to a thick, glowing cloud. OCTAVES and FIFTHS pitch half of the grains by musical intervals for a shimmering, harmonically rich texture. STRAIGHT locks the grains to the beat, from one a bar to sixteen.
VCF
A resonant filter with low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and comb modes at 6, 12 or 24 dB per octave. The 24 dB slope is a circuit simulation of a classic transistor ladder, run at twice the sample rate with the warm saturation of the original. Turn the resonance up and the filter sings, self-oscillating into a clean tone that follows the cutoff. The filter also has an LFO of its own that can sweep the cutoff while both main LFOs are busy elsewhere.
Sup|Com
The delay and granular engines each have a Sup|Com control. Turn it one way to compress the engine's output and keep the repeats even. Turn it the other way to duck the output against the incoming sound and let the echoes fall away naturally.
Five reverbs
From deep space to a black hole
The Reverb engine holds five completely different algorithms. Each has its own controls and its own character and you switch between them with the five buttons at the top of the panel.
BLKHLE
A cavernous reverb that can sustain for ever. Its tone controls sit inside the feedback loop so every pass makes the tail a little brighter or darker. Freeze holds the tail indefinitely, Reverse plays it backwards and Gravity shapes how it builds, from a slow bloom to an instant wall of sound or a hollow, backwards texture. It is made for vast, otherworldly spaces and endless drones.
SUPMAV
A dense, lush reverb with six network characters: Gemini, Hydra, Sagittarius, Aquarius, Pleiades and Sirius. Warp morphs it from a clean echo into a thick, smeared reverb. Density decides how strongly its eight delay lines interact. It is rich, wide and endlessly variable.
NGHTSK
A shimmer reverb. Each pass around its loop lifts the sound an octave and crystalline overtones stack up into shimmering clouds that spiral upwards. Texture runs from sparse and grainy to smooth and enveloping. It is perfect for ethereal pads and ambient swells.
ADPTVB
An adaptive, spectral reverb. Instead of delay lines it analyses the frequencies in your sound and rebuilds them as a reverb whose tail follows the harmony of what you play. Simplify, Richness, Contour and Air shape the result and EXCITE adds warm harmonics that melt into the tail. The tails are uniquely smooth and almost synthetic.
INSANE
A reverb deliberately designed to be unstable. It builds massive walls of sound that grow and transform over time, with Shimmer stacking pitched towers an octave and a twelfth above. Its bass and treble controls work inside the feedback loop so the tail can thunder or glitter more with every pass.
Growth
Growth belongs to the Insane reverb and nothing else sounds like it. Stop playing and the reverb swells back up to fill the silence, holds at its peak and then recedes, with a boost of up to sixteen times. Route a kick drum to the sidechain and the reverb surges on every beat. A display in the galaxy shows each stage as it happens so you can time your next chord.
Modulation
Everything moves
Two LFOs, an envelope follower and the Growth envelope can each be assigned to almost any knob in the plugin with two clicks. Click an assign pad, click a knob and a coloured bar appears beside it. Drag the bar to set the depth. A ghost pointer on each knob shows exactly where the modulation is pushing it.
Two LFOs
Each LFO has sine, saw, square and sample and hold shapes and runs freely or locked to your DAW's tempo. It can push a control up, swing it both ways or pull it down. Smooth makes the LFO glide between values and turns stepped randomness into flowing, organic movement.
Audio-rate modulation
Press AUDIO and an LFO runs at up to 5 kHz. On an engine's Level it becomes tremolo or ring modulation. On the filter cutoff it becomes filter FM. On the other LFO's rate it becomes FM synthesis. The two LFOs can even form a two-operator FM synthesiser that drives ring modulation, all inside an effect.
Envelope follower
The envelope follower tracks how loud the input is, with Sens, Attack, Release and Gate controls. Assign it to the filter cutoff for an instant auto-wah. Press SC and it listens to the sidechain instead. A kick drum on another track can then duck the reverb or open the filter on every beat.
Modulate the modulators
The LFOs can modulate each other's rate and the envelope follower's own controls. The Growth envelope can push any control up or pull it down as the reverb blooms, opening the filter or feeding the delay harder as the space swells. Stack sources on one knob and they add together.
Around the chain
Colour, width and movement
A phaser, a chorus and an auto-pan sit outside the four engines. Each can go before the chain or after it. Put a sweeping phaser or chorus first and the movement washes through every echo and reverb tail.
Phaser
A stereo phaser with 4, 8 or 12 stages, modelled on the sweep of classic light-dependent phasers that rise faster than they fall. Feedback takes it from a gentle swoosh to metallic self-oscillation. Stereo sends the notches sweeping differently in each ear.
Chorus, WIDE and HYPER
A chorus of two to four voices in the warm tradition of classic bucket-brigade hardware. WIDE pushes the stereo image beyond the speakers yet stays fully mono-compatible. HYPER builds a moving three-dimensional field that seems to reach above and behind your head, especially on headphones. Both work even with the chorus mix at zero.
Pan, Drive and Tone
The auto-pan sweeps the sound from side to side, freely or in time with your track. Drive adds warmth in three places: before, between and after the engines. Tone tilts the whole sound brighter or darker.
Safe to push
A transparent two-stage limiter guards the output when engines feed each other hard and three LEDs show when it is working. The ERASE, REC and CLR footswitches clear the buffers or capture audio for the delay and granular engines. The buffers also clear themselves when your DAW starts or stops.
The galaxy visualiser
Fly through your sound
The top of the window is a real 3D galaxy drawn from your audio as it plays. Delay taps orbit as glowing stars that pulse with every echo. Reverb energy rolls towards you as nebulae that swallow the view and dissolve behind you. Grains launch as comets trailing light.
The louder you play the faster you fly. In silence the camera slows to a gentle drift. The phaser draws a solar system of rings, the chorus fills the space with orbiting motes of light and a rainbow ribbon traces the output waveform.
Displays in the corners show the filter's response, the LFOs, the envelope follower and the Growth envelope as they move. Double-click and the galaxy fills the whole screen, with arrows to step through presets without leaving it. Press MINI to hide it and keep only the engines on screen.
Presets
Mix, match and mutate
DriftDream comes with factory presets that range from ambient soundscapes to rhythmic textures and experimental effects. The fun really starts when you take them apart.
Engine presets
Every engine has its own preset menu. Load the delay from one preset and the reverb from another while everything else stays exactly as it is.
Mutate and Mutate+
Mutate picks new settings for every engine that is switched on in a single click. Mutate+ also shuffles the order of the chain and often lands on sounds you would never have found on purpose.
Find it fast
The browser sorts presets into Soundscapes, Rhythmic, Melodic, Other and your Favourites and can show only the presets that use the engines you choose. Presets are small files you can share with other DriftDream users.
Get it free
DriftDream is free to everyone on the DreamDeep list. Join now and the download appears straight away. We also email you the link, along with news of new instruments, updates and releases.
DriftDream runs as an AU or VST3 plugin on the Mac and as a VST3 plugin on Windows. It works in any compatible DAW and follows your DAW's tempo. There is a free installer for each.