News, updates, and behind-the-scenes insights from UB DSP.
November 4, 2026
Your track meter is in the red, nothing clips, and the forum says floating point makes it harmless. It does, for the number. A saturator has a curve, and the level you feed it decides where on that curve you stand. What a trim really moves, and a two minute test to hear it.
Read article →October 28, 2026
You drive the 808 and it seems to hit harder. At the same peak the fundamental barely moves. What saturation adds is harmonics a phone speaker can play, and your ear rebuilds the note from them. What that costs on a big system, and how to do it without losing the sub.
Read article →October 21, 2026
You turn up the resonance and the low end thins out. Three different things cause that, and only one of them takes the bass out of the signal. On a ladder, the number that makes the filter sing is the number that takes your bass, measured on a real one, with a test and a fix for each cause.
Read article →October 14, 2026
You saturate the drum bus, the kick and snare sound great, and the sticks on the overheads go blunt. A saturation curve has no attack time: on a bus, the kick sets the gain for everything riding on it. What that costs your cymbals, in numbers, and the fixes.
Read article →October 7, 2026
A short filter envelope on a bass note and the note goes flat for a moment. Your synth is not drifting: a moving cutoff changes the delay the note goes through, and a changing delay is a pitch shift. How far it goes by register, slope and speed, and the fixes that do not just move the problem.
Read article →October 6, 2026
You pull a cutoff down, the loop starts to breathe, and a few seconds later it's just the same filter, darker. My third plugin is built to keep that moment going: twelve filters inspired by classic circuits, any three on the corners of a triangle, and one dot that moves the sound between them while the part plays.
Read article →September 30, 2026
Put a saturator across a drum bus and the kick causes both problems. Up top it multiplies itself into the hats, and the new frequencies belong to no note. Down low it piles its own harmonics onto the snare body and the bass. Why a symmetrical clipper does not save you, and the one decision that fixes both.
Read article →September 23, 2026
The second harmonic is an octave, the third a fifth, the fifth a major third, and the seventh sits 31 cents off anything in your key. What each one adds to a sound, why the symmetry of the curve decides which ones you get, and why none of it survives a chord.
Read article →September 16, 2026
Vocoder intelligibility is not a band count problem. Consonants do not survive being measured in bands, a slow release is a lowpass sitting on the modulation rates that carry speech, and a carrier with holes leaves bands silent. The three real levers, in order, and the one trick that works on any vocoder ever made.
Read article →September 9, 2026
Pitch shift moves the note. Formant shift moves the apparent size of the singer. Vowel morph moves the vowel itself. Three operations everyone calls the same thing, what each one can and cannot do, and why EQ is the right tool for a small move once you use it as two moves instead of one.
Read article →September 2, 2026
Formants do not follow the note you play. That one fact is the difference between a synth that sounds like a voice and a keytracked resonant lead, which are both worth making. The source-filter model explained for producers, with the formant tables and five things that make a patch speak.
Read article →August 26, 2026
An effect plugin ignores your keyboard by default, and every DAW solves it differently. The three shapes that routing takes, the Logic rule nobody explains, and what you get once the notes actually arrive.
Read article →May 26, 2026
Vowel Blender is a formant filter plugin built around a 2D phonetic pad on the IPA vowel chart. Seven voice models from Peterson & Barney and Hillenbrand research, ten vowels with four formants each, a motion recorder that loops in tempo, and nine modulators you can route anywhere.
Read article →March 13, 2026
Version 1.1 introduces frequency crossovers, per-band effect intensity, L/R stereo mode, and deep control over where and how saturation shapes your sound. A free update for all owners.
Read article →February 14, 2026
After months of development, testing, and meticulous tuning, Grit Blender is here. Twelve saturation types, three blend modes, dual-stage processing, and a design philosophy that puts the musician first. Here is the story behind our debut plugin and what makes it different.
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