Downloads

v1.3.1 September 24, 2026

• KEY TRACK works on its own. It used to move the crossover only when LOW CROSSOVER was also switched on in the ADV panel. Now turn KEY TRACK on, send MIDI to Grit Blender, and the crossover follows the notes you play.
• Cleaner fundamental. The crossover now sits half an octave above the played note: most of the fundamental stays out of the saturation, and what sits above it takes the grit. Between notes, it holds the last note instead of jumping back.
• KEY TRACK or LOW CROSSOVER. The two now work one at a time. With LOW CROSSOVER on, KEY TRACK is greyed out. A session that had both on opens with LOW CROSSOVER in charge: switch it off to get tracking back.
• License check. If Grit Blender asks for your license after the update, load your .ubkeyfile once more.

v1.3.0 May 13, 2026

• Mono track support — Grit Blender can now be inserted on mono tracks in Logic Pro and Pro Tools (Bitwig and Reaper already supported it). Pro Tools shows two separate entries in the insert list: Grit Blender (mono) and Grit Blender (stereo).
• Stereo controls auto-disabled in mono — The M/S button (bottom bar) and the M/S / L/R buttons (Advanced panel) are dimmed and non-clickable when running on a mono track. No effect on stereo behaviour.

v1.2.0 April 10, 2026

• AAX format — Grit Blender is now available as an AAX plugin for Pro Tools on macOS and Windows.

v1.1.1 March 31, 2026

• DC Block fix — Raised the DC block cutoff to a fixed 30 Hz on both saturation and analog stages. Eliminates sub-sonic energy that could cause panning shifts or interfere with downstream EQs.
• Preset dropdown — Popup menu width capped to 300px. No longer stretches across the full window on large/4K displays.
• Large mode polish — Blender panel and knobs are now capped in Large mode for better proportions.
• Hide blender panel — New “Show blender panel” toggle in the About dialog lets you hide the blender column and reclaim horizontal space.

v1.1.0 March 13, 2026

• Advanced Panel — New overlay (ADV button) with frequency crossovers, effect intensity knobs, oversampling selector, stereo mode switch, and built-in help tooltips.
• Frequency crossovers — Configurable low and high crossover frequencies (40 Hz – 16 kHz) to define the saturation band. Independent crossover handles per channel in stereo mode.
• Effect intensity — PUNCH, SMOOTH, and ANALOG each have an intensity knob (0% – 200%) for fine-grained control.
• L/R stereo mode — New alternative to M/S: process left and right channels independently with separate saturation types and drive amounts.
• Oversampling moved — The oversampling selector (2x/4x/8x) is now in the Advanced Panel, freeing up the bottom bar.

Read the full announcement: Grit Blender 1.1: The Advanced Panel

v1.0.10 March 10, 2026

• Improved Loudness Match — No longer sounds quieter than the dry signal. Uses asymmetric K-weighting that accounts for the harmonics saturation adds, so the volume comparison between clean and saturated is now more accurate.

v1.0.9 March 10, 2026

• Universal Binary (macOS) — The macOS installer now includes both Intel and Apple Silicon builds. Intel Macs are fully supported again.
• Resize safety — The saved window size is now clamped to screen dimensions when reopening the plugin, preventing the resize handle from going off-screen on smaller displays.

v1.0.8 March 8, 2026

• Plugin renamed to “Grit Blender” — The plugin now appears as “Grit Blender” in DAW plugin lists (previously “UB DSP Grit Blender”). Easier to find when browsing large plugin collections. Existing projects are unaffected. A one-time rescan in your DAW may be required.
• VU meter colour zones — The input/output VU meters now use distinct hard-boundary colour zones: green (nominal), amber (caution), orange (hot), and red (clip). Replaces the previous smooth gradient for clearer at-a-glance signal reading.

v1.0.7 March 5, 2026

• Logic Pro AU view fix — Fixed an issue where the plugin GUI would not display in Logic Pro on macOS Tahoe, showing only the generic plugin name instead of the full interface. The plugin audio was unaffected.

v1.0.6 February 28, 2026

• 8x oversampling fix — Switching to 8x oversampling no longer causes the signal to decay to silence. The issue was caused by a timing conflict during the internal filter reconfiguration.
• Saturation labels on small sizes — Saturation type labels no longer overlap or get clipped when the plugin window is resized to a narrow width.

v1.0.5 February 25, 2026

• 5 tone curve types — The TONE knob now offers five distinct EQ shapes: Default (tilt), Warm (low shelf), Air (high shelf), Smile (co-shelf), and Presence (bell). Click the TONE label to switch. Each type completely changes how the knob shapes your sound.
• Shift + drag for fine-tuning — Hold Shift while dragging any knob or the triangle blend cursor for ~10× finer precision. Great for dialing in exact values.
• Scroll wheel support — Use the mouse scroll wheel on any knob for quick adjustments.
• Dynamic help text — The contextual help bubble now updates to describe the active tone curve type, including endpoint labels and usage tips.
• Rounded popup menus — Popup menus (tone curve selector, combo boxes) now use rounded corners matching the plugin’s design.
• Updated factory presets — All 39 factory presets now include an appropriate tone curve type assignment.

v1.0.4 February 24, 2026

• Optional anonymous telemetry — On first launch, a small popup asks if you’d like to help improve the plugin by sending a tiny anonymous usage report. You can accept, decline, or change your mind anytime in the About dialog. No personal data is ever collected.
• Diagnostic tool link — The About dialog now includes a “Plugin not working? Run diagnostic” link that opens the new UB DSP Diagnostic Tool page. The diagnostic tool checks your system, scans for installed plugins, and can send a report to support.
• About dialog improvements — The Settings section now shows three toggles: update checker, anonymous telemetry, and blender animation.

v1.0.3 February 22, 2026

• Update checker — The plugin now checks for new versions on launch and shows a dismissable banner when an update is available.
• Blender animation toggle — Disable the animated blender in the About dialog to save CPU.
• Smoother PUNCH transients — Transient preservation now fades more naturally on sustained signals.
• Tube & Pentode breathing — Tube and Pentode saturation types now have a subtle power supply sag effect for more analog-like character.
• Better loudness matching — Improved perceptual loudness comparison when using LOUDNESS MATCH.
• Fixed: Freeze during CLAP offline render in Bitwig
• Fixed: DPI scaling on Windows/Linux popup menus
• Fixed: Saturation type fonts on Windows/Linux
• Various stability and cross-platform improvements.

v1.4.1 November 1, 2026

• Play it from a controller. In Bitwig, Vowel Blender sits on the eight knobs of any controller, in four pages: Vowel, Character, Output and Perform.
• Prev Preset, Next Preset, Prev Vowel, Next Vowel and Motion Play are parameters, so a controller can reach them: in Bitwig, and in Live with Push. Prev and Next Vowel put the dot on the vowel before or after the nearest one, in the order of the vowel row. They work with the window closed, and nothing records them.
• The preset browser follows. A preset loaded from the host’s browser or from a controller shows its name, and the arrows step on from it. Reopening the window shows the last preset you loaded instead of “Init”. The motion transport shows PLAY when a controller started it.
• One Bypass. The VST3 and AAX versions showed two Bypass parameters. The host’s bypass button now works the plugin’s own. Automation written on the old host bypass has to be redone.
• The crossover in Hz. Crossover Freq reads “100 Hz” in an automation lane or on a controller screen, instead of “100.0”.
• Fixed: loading a preset with the window closed, from Bitwig’s preset browser, could crash the host. A host scanning its plugins could crash during Vowel Blender’s licence check. Reopening a session now gives the host back exactly the values it saved, and a Next Preset or Next Vowel press just before can no longer change what you reopened.

v1.4.0 October 1, 2026

• Fire the Envelope Generator from MIDI. An AUDIO / MIDI button in the card header. In MIDI mode every note restarts the attack, legato included, and the gate stays open while you hold the key, so a sung or played line gets one envelope per note even when it never goes quiet.
• Envelope followers that follow the level. A held note now keeps the follower up instead of letting it drop after the attack. Peak, RMS and Transient do what their names say: Transient fires on each hit, then lets go. The five factory presets with a follower (Ad-Lib Color, Percussion Vowelize, Talkbox, Talking Bass, Talking Synth) are retuned for it and sound different.
• The Envelope Generator holds a note. On a held note its gate used to close after about 50 ms and stay shut. It now stays open while the note sounds.
• A one-time licence check, explained. This version checks your licence against your keyfile again. If the keyfile has moved or been deleted since you activated, the plugin goes back to trial mode and says so once per session, with an Activate button to load it. If your keyfile is still where you loaded it from, you see nothing.
• Clearer modulation cards. The Envelope Follower and Envelope Generator traces show the last two seconds and scroll smoothly, and their time fields show the unit.
• Fixes. Switching presets with a Step Seq or MSEG card open could crash the plugin. MIDI notes landed at the start of each audio block instead of where you played them. With the look-ahead on and the limiter off, your DAW compensated 1.5 ms that were not there. On Windows, User Manual opened the website instead of the installed PDF.

v1.3.1 September 20, 2026

• Switching presets no longer stops the sound. Leaving a preset that transposes — Octave Doubler, Sub Voice, Riser Vowel — for one that does not could silence the track for several seconds before it came back. Every time the pitch shifter went on or off the plugin handed the host a new latency figure, and that makes a DAW rebuild its audio graph. Once the pitch shifter has been used, the figure now stays put for the rest of the session. A session that never transposes still reports no latency at all.
• A preset arriving no longer leaves modulation behind. A preset loaded while the host had the plugin suspended could leave the engine playing one modulation graph while the panel showed another. Nothing is dropped now: whatever cannot be delivered straight away is replayed until it lands.
• Adding a modulator leaves the others alone. An LFO in the middle of a slow cycle used to jump back to the start because a second modulator had been added somewhere else.
• Re-touching a mapped knob keeps its amount. In ARM mode, reaching for a modulation ring you had already dialled in set it back to zero under your hand. It picks up from where it was.
• Fixes. A modulator dropped into a slot that had just been cleared could inherit the previous one’s destinations. Envelope times were read as seconds rather than milliseconds in presets that left them out, which made for a one-millisecond attack and an audible click. A Sample & Hold drew twice as many steps as it was running. A fast LFO trace froze instead of moving — it now runs in readable slow motion, with the real rate shown above it. And a recorded motion path could interrupt the audio when a preset replaced it.

v1.3.0 September 9, 2026

• Notch mode. A BOOST/NOTCH toggle in the bottom bar flips the formant filter between imposing the vowel you point at and carving it out of the sound. Point at the boxy or nasal resonance and it gets scooped from the signal. Q sets the width of the cut, MIX sets its depth, and the response curve flips from peaks to dips so you can see exactly what is being removed. Three presets come with it: De-Nasal, Anti-Honk and Carve Vowel.
• Size is its own control now. It used to do the same thing as Shift, moving all four formants by the same amount. It now reshapes the voice instead: F1 stays where it is while the formants above it pack in below 1.0 and spread apart above it, so the register holds while the character changes underneath. Seven factory presets that use a non-neutral Size sound different as a result.
• Un-mapping without hunting. Right-click any modulated knob, anywhere in the interface, to list its modulation routes and remove them, without opening the modulation panel.
• Finer LFO rate. The slow end of the range is reachable instead of crammed into a few pixels of drag, and the field shows three decimals below 1 Hz.
• Fixes. A rare case where the plugin could fall silent until you toggled the limiter. The modulation arc drawing at the wrong end of a knob when the amount ran past a stop. Presets carrying a recorded motion showing as edited the moment they loaded.

v1.2.0 June 10, 2026

• Aftertouch and Mod Wheel modulation. The MIDI modulator now carries four sources at once (Keytrack, Velocity, Aftertouch, Mod Wheel), each with its own response curve, sensitivity and smoothing in a new ADV panel. Lean into a held key and the vowel shifts under your finger.
• Input and Output gain. Trim the level going into the effect and set it on the way out, straight from the plugin.
• Cleaner limiter. The output limiter was reworked for a more transparent catch with a higher ceiling and no added harshness on loud, bright material. An optional look-ahead (in About) catches fast transients, and a small light on the limiter button shows how hard it is working.

v1.1.1 June 6, 2026

• Cleaner crash diagnostics. Old crash markers no longer pile up, so the Diagnostic Tool only flags issues that are actually current. The plugin also keeps a fuller session log, which makes support requests quicker to resolve.

v1.1.0 June 4, 2026

• SLOPE control. New Soft / Classic / Sharp control in the Character popup: choose how steeply each formant is carved, from a natural, gentle colour with more of the source coming through, to a focused, vocoder-leaning character. Automatable, click-free, and existing presets are unchanged.

v1.0.1 June 3, 2026

• Mix-lock padlock — A small lock icon next to the MIX knob. Click it to keep your current dry/wet when you audition presets — any modulation route the preset would assign to Mix is silently stripped as well. Made for testing factory presets on a real mix without your balance jumping around.
• CLAP preset browser support — Factory presets now load correctly from your DAW’s native preset browser (Bitwig, REAPER, and any CLAP host with built-in browsing). Full state restore including modulation graph and motion path.
• First-launch consent prompt — Anonymous telemetry now asks once at first open with a clear opt-in dialog, instead of staying hidden inside the About panel.
• Misc fixes around preset load reliability under CLAP hosts.

v1.1.1 November 1, 2026

• LushJup8 really keeps its low end now. Version 1.1.0 said it did, and it was true inside the filter only: the plugin’s level compensation took the bass back at the output. Turn the resonance up now and the bass stays where you hear it, and LushJup8 sings as loud as the other models again. In HP and BP it goes back to the plain ladder. A session or a user preset saved with an earlier version keeps the sound it was made with.
• Presets. The factory presets that use LushJup8 are rebuilt on the new sound, with their output level set again.
• Play it from a controller. In Bitwig, Filter Blender sits on the eight knobs of any controller, in ten pages. The first one plays the three corner levels.
• Level A ±, Level B ±, Level C ±. Three new parameters push one corner of the triangle without moving the dot. The ghost dot shows where the sound is, and the LEVEL knobs draw an arc to the level you hear, whether it comes from these or from modulation.
• Prev Preset, Next Preset and Motion Play are parameters, so a controller can reach them: in Bitwig, and in Live with Push. They work with the window closed, and nothing records them.
• Values with their units. Automation lanes and controller screens show “1.00 kHz”, “50.0 %” or “-6.0 dB”, and selectors show their names: “LushJup8”, not “5”. A value you type into the host lands where it says. Corner parameters are named “Cutoff A”, “Resonance B” instead of “Cutoff 0”, “Resonance 1”; your automation still works.
• One Bypass. The VST3 and AAX versions showed two Bypass parameters. The host’s bypass button now works the plugin’s own. Automation written on the old host bypass has to be redone.
• Fixed: loading a preset with the window closed, from Bitwig’s preset browser, could crash the host. A host scanning its plugins could crash during Filter Blender’s licence check. Reopening a session now gives the host back exactly the values it saved, and a Next Preset press just before can no longer change the preset you reopened.

v1.1.0 October 14, 2026

• Your sessions sound the same. Three filters were rebuilt and two were fixed in this version. A session or a user preset saved with an earlier version keeps the sound it was made with. New instances and the factory presets get the new one.
• WildDiode3, rebuilt. It is now a four-pole diode ladder in the VCS3 style, with stages that load each other like the original’s. Turn RESONANCE and DRIVE up and it sings on the note shown under CUTOFF, close to a pure sine. RESONANCE on its own scoops out the bass and lifts a peak on that note.
• LushJup8 keeps its low end. Turn the resonance up and the bass stays put. A loud peak gets rounded off instead of poking out.
• FunkyFollowIII hears quiet playing. The envelope now reads your level in decibels, so a guitar recorded at a sensible level opens the filter wide, not only a hot one.
• MooLadder sings all the way up. With DRIVE up it now self-oscillates from the bass to the top of the range. It used to go quiet above about 8 kHz.
• MorphPoleX’s Notch is a real notch. It now cuts a hole at the cutoff, whatever the resonance. It used to barely dip.
• The DRIVE graph draws the real curve. Turn a DRIVE knob and the small graph now shows the curve that model’s sound goes through.
• Presets. Circle Wobble, Radio Cab and Rosette Drift now ping: their West Coast corner rings out on each hit. Ring Before, Glass Stack, Break Glue and Pluck Tight have their output level set for the new sounds.
• A/B keeps your edits. Load a preset, tweak it, press A/B: B starts as your tweaked sound, and both slots are still there after you close and reopen the window.
• Fixed: with usage statistics switched on, closing a project could freeze the host for a few seconds when ubdsp.com was slow to answer. After loading a preset that reorders the chain, a pill could cut its name short.
• Linux: the update check and the opt-in usage statistics now reach ubdsp.com when libcurl is installed.

v1.0.2 October 5, 2026

• Fixed: no more DC offset at the output. Driving some filter models hard, or running the Comb Delay with high feedback, could push the waveform off center. A 5 Hz high-pass now removes it from everything the plugin puts out.
• Presets. Step Carve and Phase Cancel are 0.5 dB quieter, so their peaks stay under 0 dBFS.

v1.0.1 October 4, 2026

• Fixed: the AU version could crash a host right after you inserted it. Seen in DSP-Quattro. VST3, CLAP and AAX were not affected.

v1.0.0 October 2, 2026

First release, October 2026.

• Three filters on a triangle. 12 analog-style filter models, three at a time, each corner with its own cutoff, resonance and drive. One dot moves you between them.
• Motion recorder. Draw a path on the triangle and it loops in time with the song, or pick a ready-made shape.
• A chain in any order. Comb Delay, Ring Mod, Phaser and Vowel, before or after the triangle.
• Modulation. Nine modulator types, up to 16 at once, and they can modulate each other.
• Output stage. LOWS crossover, MIX, loudness match, limiter (BRK, SFT) and HUSH. L/R, M/S and MONO.
• 30 factory presets in eight categories, each moving on its own within a few seconds.