Psylab Pro

Psylab is a vsti plugin and standalone app dedicaced to advanced kick bass designs based on unique TRUE cubic bezier curves system.

It was initially especially designed for my personal psytrance kick and bass design applications, hence the name « psylab » , i was not happy with existing limitations on others vsts, and none of them used true  cubic bezier  but simplied quadratic versions..so i decided to build my own kick synth. but  it can do much, much more now and fit any electronic genre really…

If wanna have total shaping control, go deep on sound design,  psylab got features  unmatched yet by any  other kick synth on the market. Can control more than 300 sounds parameters with 64x sample accurate TRUE Cubic Beziers custom curves, 16x lfos, 16x eg, seq lanes.., 4x independant parts layers, each powered by 2x flexible oscillators, including engines like maths dsp /noises /wavtable / additive / FFT /sampler, / bezier waves.. a powerfull multitrack scope,  kick re-synth engines,  phase aligment and keytracking tools…

Commig next 1.3 ui

Psylab  was the first kick synth to automatically extract amp and pitch cv from a ref kck a few years back in 2020. next 1.3 version got the algos upgraded for new layers splitting modes, with high accuracy, while maintening great modularity, for a minimal number of points preseving smoothness thanks to  its  cubic bezier curves system.

Also coming next in 1.3:
_Direct2D hardware  Gpu acceleleration, Dual view, Automatic Kick n Bass Phase n Keytrack align, Re-synth kick with layers, sampler loop points,  customizable layout , pan stereo, poly mode, and more…
playlist shows wip sneak peaks:
Psylab 1.3 WIP vids

I was tired of loosing time having to launch 1 plugin for kick, 1 for bass, 1 for scope, 1 for sidechain, then  to sync all the stuff edits and constantly tab between windows. Psylab allows to centralize it all seamlessly, easy test different kicks with different basses, easy merge it all in projects, easy A-B compare while tweaking sound designs to get best results, and 1 clic ‘save it all’ to re-usable user programs.

Psylab offers up to 16x independant, sample accurate, hi rez true cubic beziers curves that can control many things like amp, pitch, phase, distortion, filter, morph, wavtables position, lfos or even oscillator shapes and more.. for deep and precise control of wave
characteristics over time.

Its NOT a traditional poly synth. It can’t do some stuff as nicely as some other synths do, ie especially pads, hypersaws or polyphonic hi freq melodies stuff, as this wasn’t its initial design goal and many synths do that task pretty well already, but it can on the other hand go way deeper in areas like kick bass / one shots, and others precise timing designs via different and unique set of tools.

audio demo of other sound types presets wip

no sound beta teaser

Advanced Curve System

Versatile, tight and precise unique curves system. Each curve is built from procedural segments including linear, steps, sinus, hermite or cubic splines, quadratic and true cubic béziers modes...

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Build-in Synced Oscilloscope

Easy inspect waves, peaks, phasing, KB overlap areas.. Display current sound or reference file wave under the curves. From 8 bars to sample rez, all with Zoom n' Scroll.



On top of the interface,  main oscilloscope  shows the result of the output summing, always perfectly in sync with the grid. ie if set on 1/4 it will re-trigger each kick and will display the kbb. Can then zoom and scroll inside the buffer, up to sample rez.
it can be displayed  in any context (curve editor, params menu..) or hidden to give more room to parameters or curves editing. 


A multi-Layer mode shows individual sounds layered. Useful to perfectly tune / phase align  (or not!) elements or samples.


Can display spectrum and spectrogram.


At any time its possible to bounce oscilloscope content via a single click, then direct drag and drop new made .wav file to the daw.

A second mode can display current sound note buffer only. Auto button will  scan max peak to auto-fit and use maximum display area, (like a ‘display normalize’).

Current sound note can also be displayed in curve editor background, so can see how the curve tweaks affect the wave real time, with 1:1 timing perfect match and synced zoom n scroll.

An optional reference wav can also be loaded (ie a kick to inspire from) and both current and ref waveforms can be then easily compared, zoomed/scrolled in sync in a very convenient way.

Multi-Engines Generators

Classic, Bezier, Noizes-Paterns, Wavtable, Cycler, Sampler, Additive...



Each one of  the 4 parts got 2x versatile generators.
Each generator provides 7 generative modes and is made to receive some more in the future.



Currently included engines:
*Classic: traditional sin, tri, saw, square and several more ‘math’ shapes with various shaping flavors.
*Bezier:  custom user curve, with  unique beziers control points true morph system from a curve to another.  
*Noise – Patterns:  various flavors of noises and procedural  patterns/sequences like white, pink, brown ,hiss,crakles,MLS,,SH…
*Wavtable: hi quality bi-cubic 2048 samples per cycle / 256 tables, with 2d or 3d overview.



*Sampler: allows to layer one shots vavs, ie add HH or other attacks or custom sounds on top of kicks.
*Cycler:  creates one cycle from wavs parts wich can give interesting harmonic rich content ie for buzzy /fm-ish type leads.
—–(Ability to load custom user .wavs for all wavtable, cycler and sampler engines)—-.
*Additive:  fourrier engine allowing to edit bins via bezier curve ( will be developped further in future releases.)



A powerful Warp engine  allows to remap/distort phase and/or amplitude via +40 different procedural functions.. available both for osc and lfos engines.

Each generator can have a modulator engaged  for AM, RM, PM, PWM, FM, phase and amp distortion.

3x extra voices can be set with independent phase, pitch and volume. ie boost cancel some harmonics.

Build-in Sequencer

Sound design is also about time. Easy build/save/recall/test/randomize different patterns within sound patch. Export to midi file with direct drag n drop to daw clips.



Each part can of course receive midi from daw, but also  has it own build in pattern sequencer.

This allows to quickly set ie, a 4/4 kick and a bass patern and save it within the preset.
So on reloading a patch  have instant overview without messing to re-find what was
 midi associated with, or make tailor sound designs for  particular set of sequences.
8x playground patterns, that can be ordered with a chainor.



Its also convenient to design in standalone without need of a daw, then later re-use patches in vst version.

Its made as an hybrid step/clip , with handled separately triggers, gate length, velocities and 
pianoroll. This allows ie to keep same notes, but randomize triggers or gates only,
or quickly generate random patterns for inspiration (can choose only a set of notes).

Pattern notes can be saved to midi file and directly drag and dropped ie to an ableton midi clip from the plugin interface.



8x lanes can record and remote chosen sound patch parameters movements.

All sequencer data can be stored/recalled to ‘SEQ’ presets. ie quickly test variations of kick bass with already saved presets.

Versatile Filter

40+ Filter types including LP, HP, BP, Band Stop, Allpass, Notch, Lo/Hi shelves, In Biquad, Butterworth, Chebyshev, Elliptic, Bessel, Legendre, Moog , Korg, Oberheim Emus, Formants and other designs… most from 1 to 12 poles, with frequency and phase response overview.

Adjust Filter envelope with ultimate precision/shaping via user bezier curve, or dynamic AHDSR.
Lfos, Sequencer, Velocity and keytrack weights.
Display Frequency response and Phase response.
Affect phase only ie via Allpass mode.
from 1 up to 12 poles for precise custom response.

Flexible routing and Matrix

20+ Fx processor can be chained and ordered as wish. powerfull matrix with +50 sources and +350 destinations parameters


Put distorsion before or after filter, VCA after/before FXs, flexible routing via simple drag and re-order processors chain.
Matrix can pick any of 50 sources (4x macros, 4x lfos, 16x custom curves, 4xAHDSR, randoms, vel, gates,  audio..) to +350 parameters destinations.

Features:

* 4x parts multi-timbral monophonic synthesizer.
* 4x separated midi-in & 4x audio outputs if wanna split.
* Full vector resizable Ui,  fast and responsive, with lot of visual feedback.
* Ultra fast preset switching / compare system.
* Foldable parameter’s groups. Display only a reduced to ‘only wanted’ set, or have control on everything.

*  Built in synced oscilloscope for precise overview (ie Kick bass phasing), with zoom and scroll, from 8 bars up to sample rez.
* Advanced curves system and editor (16x vector user curves with: true cubic beziers, quadratic beziers, cubic splines, hermite splines, steps, linear, sinus, and more … independent segment’s types controlling various sound aspects like amp, freq, osc shapes, phases, filter, morphing ect.. ).
* Ultra tight and stable/consistent sample accurate midi and envelopes timings.
* 2x versatile generators per part with classic, bezier, noizes-paterns, wavtables,  sampler, cycler & additive fourrier engines.
* Hi quality bi-cubic wavtable/cycler/sampler engines modes, with custom user .wav load ability.
* Independent modulator per oscillator.
* AM, PM, FM, RM, PWM, SYNC, phase and amplitude distortion, wich can all be cumulated.
* 3x sub oscillators voices per osc with independent phase, vol , pitch controls, ie cancel/boost fundamental.

* 2x versatiles LFOs with wide range of sources modes,
 including user beziers.
* 40+ modifiers/warpers types that can be applied on phase and/or amplitude of both osc and lfos.
* 40+ Filters type including LP, HP, BP, BS, Allpass, Lo/Hi shelves,
 Incuding Biquad, Butterworth, Chebyshev, Elliptic, Bessel, Legendre, Moog , Korg, Oberheim Emus, Formants…
most from  1 to 12 poles, with frequency and phase response overview.
* Custom curves choice for amplitude / pitch / filter, or dynamic AHDSR envelopes.
* Fx:  delay, disto, reverb, flanger, phaser, compressor, ring modulation, soft cliper, bit -rate reducer, karplus strong resonator, limiter, custom user curve based wavshaping, multi-modes drive, eq…
* Load reference wav files with wavform display, automatically extracts pitch and amplitude enveloppes for   easy copy / use as starting point ie to clone a kick, easy toggle ref/current.
* Approximate true ref wavform itself with bezier function.
* Instant Midi sidechain with precise custom user bezier curve ducking.
* A-B memory slots for comparing different patch settings.
* Build in bounce sound to wav file with direct drag n drop to daw.
* Build in sequencer with drag and drop Midi patern to daw.
* Build in converter helper (samples to ms, hz, beat, note names, tempo to delay ect.. ).
* Unique bezier morph system for true morph from user osc shape to another.
* Up to 16x oversampling.

..more in cooking for future releases..

screenshot_curve
screenshot_oscillator_cv
skin system
screenshot_curve screenshot_oscillator_cv skin system

Downloads:

  Current Build:

Available as VST 2.4 – 64bits – dll, VST3 and Stand-Alone app for Windows

Public Beta demo:

Demo Limitations:  

  • Limited to one instance
  • Saving of presets is disabled
  • Wav export and drag n drop to daw is disabled
  • No multi output

Full Version:



Full version without limitations requires a license that can be purchased at  Gumroad Inc website linked here.

Users Area:



Login to your user account to retrieve latest installer and license files.


System Recommendations:

  • modern i5-i7-i9 or AMD Ryzen cpu
  • 8Gb ram with at least 256 mb free
  • 100mb free hard drive space.
  • 64 bits VST host
  • Windows 7-11
  • 32-2048 samples asio buffer size
  • 1280×720 min screen resolution
VST PlugIn Interface Technology by Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.

Tutorials:

 Here find quick tours  in .en and .fr.  and more specific tutorials.

And can check youtube channel for more tutorials / updates infos ect:
FX23 vst playlist

How to: sequence from daw




Select sound wanna remote, go to sequencer tab and switch it off via the on off button. Or to completely disable all internal sequencers go to about tab and tick « disable sequencer in vst » option.

Then create a new midi track for each sound wanna individually remote from daw and route its midi output to corresponding midi input on the plugin.
(refer to your daw manual).

If having pro version you can also  route each audio individual outputs.

FL Multi-out exemple

If wanna read more about psylab historic..

Read more