Plugin Freq

Added

• Aliasing in the Analyzer. Send a high tone through a plugin and see which of its harmonics fold back down into the audible range, where each one lands and how loud it is. Every peak is labelled with the harmonic it came from, so the harsh, unrelated tones aliasing adds stand apart from the ordinary warmth of saturation.
• Sweep tones across the whole range to see aliasing against frequency, or every tone at once as a spectrogram, where folded harmonics show up as lines running the wrong way. Try a plugin's oversampling settings, or a higher sample rate, to see what each one buys you.
• The command line measures aliasing too, with --run aliasing; choose the tone with --alias-tone, and add --sweep for the whole range.
• Null Test in the Analyzer. Compare two plugins and see nothing but their difference: both play the same noise, one output is taken from the other, and what's left is shown against frequency and over time. Nothing left means they sound exactly the same, to the last bit. You also see how much of any difference is only a change of level.
• Robustness checks, for the problems that only show up in someone else's session. Is the output the same every time, at every buffer size, and after a change of sample rate? Does a saved state bring every control back? Is there silence out when silence goes in? Does any invalid sample come out? Each check says what it found and what usually causes it.
• The command line runs both: --run robustness, and --run null together with --compare.
• IMD in the Analyzer: intermodulation, the harsh new tones a plugin makes between two notes that aren't harmonics of either. Measured the two standard ways, SMPTE and CCIF, with the spectra they leave.
• Stereo in the Analyzer: whether a plugin keeps mono mono, keeps its balance, survives being summed to mono, and how much of one side leaks into the other.
• Decay in the Analyzer: how long a plugin's sound carries on after the input stops, against how long it tells your DAW, so you can spot one that gets cut off when you export. Reverbs get their RT60 and early decay time, drawn with the decay itself.
• Loudness in the Analyzer: the loudness in and out in LUFS, and how much the plugin changes it.
• Presets: measure every preset a plugin lists, one after another, and see any figure across all of them — the one that's far louder, harsher or heavier on the CPU stands straight out. In Against a Control, and on the command line with --presets.
• Export: save the graph on screen as a picture and its numbers as a spreadsheet.
• Against a Control in the Analyzer. Step one of a plugin's controls through its travel and see a figure drawn against it: THD against Drive, latency and CPU against oversampling, the level against a knob that shouldn't change it. Every other control stays where you set it. The command line does the same with --vary, and gives every figure at every point.
• Listen in the Analyzer. Play a tone, a sweep or pink noise through a plugin and out of your speakers, turn its controls and hear what the graphs show. Hear the signal without the plugin with Dry, and switch instantly between two plugins you are comparing with Hear B. Playback starts quiet, fades in, and never goes above a safe ceiling, however loud the plugin gets.
• Play instruments while you listen: synths and samplers, VST3 and CLAP alike, from the keyboard under the Analyzer's settings or from your own MIDI keyboard. Pressing a key starts Listen.
• Audio & MIDI, in the gear menu, chooses what Listen plays through: Windows Audio, ASIO or DirectSound, the output and input devices and channels, the sample rate and the buffer size, and which MIDI inputs play the plugin. Driver Settings opens an ASIO driver's own panel.
• Audio Input as a Listen signal: play a guitar, a microphone or another program through the plugin, live.
• A Master level and a meter beside Listen, showing exactly what reaches your speakers.
• Baselines in the Analyzer. Save Baseline measures a plugin as you have it set, every analysis at once, and keeps the lot; Check Baseline measures it again the same way — a new version, say — and lists everything that has changed, side by side with what it was.
• The command line checks against the same files with --baseline, and fails the run when anything has changed beyond a small allowance, so a release can stop before it ships a change nobody meant to make.
• Hide Disabled on the Dashboard, in Plus and Pro: list only the plugins your DAWs can find, and bring the ones you've switched off back with Show Disabled. Plugin Freq remembers which you chose.
• Plugin Freq looks for plugin updates by itself while it is open, in Plus and Pro, and tells you when it finds some. Updates on the Dashboard counts the plugins with a newer version and lists just those. FreqElement's own plugins are checked the moment it starts; everything else is looked up gradually in the background, and each answer is kept for a week.
• Stretch, for a plugin whose window opens far too small on a high-resolution screen: one click draws it at the size it was designed to be. Plugin Freq remembers the choice for that plugin, and a second click puts it back.
• The command line lists every control a plugin has, with --run controls: each one's name, current value and choices, ready to use with --param and --vary.

Changed

• Plugin Freq opens straight away and fills in your plugin list while it reads your folders.
• A plugin's window takes the keyboard as soon as it opens, so plugins you play or control from your computer keyboard respond without being clicked first.
• The keyboard under the Analyzer's settings shows for instruments only.
• --param takes a control's choices by name, and stops with the list of choices when a value isn't one of them.

Fixed

• When the command line compares two plugins, the sample rate, level, tone and everything else you set for the measurement apply to both.
• A plugin window that changes its own size stays on the screen, title bar included.
• A damaged plugin file is listed as one that can't be loaded, and the scan carries straight on.
• Checking for updates finds FreqElement's own plugins under their full names, always answers for them from freqelement.com, and never offers a newer edition of a plugin, sold separately, as an update to the one you have.
• Plugins are measured through their main inputs and outputs, the way a DAW insert uses them, so a plugin's VST3 and CLAP measure the same and a sidechain input is left out of the loudness.
• Narrow resonances at low frequencies are measured at their full height, and the command line lengthens its capture by itself when one rings on past it.
• THD+N includes every harmonic THD counts, at any tone.
• The sample-rate robustness check reads a plugin's latency once the change has taken effect.
• Stereo and loudness figures for a plugin putting out silence are shown as unmeasured, with the reason.
• Dynamics asks for a lower tone when the one chosen is too close to the top of the range for the sample rate.
• Going back to an Analyzer view you have already measured shows its figures again.

Added

• CLAP plugins open their windows, like every other format Plugin Freq loads. Take a picture of one to recognise it by in the list, include them in Capture Thumbnails, and open a CLAP's own window beside the Analyzer to watch the graphs while you turn its controls.
• The command line can set a plugin's controls before it measures it, with --param "Ratio=4" as many times as you need. Name a control the way your DAW shows it and give the value in the plugin's own words — -30, On, the name of a mode — and the results say exactly what each control was set to. A control the plugin doesn't have, or a value it reads as something else, stops the run and says why instead of measuring the plugin set some other way.

Changed

• The zoom buttons over a plugin's window work for CLAP plugins that can draw themselves at another size, and say so when one can't.

Fixed

• The frequency response of a plugin that eases into its settings, rather than jumping straight to them, is measured once it has arrived, so an EQ boost reads at its full height.

Added

• Every padlocked control opens a short explanation of what it does and what the upgrade includes, with today's price from freqelement.com — launch offers included — whenever Plugin Freq can reach the site.
• An upgrade bought while Plugin Freq is open unlocks as soon as you switch back to it, with no restart, and Plugin Freq says so when it does.

Changed

• Upgrading from Plus to Pro costs only the difference: what you paid for Plus comes off the price of Pro when you sign in to buy it.
• Compare works straight away. With nothing in the Analyzer yet, it puts the plugin there, ready for a second one to be compared with it.

Fixed

• The Enable and Disable buttons in the plugin list are shown in full.
• Capture Thumbnails says when plugins need a deep scan before their windows can be pictured.

• Lists every plugin you have installed — VST3, CLAP, LV2 and VST2, 32-bit and 64-bit — with its maker, version, category and where it lives on disk. Plugins inside a shell are listed one by one, not as a single file.
• Reads the real details out of each plugin by loading it, so what you see is what your DAW sees rather than what a filename suggests. Each one is loaded on its own, so a plugin that misbehaves can't take the rest of the scan down with it.
• Search and sort the whole list, however many thousand plugins are in it.
• Every plugin gets a page of its own, with its full details and a picture of its window.
• Add your own folders to search, for plugins kept outside the usual places.
• Turn plugins off and on without uninstalling them, so your DAW stops loading the ones you don't want and finds them again when you do. Works on a whole folder at a time.
• Takes a picture of each plugin's window, so you can recognise one by sight in the list.
• Tells you when a plugin has a newer version than the one you have installed.
• The Analyzer measures a plugin the way a test bench would, and follows it as you move its controls: frequency and phase response, group delay, impulse, and the latency a plugin reports against the latency it actually has; harmonic spectrum, THD and THD+N, against frequency and against level; the transfer curve from quiet to loud, gain reduction, and attack and release times; and how much of a CPU core it costs at every buffer size from 32 to 2048, worst buffer as well as average.
• Compare two plugins side by side in the Analyzer, with the difference between them drawn on the same graph.
• Open any plugin's own window from the Analyzer, keep it on top, and zoom it.
• Measure any plugin file from a script or the command line and get the results as JSON — including a plugin straight out of a build folder, with nothing added to your list.
• Free, Plus and Pro. Free lists and inspects everything; Plus adds turning plugins off and on, pictures of plugins' windows, and update checking; Pro adds the Analyzer and the command line. Every control is visible in every version, so you can always see what the others do.