Early Digital Echo & Reverb with Shimmer

Polaris is an echo/reverb plugin inspired by early hardware digital reverbs of the late 1970s and able to provide echo, ambience and reverb out of a single multitap delay line.

When hardware digital reverbs came out to the market they were really expensive. Most manufacturers were already exploiting chains of comb and all-pass filters (smoother reverbs, but expensive in both resources and chips), there were other techniques involving the use of a single multitap delay line to create a reasonable reverb while keeping the cost affordable.

That idea is so simple yet powerful: you mix a bunch of unmodulated taps (Early Reflections) with the remaining modulated taps (Diffusion) to create a cheap but convincing reverb.

We extended this technique by making the Echo tap recirculating with the Diffusion section, allowing longer reverb tails. Furthermore, you can easily edit all taps to create your own room responses, resonant combs, Karplus-like tuned delay lines, Chorus, Flanging, Vibrato and much more.

From v1.1 we introduced new features like Shimmer, internal Sample Rate reduction (useful to get a vintage digital sound) and Stereo Width (Ping Pong delay).

From v1.3 we introduced a Swell feature that will smooth the transients of the incoming signal, with its attack time automatically matching the delay time. This new feature works great for ambient guitars, intense endless pads and much more.

From v1.5 we introduced Pre-Delay, Modulation Boost and a 3 Band Feedback Equalizer on the new Echo editor page.

Changelog v1.7 (February 2020)

NEW: HQ Mode
NEW: Newsfeed
NEW: VST3 plugin format
FIX: Mac OSX Catalina support
BREAKING CHANGE: Dropped 32bit support

Features

Single Multitap Delay Line
Pre-Delay (NEW v1.5)
Early Reflections (8 Programmable Taps)
Diffusion (16 Programmable Modulated Taps)
Echo (Ms, Sync, Tuned, Long)
Echo Modulation
Modulation Boost (NEW v1.5)
3 Band Feedback Equalizer (NEW v1.5)
LFO (Sin/Tri/Rnd – Hz, Sync)
Shimmer
Sample Rate Reduction
Stereo Width
Swell

System Requirements

Windows 7 (64-bit only)
Intel i5 or higher
2GB RAM
Screen resolution: 1024×768
VST2, VST3 64-bit host
PT11 or higher, AAX 64-bit host

MAC (Intel)

OSX 10.13 or later (64-bit only)
Intel i5 or higher
2GB RAM
Screen resolution: 1024×768
VST2, VST3, AU 64-bit host
PT11 or higher, AAX 64-bit host

MAC (Silicon)

macOS 11.0 or later (64-bit only)
Apple M1 or higher
2GB RAM
Screen resolution: 1024×768
VST2, VST3, AU 64-bit host
PT11 or higher, AAX 64-bit host

Important note: this software is 64-bit only and will not function on 32-bit systems.