Mix Tools
STEPVEIL
A tempo-synchronised step sequencer driving a click-free amplitude envelope, with a resonant filter swept by the same gate.
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- AU (macOS)
- VST3
- AAX
- macOS Universal
- Windows 64-bit
- v1.0.0
What it does
Draw the rhythm. It plays the level.
Each step carries a continuous level from closed to open, not a switch. That one decision is why the same instrument is a hard trance gate and a rhythmic volume sequencer depending only on how the pattern is drawn.
Ties join steps into longer events. Per-step probability makes patterns breathe instead of chattering. Pattern slots morph between each other. Beneath the grid, the gate display draws the envelope the engine will actually produce, and dragging a step's corners there gives that step its own attack, hold and release. The whole grid is reachable from the keyboard and readable by a screen reader, which is rare enough in this category to be worth saying plainly.
It ships with 226 presets, a hundred of them an electronic collection for garage, sidechain, vocal chops, builds and breaks. At 48 kHz it costs about four hundredths of one percent of real time per instance.
Key features
Continuous level per step
Not on/off. That is the whole difference between a gate and an instrument.
Ties and probability
Ties join steps into longer events; per-step probability decides how often a step fires at all. By default the dice are hashed from the musical position, so a bounce plays exactly what you heard.
Shape any step by hand
Hover a step in the gate display and three handles appear on its envelope. Drag them and that step keeps its own attack, hold and release, stored as fractions of the step so it survives a tempo change; double-click hands it back to the global controls.
A filter the gate sweeps
Low pass, band pass or high pass, inside the sequencer rather than after it. ENV moves the cutoff up to six octaves with the same envelope that opens the gate, or closes it as the gate opens.
Pattern slots with morph
Eight slots, A to H. MORPH sweeps the current pattern towards a second one, so automating it turns a pattern change into a sweep, and a straight switch can wait for the next beat, bar or cycle.
Drag-painting with a live playhead
Draw a pattern by dragging across the grid while the playhead runs through it. A whole drag is one undo step.
Click-free by construction
The envelope's edge cases and test oracles are worked out mathematically in the design document rather than smoothed over afterwards. Input, Output, Mix and Bypass take the session's values from the first block of playback instead of ramping to them.
Keyboard and screen-reader access to the grid
The step grid is fully operable without a mouse and announces its state. Genuinely uncommon in a step sequencer.
The interface
How it works
The signal path, as the plugin’s own documentation states it.
host transport ──► step clock ──► pattern (rotate · morph · chance · human · stereo offset)
──► envelope (ATTACK · HOLD · RELEASE · CURVE, or the step's own shape)
──► SMOOTH ──► gate
input ──► INPUT ──► DC block ──► FILTER (cutoff moved by the gate × ENV)
──► × gate, at a depth set by MIX ──► OUTPUT ──► outAudio
Audio demos for STEPVEIL are not published yet.
We would rather show you nothing than show you a demo that was not recorded through this plugin.
Measured
STEPVEIL release audit (StepVeilBenchmark, engine suite, null test, pluginval, auval) · StepVeilPluginTests preset checks
- CPU, 48 kHz, 512-sample blocks
- 0.042 % of real time
- CPU, worst case (192 kHz, 32-sample blocks)
- 0.183 % of real time
- Instances per core, worst case
- ≈547
- Engine test suite
- 155 tests, all passing
- Block-size independence
- bit-identical output from 32 to 512 samples
- Pumping and Sidechain presets measured as ducks
- 34 of 34
- pluginval
- strictness 10, clean on both formats
- auval
- clean
- Factory presets
- 226 across fourteen categories
Figures are produced by this plugin’s own test suite and benchmark, on the hardware and sample rate named above. They are not estimates.
Controls
Toolbar
- Preset
- Previous, next, or click the name to browse the bank and your own presets. SAVE writes a user preset.
- BPM
- The tempo the sequencer is following, marked when there is no host position and it is free-running.
- A / B
- Two states to compare, with a button to copy one to the other.
- Undo / Redo
- Pattern edits, generators included.
- Settings
- Opens the advanced panel: Grid, Stopped, Random, DC Block, and the DENSITY, PULSES and SEED the generators use.
- Power
- Bypass, crossfaded over 20 ms.
Sequencer
- A–H
- Eight pattern slots.
- MORPH
- Sweeps the current pattern towards the target slot beside it.
- Switch
- When a slot change takes effect: Immediate, Beat, Bar or Cycle.
- Step grid
- Up to 32 steps, each with a level, a probability and a tie, on one lane or separate left and right lanes.
TIMING
- RATE
- Step length, 1/1 to 1/32 triplet, with dotted and triplet values.
- STEPS
- 1 to 32.
- SWING
- 0 to 75 %, applied to the step timing. 66.7 % is a triplet feel.
SHAPE
- ATTACK
- How long the gate takes to open, up to 200 ms.
- HOLD
- How much of each step stays open, as a percentage of the step.
- RELEASE
- How long the gate takes to close, up to 500 ms.
- CURVE
- Analogue softens the corners, Clinical sharpens them.
STEREO
- MODE
- Linked, or Independent left and right lanes.
- OFFSET
- Shifts the right lane against the left, up to 16 steps either way.
VARIATION
- CHANCE
- Scales every step's probability.
- HUMAN
- Bounded variation in level, timing and shape.
- ROTATE
- Shifts the whole pattern without editing it. Automatable.
- RANDOMISE / EUCLID / INVERT
- Write a weighted random pattern, an evenly spread one, or the mirror image of the current one.
OUTPUT
- INPUT
- Trim before the gate, ±24 dB.
- MIX
- Also the gate depth: at 50 % a closed step is half open.
- OUTPUT
- Trim after the gate, ±24 dB.
FILTER
- TYPE
- Off, Low Pass, Band Pass or High Pass.
- CUTOFF
- 20 Hz to 20 kHz: where the filter sits when the envelope is not moving it.
- RESO
- How much it peaks at the cutoff.
- ENV
- How far the gate envelope sweeps the cutoff, ±6 octaves. Negative closes it as the gate opens.
SMOOTH
- SMOOTH
- Rounds the envelope's corners after its shape is drawn, up to 200 ms.
- Gate display
- The envelope over one cycle, simulated by the engine. Drag a step's corners to shape it; double-click to reset it.
Technical details
- Formats, macOS
- AU · VST3 · AAX
- Formats, Windows
- VST3 · AAX
- Operating system
- macOS 10.15 or later · Windows 10 or later, 64-bit
- Architecture, macOS
- Universal: Apple Silicon and Intel
- Architecture, Windows
- 64-bit
- Plugin code
- Ggte
- Version
- 1.0.0
- Latency
- 0 samples
- CPU
- ≈0.04 % of real time at 48 kHz; 0.18 % worst case, 192 kHz in 32-sample blocks
- Factory presets
- 226
Across fourteen categories, the last five a hundred-preset electronic collection: UK Garage, Sidechain, Vocal Chops, Builds & Drops and Breaks. The Pumping and Sidechain presets are tested to duck, closing on the sixteenth-note grid and recovering more slowly than they fall. User presets live on disk, with a tested state-migration chain.
Also in these bundles
COMPLETE COLLECTION
Get STEPVEIL as part of COMPLETE COLLECTION, 22 plugins worth 708 for 199.
199
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