A synthesizer where light meets sound.
Elements Beta 1.0 is functional and stable, but there are known limitations to be aware of before using it in a production context.
There is no preset system in Beta 1.0. The plugin reports a single program placeholder as required by JUCE, but there is no preset save/load and no factory presets. Your DAW will show an empty preset list — this is expected. Preset support is planned for a future release.
Elements has a fixed limit of 8 voices. When all 8 are active, soft voice stealing kicks in — the oldest voice fades out over 256 samples (~5.8ms) and is reassigned. If all 8 voices are simultaneously fading out, new notes are discarded silently with no click or artifact. This can occur in fast passages with long sustain times.
The plugin saves and restores its state between sessions. The following is persisted:
The following resets to defaults when reopening a project:
This means you will need to reassign your light sources after reloading a project. This will be addressed in a future update.
Elements uses JUCE’s generic VST3 and AU implementation with no host-specific workarounds.
Bitwig Studio — Bitwig aggressively caches VST3 parameter layouts. If you update Elements to a version that adds new parameters, you will need to recreate the instrument track (rescanning plugins is not enough) for Bitwig to recognize the new parameters.
Logic Pro (AU) — Not extensively tested. The AU wrapper is JUCE’s generic implementation with no Logic-specific adaptations. No issues are known, but full compatibility cannot be guaranteed.
Other DAWs — Not tested. Elements declares mono and stereo support, accepts standard MIDI, and reports a 5-second tail length for release.
Occasional saturation — With spectrally dense materials and high polyphony, the output signal can clip. A soft clipper (tanh) is in place but there is no full limiter. If you experience saturation, reduce the light intensities or the number of simultaneous voices.
Apple Silicon + Intel — Beta 1.0 is a Universal Binary, running natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Windows builds are planned for a future release.
Deformer is Sphere-only — The Geometric Deformer is currently implemented for the Sphere geometry only. Support for other geometries is planned.
Found something not listed here? Please open an issue on GitHub.
Elements is free. If you find it useful, buy me a coffee.