dozius / dtblkfx

Fast-Fourier-Transform (FFT) based VST plug-in

DtBlkFx Audio FX Plug-in

DtBlkFx is a Fast-Fourier-Transform (FFT) based VST plug-in.

This is a fork of the original DtBlkFx by Darrell Tam. The original source was not ready for public consumption. I have spent a considerable amount of time getting this ready for a Github release.

Despite a major overhaul of the project structure, I have only made very small changes to the source itself to enable x64 builds on windows. There is still a long way to go to making it clean and easy to hack on.

That being said, anyone with a reasonable amount C++ experience shouldn't find it too difficult to get started. I am glad to accept pull requests and any other help I can get.

Usage examples

• Precision parametric equalizing with sharp-roll off
  • Set the frequencies so accurately that you can adjust individual harmonics of a sound
  • Frequency resolutions of up to 0.7 Hz
• Harmonic based (or comb) filtering
  • Set a fundamental frequency and adjust the level of it and its harmonics - you can even remove the pitched component of a voice
  • Active harmonic tracking - let DtBlkFx automatically track a sound and adjust the level of it's harmonics
• Various types of noise control
  • Change the "contrast" between loud and soft frequencies
  • Adjust only those frequencies below or above a particular threshold
  • Clip frequencies above a particular threshold
  • Sound smearing (phase randomizing)
• Frequency shifting
  • Harmonic shifting by a fixed number of notes
  • Non-harmonic shifting by a fixed frequency
  • Active harmonic repitch - the pitch of your sound is monitored and shifted to a destination note (or matched to another channel)
• Various methods of mixing left and right channels
  • Standard Vocoding (frequency enveloping) - make your trumpet rap, string section sing or synthesizer talk
  • Harmonic based vocoding - harmonics in one channel are power-matched to those in the other (or some predefined waveforms) for a new vocoding sound
  • Convolution-like mixing
  • 2 new mixing algorithms
• Frequency masking
  • A harmonic or threshold mask may be set for any effect (apart from vocoding) - for example only shift frequencies that are below the threshold

You can select up to 8 of the above effects to be run in series! Combining the effects in this way allows you to make completely new and surprising sounds.

dtblkfx's Issues

Port DSP to JUCE

Goals

• Port all sound processing code to the JUCE project
• Ensure processing is fully functional within the new framework

Possible GPLv3 Compliance Issues

The Problem

This plugin uses the VST 2 SDK. From what I know the VST 2 SDK is proprietary and depreciated. That makes legally it impossible to share the full source code, which is required for GPLv3 compliance.

Possible Solutions

• Move the project to a different license like Apache 2 or the MIT license. Note: This requires to ask all contributors/copyright holders for permission first.
• Upgrade from VST 2 to VST 3. VST 3 offers a licensing option that is compliant with the GPLv3.

Id be willing to help out with the upgrade. However I haven't worked with VST as of yet, so I dont know how long it will take. Also due to the in-compliance the legal situation of making a fork is a bit unclear to me. Getting a confirmation of the copyright holders that this is OK for me to do would be nice.

Port GUI to JUCE

Goals

• Port UI to the JUCE project
• UI should be resizable to meet modern plugin expectations, possibly move to 100% vector based.

Source code

Where is the source code?

Create JUCE project

Goals

• Create a basic JUCE project as a starting point to port to JUCE.
• Use cmake as the build system
• Use vcpkg to manage external dependencies (i.e. fftw)

Use vcpkg for FFTW library dependency

The plugin depends on FFTW. It would be nice to be able to download, build and statically link this in a cross platform way. Vcpkg seems like a good option.