Split your bass. Compress the lows. Twist the guts out of the highs.
Formerly Twist Your Guts, renamed to Crypta as part of the suite's move to Basilica Audio naming (the crypt: the basilica's low-end foundation). If you have a v0.1.0-era session referencing the old plugin identity (
com.yvesvogl.twistyourguts, plugin codeTygt), see the [Unreleased] entry inCHANGELOG.md— the new bundle ID and plugin code (com.yvesvogl.crypta,Cryp) mean DAWs treat this as a new plugin, so existing sessions will need to be re-pointed at the new plugin.
Work in progress. Crypta is pre-1.0 and under active development (v0.2.0). Binaries for macOS and Windows are available from the Releases page (macOS builds are signed & notarized); building from source works too. Expect breaking changes until v1.0.0 ships (see Roadmap).
Crypta is a Parallax-style bass plugin built on JUCE 8. As of v0.2.0 it splits your bass signal into three bands — low, mid, and high — with two cascaded 4th-order Linkwitz-Riley crossovers, compresses the low band in parallel, drives the mid band with staged saturation, and runs the high band through a choice of three distortion voicings before summing everything back together through a 4-band EQ and an impulse-response (cab sim) loader. v0.2.0 also adds a full preset system (factory + user presets, import/export, German localisation). See docs/manual.md for the full parameter reference and usage tips, and docs/design-brief.md/docs/research-notes.md for the research behind the v0.2.0 topology rebuild.
- Noise gate — full-band, ahead of both crossover splits
- Two cascaded LR4 crossover splits — Split Low (60–400 Hz, default 120 Hz) and Split High (300–2000 Hz, default 600 Hz), building a genuine 3-band (low/mid/high) topology, replacing v0.1.x's 2-band split
- Low band: parallel "glue" compressor (re-sourced fast/gentle ballistics, ratio 2:1 / attack 3 ms / release 6 ms) with makeup gain, wet/dry mix, and output level
- Mid band (NEW): staged/cascaded drive-only saturation, no filter/tone/blend — a distinct "throatier" character separate from the high band
- High band: three distortion voicings, each 4x oversampled to keep aliasing under control, now with a shared, voicing-independent Tight pre-drive highpass (was Razor-only in v0.1.x)
- Gnaw — op-amp-style hard clip
- Wool — cascaded soft-clip fuzz with a mid scoop
- Razor — tight overdrive: soft clip, mid hump
- Clean/distorted blend control, plus drive/tone/output level
- 4-band EQ post-sum (LowShelf / Peak / Peak / HighShelf), re-anchored default frequencies (80/500/2800/5000 Hz, sourced from the same design lineage's hardware tone stack)
- IR loader (cabinet simulation), relocated in v0.2.0 to process only the Mid+High post-sum signal — the low band never passes through it, matching the reference class's own architecture. Convolution engine is live; bundled factory IRs and a GUI file browser land in a later milestone
- Delay-compensated, phase-aligned signal path — the Mid+High branch's shared oversampling latency is reported to the host, the low band is time-aligned to match, and a phase-alignment allpass filter keeps the cascaded three-way sum flat-magnitude
- Presets — factory + user presets, save/save-as/delete, import/export (single files and zip banks), German localisation of the preset UI frame
- State migration — a v0.1.x session's single crossover frequency is migrated to the new Split High parameter on load
- Metering throughout the signal chain (planned, alongside the custom GUI)
Input Trim → Gate → LR4 Split Low (60–400 Hz, default 120 Hz)
│
┌─────────────┴───────────────────────────────┐
│ │
Low band Remainder → LR4 Split High (300–2000 Hz, default 600 Hz)
Parallel Comp → Level │
│ ┌───────────────────┴───────────────────┐
│ Mid band High band
│ Drive → Level Tight → Voicing → Drive → Tone → Blend → Level
│ └───────────────────┬───────────────────┘
│ Mid+High sum → IR loader (cab sim)
│ │
└──────────── Phase-align + delay ───────────────┘
│
Sum (delay-compensated)
│
4-band EQ
│
Safety Clip (optional)
│
Output Trim
The Mid and High bands each run 4x oversampled (identically configured, so their latencies match exactly); the low band is delay-compensated and phase-aligned to stay both time- and magnitude-flat with them before the sum. See docs/architecture.md for the full breakdown, including the latency-compensation strategy and the phase-alignment proof, and docs/manual.md for the full parameter reference.
See docs/manual.md for the complete, musically-annotated parameter reference. Summary:
| Section | Parameters |
|---|---|
| IO / Global | Input Gain, Output Gain, Bypass, Safety Clip |
| Noise Gate | Enable, Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release |
| Crossover | Split Low (60–400 Hz), Split High (300–2000 Hz) |
| Low band | Comp Threshold/Ratio/Attack/Release/Makeup/Mix, Level |
| Mid band | Drive, Level |
| High band | Tight, Voicing (Gnaw/Wool/Razor), Drive, Tone, Blend, Level |
| EQ | Enable, Low Shelf Freq/Gain, Peak 1 Freq/Gain/Q, Peak 2 Freq/Gain/Q, High Shelf Freq/Gain |
| IR loader | Enable, Mix |
No pre-built binaries are published yet (see the work-in-progress notice above). Once releases begin, installation will follow the standard plugin locations:
macOS
| Format | Path |
|---|---|
| AU (Component) | ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/ |
| VST3 | ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/ |
If Logic Pro doesn't pick up the plugin after installing, force a rescan by resetting the AU cache:
killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar
auval -aWindows
| Format | Path |
|---|---|
| VST3 | C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\ |
Requires JUCE 8.0.14, C++20, and CMake ≥ 3.24. See docs/building.md for full prerequisites and step-by-step build/test commands for macOS and Windows.
cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure| Milestone | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| M0 | Bootstrap — project skeleton, CI, docs | Done |
| M1 | DSP completion & test coverage — gate, crossover, parallel compressor, 3 voicings (oversampled), 4-band EQ, IR loader, latency compensation, broadened test suite | Done (v0.1.0) |
| M2 | Deep-dive topology rebuild (2-band → 3-band) + presets & state recall — preset manager, 9 factory presets, state migration, German localisation | Done (v0.2.0) |
| M3 | GUI & accessibility — custom LookAndFeel, metering UI, accessibility pass | Planned |
| M4 | Release: signing, notarization, v1.0.0 — installers, tagged release | Planned |
Crypta is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3).
This project uses JUCE 8, whose open-source tier is licensed under AGPLv3 (as of JUCE 8; JUCE 7 and earlier used GPLv3), which is why this project is AGPLv3 rather than GPLv3. See docs/adr/0002-agplv3-licensing.md for the full reasoning.
VST is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.
Crypta is an independent open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Neural DSP or the makers of any Parallax-branded product; any naming similarity refers only to the general "parallel bass processing" concept, not to any specific commercial product.
Tagged releases (v*) are built and published automatically by .github/workflows/release.yml:
- macOS — AU (
.component), VST3 (.vst3), and Standalone, Universal Binary (arm64 + x86_64), signed with a Developer ID Application certificate (org-level secrets, shared across the Basilica Audio suite), notarized, and stapled. Installs and opens without a Gatekeeper warning. - Windows — VST3 and Standalone, unsigned. On first run, Windows SmartScreen may show a "Windows protected your PC" warning; choose More info → Run anyway to proceed. A signed Windows build is a documented future improvement, not yet available.
See v0.1.1 for the most recent published release; v0.2.0 is the next tagged release, shipping the 2-band → 3-band topology rebuild and the M2 preset system.