RKDSP DLPG

DEMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU63IYGLg5Q

DLPG - Digital Low-Pass Gate

Turn static sounds into organic, rhythmic grooves.

A MIDI-triggered digital low-pass gate inspired by the behaviour of vactrol LPGs.

Optoresistor-based LPGs are unpredictable by nature, the light-dependent resistor at their core behaves in ways that are hard to fully control and that unpredictability is exactly what gives them their natural, organic character. With cadmium now banned in the EU, new vactrols are no longer available on the market, and LPG production has largely shifted toward digital designs. That doesn't make the hardware unusable, but it did make me wonder why I didn't have a software version of that LPG dynamic inside of my DAW.

Digital LPGs work differently they're precise and mathematical rather than driven by light. My first instinct was to mimic the classic vactrol sound. But after spending time developing and testing, I realized I was ignoring one of the real advantages of building something digital, software can mimic the real thing, but it can also do things analog circuitry simply can't. So instead of a pure emulation, DLPG blends the vactrol-inspired core with a bit of extra character subtle differences modeled on how different materials respond when struck landing on something that feels familiar but has its own identity.

Having a LPG inside the DAW means you can take any long, slowly-modulating audio source and turn it rhythmic, while keeping all the small variations of the original running audio intact. That can add life to percussion or melodic parts that would otherwise feel static. Or, run a different rhythmic trigger into an already-rhythmic signal to build new grooves, with the original rhythmic hits breaking through when triggered creating nested rhythms within rhythms.

!Note that it currently only supports mac silicon (meaning M-chips) and windows!