{"id":1970,"date":"2026-06-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pcjv.de\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:27:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:27:02","slug":"the-vst-plugin-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pcjv.de\/?p=1970","title":{"rendered":"The VST plugin years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Everything on this site ultimately traces back to one obsession: audio. So it feels right to start this little retrospective series where my public work started \u2014 with <a href=\"\/?page_id=8\">VST plugins<\/a>, written in Object Pascal, one filter and one waveshaper at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My very first plugins were learning exercises that escaped into the wild. <strong>Toadstunnel<\/strong>, a bit-crusher, existed mostly to prove how easy writing a VST plugin could be. <strong>Christortion<\/strong> was more ambitious: a Chebyshev polynomial waveshaper where every single harmonic can be adjusted in level and phase \u2014 a surprisingly wide palette of distortion from one simple mathematical idea. And <strong>HRTF 3D<\/strong> convolved the signal with head-related transfer functions so that sounds could virtually fly around your head; I rewrote it three times over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Filters, filters, filters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The project I am probably still best known for in that era is <a href=\"\/?page_id=64\">Electri-Q<\/a>. It began as a lecture-inspired prototype of a &#8220;transistor EQ&#8221; with the wonderfully absurd working title <em>Posihfopit<\/em> (the name came from a friend&#8217;s crashed notebook \u2014 long story), and grew into a serious parametric EQ that our small company AIXcoustic creations sold until 2013. The freeware <em>posihfopit edition<\/em> is still downloadable today, and the plugin still has friends out there in the forums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Collaborations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not everything was a solo effort. With the folks at BetaBugsAudio I built the <a href=\"\/?page_id=59\">Betabugs plugins<\/a> \u2014 Bugpass, PhaseBug and the Leslie-style Spinbug. A mysterious gentleman named Leonardo Lasagne contributed the <a href=\"\/?page_id=351\">Pushtec 5+1A<\/a>, a six-band midrange and program EQ that I hosted here. And I was responsible for the entire VST plugin series of the vendor Audiocation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Spatial experiments<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <a href=\"\/?page_id=70\">spatial plugins<\/a> were where DSP met psychoacoustics: Simple Crosstalk Cancellation turned stereo speakers into a headphone-like experience, Headphone Mix did the inverse and fought in-head localization on headphones, and Quadropolis simulated a quadraphonic setup over ordinary headphones via HRTF convolution. Ideas from these plugins kept resurfacing in my work for the next twenty years \u2014 more on that in a later post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of these are archived on this site with downloads intact. They are old, some may struggle with modern hosts, but they document how digital signal processing became my home domain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everything on this site ultimately traces back to one obsession: audio. So it feels right to start this little retrospective series where my public work started \u2014 with VST plugins, written in Object Pascal, one filter and one waveshaper at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dsp","category-retrospective"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The VST plugin years - Christian&#039;s private site<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pcjv.de\/?p=1970\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Christian\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Christian\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79b654f8c2fb5bf9405ccc4cb1c11880\"},\"headline\":\"The VST plugin years\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-01T08:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-07-24T15:27:02+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970\"},\"wordCount\":360,\"articleSection\":[\"DSP\",\"Retrospective\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970\",\"name\":\"The VST plugin years - Christian&#039;s private site\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-01T08:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-07-24T15:27:02+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79b654f8c2fb5bf9405ccc4cb1c11880\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/?p=1970#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The VST plugin years\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.pcjv.de\\\/\",\"name\":\"Christian&#039;s private site\",\"description\":\"Private site of Christian-W. 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