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. Binaries for macOS and Windows are published on the Releases page (macOS builds are signed, notarized and stapled); 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, oversampled to keep aliasing under control, with a shared, voicing-independent Tight pre-drive highpass
- Circuit drive engine (v0.3.0): the mid and high bands rebuilt from circuit models with antiderivative antialiasing, sharing one oversampling region — measured 25–30 dB less aliasing than the previous engine, which ships on as the bit-identical
Classicfallback - Smooth RMS low-band detector and a Modern gate (v0.3.0): a log-domain RMS detector that stops the low band tremoloing on sustained notes, and a gate with hysteresis, hold, a sidechain highpass and a straight-line release
- 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
- Custom vector GUI — a fully drawn (no bitmaps) black-and-gold editor: ten sections laid out in signal order carrying all 51 parameters, pointer knobs with engraved scale rings, lamp toggles, and a resizable, aspect-locked window whose zoom level is saved with the session
- Metering — input and output peak plus gate and low-band compressor gain reduction, on four needle meters driven at 30 Hz from the lock-free metering taps
- Accessible by design — full keyboard operability with WAI-ARIA-style stepping, a visible focus ring, screen-reader names/roles/values with units, signal-flow focus order and WCAG AA contrast, all enforced by tests
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 |
The plugin icon — a gold serpent coiled around a bass clef, antique-gold
bas-relief on a flat near-black squircle — is the header image above, and is
committed at docs/assets/icon.png (1024×1024) and
docs/assets/icon-256.png (256×256). Motif,
palette, master locations and the archived logo drafts are documented in
docs/branding.md. All artwork is self-made and therefore
license-clean under this repo's AGPLv3.
Editor. Crypta ships the suite's vector editor: black-and-gold, drawn
entirely at runtime (no bitmaps), with EB Garamond embedded as the only
typographic asset. Ten section panels follow the signal flow and carry all 51
parameters — 44 pointer knobs with engraved scale rings and 7 lamp toggles —
alongside four needle meters (input/output peak, gate and low-band-compressor
gain reduction). The window is resizable and aspect-locked between 60 % and
180 %, and the zoom level is saved with the session. Which control drives
which parameter is tabulated in docs/gui-mapping.md;
the component architecture is in
docs/architecture.md.
Screenshot. 
The preview above is generated, not mocked up: the GUI test suite takes an
offscreen snapshot of the real editor, asserts it is not blank, and writes it
to build/gui-preview.png (tests/gui/GuiPreviewSnapshotTests.cpp); that file
is what is committed as docs/gui-preview.png. See
docs/branding.md for the convention.
Download the archive for your platform from the Releases page and copy the bundles into the standard plugin locations. Each archive ships with a .sha256 file, so a download can be verified with shasum -a 256 -c <asset>.sha256.
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 vector LookAndFeel, full parameter surface, metering UI, resizable editor with stored scale, accessibility pass | Done |
| 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.
The editor embeds the EB Garamond typeface, licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 — a copy of that licence ships with the source and inside the plugin's own resources.
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 — nothing is built or uploaded by hand. Release notes are the matching section of CHANGELOG.md.
- 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, then Run anyway. Authenticode signing needs a paid certificate and is not part of this phase.
- Every archive is accompanied by a
.sha256checksum file.
A .pkg installer for macOS is wired up in the release workflow but not yet shipped: it requires a Developer ID Installer certificate, a different Apple certificate type from the application-signing one this repo uses. The step stays inert until that certificate exists. See docs/building.md for the full release process and the secret names.
The latest published version is always on the Releases page.