Install, activate, keep moving.

The operating model

Chiral Audio plugins are digital downloads. Checkout is handled by Paddle. License delivery and activation are handled by the Chiral license service at license.chiral.audio. The site starts checkout, but it does not generate licenses or store payment details.

Use current installers

Download from official Chiral Audio links. Keep the purchase email, because it contains the license key and a durable path back to the installer links.

macOS install

1. Download the macOS DMG for your product.
2. Open the DMG and double-click the installer inside.
3. Walk through the wizard. The installer asks which formats you want included — VST3, Audio Unit (AU), and Standalone are all checked by default. Uncheck anything you don't need.
4. macOS will ask for your admin password to write the plugins into the system folders.
5. Quit and reopen your DAW so it picks up the new plugin on its next scan. If your DAW has a plugin manager, run a manual rescan if the plugin does not appear on first launch.

The installer places files at /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/, /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/, and /Applications/. Product pages list macOS 11 or later as supported.

Windows install

1. Download the Windows ZIP for your product. The Windows download is a ZIP, not an installer.
2. Extract the ZIP.
3. Copy the .vst3 file into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\.
4. Restart your DAW and rescan VST3 plugins.

Logic and other AU-only hosts are not supported on Windows.

Activate the plugin

1. Open the plugin in your DAW.
2. Paste the full license key from the email, including dashes.
3. Activate while connected to the internet.
4. Keep the purchase email for future reinstallations.

The key format is CHRL-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. If a bundle email includes three products, use the matching key for the product you are opening.

Seat resets, lost keys, refunds

• Seat limit: each product license activates up to two machines. If you have used both seats and need a third (replacing a computer or drive, moving studios), email [email protected] with the order or transaction ID and we will free a seat. A self-serve in-plugin deactivation menu is on the roadmap; until then, support handles deactivation.
• Lost key: email from the purchase address when possible and include the order or transaction ID.
• Offline use: after activation, the plugin runs offline for up to 14 days between online checks. If you are taking a machine off-network, activate first while connected.
• Refunds: the public refund policy gives a seven-day window, subject to license revocation and the conditions stated there.
• No key sharing: do not send license keys in bug reports. Use the order or transaction ID instead.

What to reach for first

Foxfire is a chorus built from up to sixteen coupled oscillators that share phase information through the Kuramoto mean-field model: \(\dfrac{d\theta_i}{dt} = \omega_i + \dfrac{K}{N}\sum_{j} \sin(\theta_j - \theta_i)\). Start by choosing the size of the population, then use Coupling to move the field from independent drift toward partial synchrony and lock. Depth and Rate set how obvious the modulation feels. Stereo and Mix place the field in the track.

The chassis splits the controls into a core row (always visible) and an advanced row hidden behind the aperture toggle in the upper-right. A live order-parameter readout (R) sits in the footer — useful while you set Coupling, since R names how coherent the population is at any moment.

Build the bloom

Autocatalysis is a network of sixteen tuned resonators arranged on a Bark-spaced filterbank. Each resonator's gain is governed by logistic growth: \(\dfrac{dx}{dt} = rx\!\left(1 - \dfrac{x}{K}\right)\) when the band's energy is above the nucleation threshold, and exponential decay below it. Bands present in the input self-amplify; bands absent decay. Catalyst controls how quickly the bloom starts. Capacity sets the ceiling. Compete changes whether bands grow together or push against each other.

At high Compete settings the network enters the Belousov–Zhabotinsky regime: competing resonators rise and fall in cycles, producing rhythmic spectral pulsation from a static input. The chassis exposes a live band-field display across the top — sixteen vertical bars showing each resonator's growth state, with horizontal reference lines for Threshold and Capacity.

Hold the line without runaway

Soliton is a feedback delay where repeats stabilize instead of decay. The feedback loop holds a cascade of allpass dispersion stages (Spread smears each repeat; Smear Density picks how many stages run — Light, Medium, or Dense), a saturator (Focus drives, Shape picks the curve), and a dual-cut filter cluster (Lo Cut + Hi Cut with resonance and a 6 / 12 / 24 dB/oct slope selector). A dynamic stabilizer regulates loop energy so the line neither dies nor runs away — Sustain sets the target level, Return sets how quickly the stabilizer corrects toward it. The conceptual spine is the Korteweg-de Vries equation: \(u_t + 6u\,u_x + u_{xxx} = 0\).

The XY pad at center is the live performance surface — default axes are Spread (X) and Focus (Y), reassignable from the corner dropdowns. The drift halo only renders when Spread is on an axis, by design — it visualizes the dispersing field, and there is no field to draw if Spread is locked off-axis. The pad's indicator follows external parameter changes (Balance drag, preset recall, host automation), so the dot stays accurate even when you're driving the underlying dials directly.

New in v1.1: In pre-feedback trim, full Filter cluster replacing the v1.0 Tone knob, Clear Buffer panic gate, Smear Density selector (Light/Medium/Dense), expanded 19-division tempo grid, Filter Slope selector (6/12/24 dB), and Recovery renamed to Return. Upgrades land in place; v1.0 presets carry over.

Draw notes from an energy landscape

Boltzmann is a MIDI sequencer and arpeggiator. It chooses each note by drawing from the Boltzmann distribution, \(P(E_i) = \dfrac{e^{-E_i/T}}{Z}\), where every pitch's energy is its dissonance against the root. Low-energy pitches (the root, the fifth, the consonances) are most probable; high-energy pitches (the tritone, the minor second) are rare. Temperature is the hero control: it sets how sharply the distribution favors the low-energy ground state. It outputs MIDI, so route it to any instrument in your session.

Two source modes set what the landscape is built from. GEN derives energies from the selected Scale and Root. ARP rebuilds the landscape from notes you hold, with the lowest held note as the ground state. Two samplers walk the distribution: Independent draws each note fresh, and Metropolis takes neighbor steps for a melodic contour. LOCK re-seeds the generator at every loop top, freezing the stream into a repeatable phrase; Mutate then redraws a fraction of the steps each pass. The viz header reads Order, Entropy, and the number of occupied states directly off the live distribution.

Set Disorder, then pick the hold model

Anderson Freeze is a spectral freeze built from Anderson localization. The spectrum is split into bands, and each band runs its own feedback path whose resonance is detuned by Disorder. As disorder rises, energy stops propagating between bands and becomes trapped in place, so the spectrum sustains instead of decaying. High frequencies localize first along a mobility edge, so brightness suspends before the low end does. Mode chooses the freeze mechanism: Localization holds the spectrum through per-band detuned feedback, and Zeno holds it by re-sampling the spectrum at a measurement rate so repeated observation keeps it from evolving. The plugin is silent until activated, so a held bed only sounds once a license is in place.

Three gesture systems sit on top of the core. FREEZE and CLEAR capture and release the held state by hand. ARM with SENSITIVITY captures on the next transient. SYNC with DIVISION, SWING, and PULSE DEPTH refreshes the freeze in tempo so the held bed keeps a living pulse. HARM with ROOT and CHORD snaps the captured spectrum onto a harmonic frame.

Set the gravity well before the feedback

Geodesic maps gravitational time dilation onto a multi-tap delay. It uses one consequence of the Schwarzschild solution: clocks closer to a massive body run slower than clocks farther away, written in simplified form as \(\alpha(r) = \sqrt{1 - r_s/r}\), where every tap inherits a clock ratio from its radius. Taps nearer the source read their buffers more slowly, so repeats stretch and redshift, then approach a horizon-like hold. Mass deepens the curve and Orbit moves the tap population through it, so one law governs the whole delay field while position sets the audible difference. Near taps slow, stretch, and redshift; the field can hold at a horizon. Shape the well first, then decide how much material keeps falling through it. New in this build: in Sync mode the Orbit knob sweeps the tempo division, so tap placement and clock division move together.

Find the temperature where the mix transforms

Arrhenius controls how often the signal transforms, not how much. It splits the input into eight bands and lets each one fire according to the Arrhenius rate law of chemical kinetics, \(k = A\,e^{-E_a/RT}\): an attempt clock (Rate, the factor \(A\)) throws collisions against an activation barrier (Barrier, \(E_a\)), and Temperature sets the fraction that succeed, exponentially. Because the relationship is exponential, one octave of temperature moves event density by orders of magnitude, so Temperature has a narrow sensitivity zone where the signal goes from skeletal to full. That zone is the instrument: a drum loop at frozen temperature is two kicks a bar; sweep up and it reconstructs energy-first, kick then snare then hats, as higher-energy collisions clear the barrier first. The classification chip reads FROZEN, LIQUID, then BOILING as you cross the regimes.

The sound remembers how it got there, not just where it is

Anneal is a pad and keys synth built on the physics of a glass transition. The patch is a slab of material with a thermal history. Cool it slowly and it finds the ordered crystal; cool it faster than its own structural relaxation time and disorder freezes in as glass. The variable that carries this is the fictive temperature \(T_f\) (Tool, 1946): the temperature at which the frozen structure would be the equilibrium one, drifting toward the real temperature at a rate set by the material's own relaxation time,

\[ \frac{dT_f}{dt} = \frac{T - T_f}{\tau(T)} \]

\(\tau(T)\) is the Arrhenius relaxation time: it grows exponentially as the material cools, so the same knob position produces a different frozen structure depending on how fast you got there. TEMP sets where the material sits on that curve; MELT and QUENCH are the two gestures that move it, one gradual, one instant; RATE decides which side of the transition the cooling lands on. Same TEMP, same RATE, same STRESS: hold MELT and release slowly and the patch anneals into a coherent, in-tune ring. Snap-cool it with QUENCH and the same settings freeze disorder in as inharmonic shimmer with slow internal beating. The path is the instrument, not the destination.

Factory presets

Twelve presets, ordered to lead with the thermal gesture (Melt, Quench, or annealing creep) rather than a static timbre. Anneal is a path-dependent instrument; a preset name here describes what you do to it, not just what it sounds like at rest.

Plugin not showing up

• Confirm you installed the correct format for the host: AU or VST3 on macOS, VST3 on Windows.
• Restart the DAW after installing.
• Run the DAW's plugin rescan or plugin manager if it has one.
• On Windows, check the instructions in INSTALL-WINDOWS.txt if the file was blocked or quarantined.

License key rejected

• Copy the key directly from the email, including dashes.
• Use the key that matches the product currently open in the DAW.
• Confirm the computer is online for first activation.
• If both seats are already used, email support with the order or transaction ID.

No sound or not enough effect

• Check the host track routing first. Bypass the plugin and confirm the dry signal passes.
• Check Mix, Output, and any host-level wet/dry control.
• Foxfire — sounds static, no motion: Coupling is in the lock zone. Pull it back into the transition area where the chorus breathes between coherent and scattered.
• Foxfire — Feedback knob inert: Color, FB Q, and FB Coupling are gated by Feedback. With Feedback at 0, those three do nothing by design.
• Foxfire — chorus feels mono: Stereo is at 0. Push it up.
• Foxfire — advanced controls missing: Density, Locality, FB Coupling, and FB Q live behind the aperture toggle in the upper-right of the chassis.
• Autocatalysis — nothing blooming: Threshold above the loudest material in the signal. Watch the band-field display — no bars are crossing the lower reference line. Drop Threshold or push In Gain.
• Autocatalysis — it's screaming: Capacity too high, or Threshold too low. Pull Capacity back first; it's the ceiling.
• Autocatalysis — it started pulsing on its own: Compete is in the BZ regime. Pull Compete back if unintended; or commit to it — BZ is the most distinctive thing the plugin does.
• Autocatalysis — stereo collapses on mono check: Width > 0. Drop to 0 for mono compatibility.
• Soliton — repeats just decay like a normal delay: Sustain at 0. Push it up — the self-sustaining behavior comes from the stabilizer.
• Soliton — collapsing into mush: Focus too low or Spread too high. Bring the two back into balance, or center the Balance macro. Or set Smear Density to Light — fewer dispersion stages keeps the source more articulated.
• Soliton — screaming or running away: Focus and Sustain both pushed hard. Drop one, or hit Clear Buffer to wipe the loop instantly without zeroing the knobs.
• Soliton — pumping audibly: Return is high. That's a regime, not a fault — pull Return back for clean repeats.
• Soliton — Time knob looks active but doesn't respond: Sync is on. Click on the Time knob and Sync flips off, or click the Free pill in the Delay Rate control to toggle Sync off explicitly.
• Soliton — filter knobs do nothing: Filter Mix is at 0 — the filter cluster is bypassed. Raise Filter Mix to bring it into the loop. Default is 0 so v1.0 sessions are unchanged.
• Soliton — resonance handles don't raise a peak: Filter Slope is at 6 dB. A 1-pole filter has no resonance by design. Flip slope to 12 or 24 dB and the Lo Res / Hi Res handles become active.
• Soliton — v1.0 preset sounds different in v1.1: Legacy Tone values map onto Filter Mix at slope = 6 dB. The audio chain is identical at slope = 6, but if a preset relied heavily on Tone, you may want to rebuild it using the new Filter controls.
• Soliton — XY pad halo isn't showing up: both pad axes are assigned to controls other than Spread. Reassign at least one to Spread.

Email support

For purchase, license, download, or plugin issues, email [email protected]. Include enough context to reproduce or identify the issue.