On a send/aux bus, keep MIX at 100 % and automate the ORIGIN drag — you get a moving spatial echo without touching the dry track.
What DUST is
DUST is a binaural echo. It fires reflections of your sound and scatters them as bubbles around the listener's head — each bubble is one delay tap convolved with the HRIR of its own direction, so it doesn't just pan, it sounds placed in 3D. You pick (and can drag) the point the echoes are born from, and the effect runs from a few discrete, rhythmic taps to a growing cloud. It stays a sparse, coherent, musical echo — not a diffuse wash, not pulverized grains.
Where it shines It shines on vocals and plucks you want to scatter around the head, on drums where SYNC turns the echoes into a rhythmic spatial grid, and on send buses where you want a 3D tail that breathes with the take. Best felt on headphones, but it stays mono-safe for the club.
Up and running in five steps
- Drop DUST on a track — or on a send/aux bus to scatter a whole group into echoes.
- Drag inside the field to set the ORIGIN: the point the bubbles are born from. The whole scatter follows where you drop it.
- Set the spacing: leave FREE for a RATE in ms, or hit SYNC and pick a division so the echoes land on the beat.
- Bring DENSITY up from a few discrete bubbles toward a growing cloud, and open SPREAD to fan them around the head.
- Dial LIFE for character (placed vs. floating), then set MIX to taste — 35 % is the curated start on an insert.
How the signal moves through it
The dry signal is tapped into a multi-tap delay: RATE (free in ms, or a tempo division under SYNC) sets the spacing between echo births, DENSITY drives the feedback/regeneration — log-mapped with a stability floor so a few decaying taps grow into a cloud that never diverges. Every tap is born at the ORIGIN you drag and spread around it by SPREAD (angular variance), then convolved with the HRIR pair of its direction so each echo is truly placed in 3D; LIFE makes the azimuth of each tap drift and burst between birth and death. IN PHASE collapses the bank to constant-power panning for mono. Finally DUCK ducks the wet under the dry (5 ms attack / 150 ms release), a stereo-linked limiter keeps the bubble pile-up clip-safe, and a power-law MIX blends wet against dry — latency stays an honest zero.
Every control, explained
Field (ORIGIN)
The big binaural field — the heart of DUST and its control surface.
Drag anywhere to move the ORIGIN, the point bubbles are born from; the scatter re-spreads from wherever you drop it. Reads bubble count, spread, wet level and birth rate live. Default origin is centre-front (x 0, y 0.35).
Park the origin off to one side for echoes that fly out from the left or right of the head.
FREE / SYNC
How the echo spacing is timed — free or locked to the host.
Segmented toggle. FREE exposes the RATE knob in ms; SYNC hides it and shows the DIVISION chips instead, so the bubbles are born on the beat.
Hit SYNC for echoes that sit in the groove; leave it on FREE for spacing that ignores the tempo.
RATE
Free spacing between echo births, in milliseconds.
20 ms – 2 s (default 250 ms), log-mapped so every part of the throw is musical with no dead zones. Active only when FREE is selected.
Short rates (under 120 ms) stack into a dense, near-field swarm; long rates spread the bubbles out into discrete, distant taps.
DIVISION
The tempo-synced echo spacing.
Chips: 1/16 · 1/8 · 1/4 · 1/2 (default 1/8). Replaces RATE while SYNC is on; spacing follows the host BPM.
1/8 is the classic mix echo; 1/4 reads as obvious, rhythmic taps you can feel against the kick.
DENSITY
From a finite burst of bubbles to a growing cloud.
0–100 % (default 40). Drives the feedback/regeneration of the tap bank, log-mapped with a stability floor — low is a few clean taps that decay; high regenerates into a continuous, swelling cloud that never runs away.
Keep it under 50 % for discrete, countable echoes; push past 75 % only when you want a self-sustaining cloud.
SPREAD
How wide the bubbles fan out around the head.
0–100 % (default 60). Angular variance of the echoes around the ORIGIN — at 0 they stack on the origin point, at 100 they scatter across the whole field. Perceptually re-curved so each quarter-turn opens the field audibly.
What you see opening in the field is exactly what you hear; check a wide SPREAD on headphones to feel the 3D placement.
LIFE
The character knob — placed echoes vs. floating, bursting ones.
0–100 % (default 25). Modulates how far each tap's azimuth drifts between birth and death, plus bounded temporal/tonal jitter. At 0 the echoes are static and rhythmic; near 100 they float, drift and burst.
Low LIFE for a tight, mix-ready echo; high LIFE turns DUST into living sound design that never repeats.
MIX
Dry/wet blend of the effect.
0–100 % (default 35), power-law cross-fade. At 35 % the bubbles sit behind the source; raise it to push the echoes forward.
Keep MIX at 100 % on a send bus; pull it back on an insert so the dry keeps its punch.
DUCK
Lets the echoes breathe with the performance.
0–100 % (default 0, off). An internal sidechain: the dry's envelope ducks the wet (5 ms attack / 150 ms release), so the bubbles step back when the source hits and return in the gaps.
Raise DUCK on busy vocals or drums so the echo never masks the take — it fills the spaces instead.
IN PHASE / MONO SAFE
Collapses the field to a mono-compatible path.
Toggle. One click drops the HRIR bank to constant-power panning per tap, so nothing cancels when summed to mono.
Leave it on when the track has to survive a club PA or a phone speaker.
IN / OUT
Input and output trim.
−24…+24 dB each (default 0). Stage gain into the engine and compensate level out.
Trim IN down a touch on hot signals so the DENSITY feedback stays well-behaved.
Tips & tricks
01
02
For a rhythmic delay, hit SYNC and pick 1/8; keep DENSITY low so each tap stays a distinct, countable echo.
03
Drag the ORIGIN from front to one side while it plays — the bubbles re-scatter from the new spot, no clicks, like the echo is on the move.
04
Push DENSITY past 75 % with LIFE high for a self-feeding cloud that drifts and bursts — a spatial reverb made of placed echoes.
05
Pair high SPREAD with mono source material: the taps spread across the whole field in different azimuths, opening a flat sound into 3D.
06
Automate DENSITY up across a riser — a few echoes swell into a cloud that lifts off into the drop.
Troubleshooting
It sounds thin or the echoes collapse in mono.
Click IN PHASE / MONO SAFE. The HRIR placement uses interaural cues that partly cancel when summed to mono; IN PHASE drops the bank to constant-power panning so every tap survives the fold-down.
The echoes aren't locked to my beat.
Switch from FREE to SYNC and pick a DIVISION (e.g. 1/8). On FREE, RATE runs in milliseconds and won't follow the host tempo.
DENSITY high turns into a runaway wash.
That's by design up to the stability floor — but pull DENSITY back toward 50 % for discrete bubbles, or lower LIFE so the taps drift less. The feedback is log-mapped and clamped so it never actually diverges; if it feels like too much, it's the cloud doing its job.
I hear a faint pitch wobble on long echoes.
That's the LIFE drift — each tap's azimuth (and a little time/tone jitter) moves between birth and death. Lower LIFE for static, placed echoes; it's organic motion, not a bug.
Specs
Formats: VST3 · AU
Systems: macOS
Build: Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel)
Engine: Multi-tap delay + binaural HRIR placement
Spacing: 20 ms – 2 s free, or tempo-synced (1/16–1/2)
Latency: Zero, declared and real
License: AGPLv3 · open-source