For an infinite pad, FREEZE a sustained chord with RATE at OFF and WHISPER low — you get a stable, musical drone that never wobbles or rings.
What HORIZON is
HORIZON is a spectral freeze with a pulse. It captures one frame of your sound and holds it forever — but the held note doesn't have to sit still. With RATE off it's the classic freeze (an endless pad or drone); turn RATE up — and especially lock it to tempo with SYNC — and that same frozen instant starts to re-trigger and gate in rhythm, from a glassy sustained chord to a glitchy, in-time stutter. One gesture: you press Freeze and the moment is suspended; you move RATE and that moment begins to beat with the track.
Where it shines It shines on pads, keys and vocal tails you want to suspend into infinity, on risers and transitions, and — once you bring RATE and SYNC in — on rhythmic stutters, gated pads and glitch fills that lock to the groove. Great as an insert for a frozen tail or on a send to layer a held bed under the live track.
Up and running in five steps
- Drop HORIZON on the track you want to suspend — keys, a pad, a vocal, a whole bus.
- On the note you want to keep, click FREEZE. That spectral instant cristalizes and holds; the field on screen stops and hangs.
- Leave RATE at OFF for a clean sustained pad (the classic freeze), or raise it to make the frozen frame pulse.
- To lock the pulse to your song, flip the rail to SYNC and pick a division (1/4 gates on the beat; 1/16 stutters; 2 bar breathes slow).
- Shape the character with WHISPER (glassy → airy) and SPREAD (centered → wide), then add DUCK if you want the freeze to make room for the live signal.
How the signal moves through it
The live signal runs through an STFT engine (overlap-add, Hann window at 75 % overlap, the same spectral core as AURORA) at a fixed, host-reported latency of one full frame — N = 2048 samples. When you press FREEZE, the magnitude of the current frame is captured and the engine switches from passing audio to resynthesizing that frozen frame indefinitely, with a cross-fade at the splice so the gesture never clicks. RATE drives a re-trigger scheduler: at OFF the frame is held flat (a pad), and as RATE rises the frozen resynthesis is gated/re-fired each cycle with a soft (non-rectangular) envelope — in SYNC that cycle is locked to bpm/60 ÷ beatsPerCycle and phase-aligned to the host so the beat never drifts. WHISPER interpolates the frame's phase from coherent (glassy, tonal) to randomized (whisperized, airy); SPREAD de-correlates L/R with constant-power panning; DUCK uses an envelope follower on the dry to pull the wet down on transients; finally MIX cross-fades wet against the latency-aligned dry (with IN PHASE forcing a mono-safe path) before a zero-latency limiter keeps the output clip-safe.
Every control, explained
FREEZE
The central gesture — captures and holds the spectral frame.
Latch toggle (default off, automatable). One click captures the current frame's magnitude and switches the engine into endless resynthesis; click again to release back to live audio. A cross-fade at each edge keeps it click-free.
Freeze on a sustained part (a held chord, a vowel) rather than a transient — the frame you grab is the sound you keep forever.
FREE / SYNC
Chooses how the re-trigger gets its speed.
Toggle on the left rail. FREE uses the RATE knob in Hz; SYNC replaces it with a musical division locked to host tempo. The division chips stay visible so you always see the value.
Use SYNC any time the freeze should be rhythmic — it phase-locks to the host so the stutter never slides off the beat.
RATE
Speed of the freeze's re-trigger / gate — what turns a pad into a stutter.
0–8 Hz (default OFF). At 0 the frame is held flat (the classic sustained pad); raise it and the frozen frame re-fires faster and faster. Active when FREE is selected; replaced by the division under SYNC.
Sweep it from OFF upward across a section — the held pad smoothly turns into a rhythmic gate without any jump.
RE-TRIGGER (division)
The tempo-synced cycle length of the gate.
Choice of 1/16 · 1/8 · 1/4 · 1/2 · 1 bar · 2 bar (default 1/4 — one gate per beat). Only drives the pulse when SYNC is on.
1/4 reads as an obvious on-the-beat gate; 1/16 is a glitch stutter; 2 bar is a slow, hypnotic breathing pad.
WHISPER
The character of the freeze — glassy vs airy.
0–100 % (default 12). Interpolates the frozen frame's phase from coherent (tonal, crystalline, clean) toward per-frame randomization (whisperization, diffuse and breathy).
Keep it low for a clean, glassy hold; push past 50 % to blur the freeze into an airy, noise-like cloud.
SPREAD
How wide the freeze sits in the stereo field.
0–100 % (default 50). De-correlates L/R and pans the freeze with constant-power law, so widening never dents the energy.
Park it near 0 to keep the freeze mono and centered; open it up to wrap a held pad around the listener.
DUCK
Makes the freeze breathe with the performance.
0–100 % (default 0, off). An envelope follower on the dry signal pulls the wet (freeze) down when the dry hits, and lets it return in the gaps.
Raise it under drums or a vocal so the frozen bed steps aside on each hit and the mix stays clear — it feels, not buries.
MIX
Dry/wet blend of the freeze.
0–100 % (default 100). Power-law cross-fade; the dry travels delayed to stay aligned with the engine's latency, so the blend phase-matches.
100 % on a send to layer a pure freeze under the live track; pull back on an insert to keep the dry note present beneath the held frame.
IN PHASE
Collapses the stereo image to a mono-compatible path.
Toggle in the utility column. One click forces a positive phase correlation so the de-correlated freeze doesn't cancel when summed to mono.
Leave it on when the track has to survive a club PA or a phone speaker and you're running SPREAD high.
IN / OUT
Input and output trim.
−24…+24 dB each (default 0). IN stages level into the STFT engine; OUT compensates the level on the way out.
Trim IN down a touch on hot signals so the frozen frame is captured clean, without the engine running too hot.
Tips & tricks
01
02
For a rhythmic gate, FREEZE, then flip to SYNC and pick 1/4 or 1/8 — the held frame stutters in perfect time with the song.
03
Automate RATE from OFF up to fast across a riser: the pad lifts off into a tightening stutter right into the drop.
04
On a send/aux bus, keep MIX at 100 % and freeze a copy of a part — you layer a suspended bed under the dry track without touching it.
05
Push WHISPER high for a vocal freeze that turns into an airy, breathy texture — great glue under a chorus.
06
Use DUCK under a busy drum bus so the frozen pad breathes in the gaps instead of masking the groove.
Troubleshooting
I froze something but I still hear the live signal.
Check MIX — at less than 100 % you hear the dry note under the frozen frame on purpose. Raise MIX to 100 % to hear only the freeze. FREEZE itself just captures the frame; MIX decides how much of the wet you hear.
The frozen pad sounds metallic or ringy.
Lower WHISPER toward 0 for a cleaner, more coherent hold, and try freezing on a more sustained, tonal part of the sound. A metallic ring usually comes from grabbing a noisy or transient frame; capture a steadier note instead.
The stutter isn't locked to my beat.
Flip the rail to SYNC and pick a division (e.g. 1/4). In FREE the RATE knob runs in Hz and won't follow the host tempo. Under SYNC the gate phase-locks to the song so it can't drift.
The freeze disappears or sounds thin in mono.
Turn on IN PHASE and/or pull SPREAD down. High SPREAD de-correlates L/R, which partly cancels when summed to mono; IN PHASE forces a mono-compatible path so nothing drops out.
Specs
Formats: VST3 · AU
Systems: macOS
Build: Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel)
Engine: STFT spectral freeze (overlap-add, Hann 75 %)
Re-trigger: Tempo-synced gate, host phase-locked
Latency: N = 2048 samples (one full frame, reported = real, latency-compensated dry)
License: AGPLv3 · open-source