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1. TELESCOPE v0.3.02026-10-12

   TELESCOPE 0.3: the spectrograms scroll again on Windows, and a Linux beta.

   0.3 fixes what was reported on 0.2. On Windows, SPECTROGRAM and STEREO SPECTROGRAM scroll again, and removing or moving TELESCOPE no longer hangs or crashes the DAW. WATERFALL flows instead of jittering, and the SPECTRUM peak hold holds. There is a first build for Linux, in beta. What a file measures did not change: the thirteen golden dumps of the engine are equal to the bit. VST3 + AU for macOS 11+, universal, signed and notarized by Apple; VST3 x64 for Windows 10+ as an unsigned ZIP; VST3 + LV2 for Linux x86_64 as a .tar.gz, in beta — free and open-source (AGPLv3).

   • The spectrograms scroll again on Windows. In 0.1 and 0.2, SPECTROGRAM and STEREO SPECTROGRAM stood still on Windows — only the newest edge changed — and moved only when you clicked a button. The picture was shifted on the graphics card while the new columns went into a copy in memory that did not have the shift; now both happen in memory. On a Mac nothing changes: the pictures are equal to the bit.
   • Removing it no longer hangs or crashes the DAW. No background thread is ever killed any more: TELESCOPE asks it to stop and waits for it, and the threads it waits for no longer start at low priority. Removing or moving it while a reference track or a VERDICT file is still being analysed no longer crashes the DAW — 200 of 200 remove-and-move cycles pass in a test host loading the VST3.
   • WATERFALL flows, and the peak hold holds. Each waterfall line is now a fixed slice of time that moves back smoothly, and changing the DAW’s buffer size no longer wipes it. In SPECTRUM, CQT and SPIRAL a peak stays still for 2 seconds, then falls at the rate you chose.
   • Less work per frame. On a Retina Mac at size L the slowest lens went from 4.8–6.6 ms to 4.0–4.7 ms per frame. And nothing is allocated on the audio thread any more.
   • Linux, in beta. VST3 + LV2 for x86_64, built on Ubuntu 22.04 (glibc 2.35), so it loads on Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12 or anything at least that recent. It passes TELESCOPE’s automated tests and pluginval at strictness 10 on a build server, but it has not been tried in a real DAW yet. No installer: copy it into ~/.vst3 and ~/.lv2 — README-LINUX.txt inside.
   • Ready for the next version of EYEPIECE. With the next version of EYEPIECE open in the same DAW, TELESCOPE will share what it measured — numbers only, in a local file, never audio and never over the network. Without EYEPIECE, TELESCOPE writes nothing at all.
   • Known issues. On Linux, at size S some small labels are drawn thinner than on macOS and Windows; sizes M and L read better.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
2. TELESCOPE v0.2.0Sep 30, 2026

   TELESCOPE 0.2: an open window no longer stalls your DAW.

   The fix that matters most comes first: an open TELESCOPE window could stall the whole DAW, and no longer does. 0.2 also brings a light theme, labels you can read, VERDICT at 125 % and 150 %, and a way to choose which part of the reference TONAL BALANCE compares against. What a file measures did not change: equal to the bit to 0.1.0, checked against thirteen golden dumps of the engine. It comes out on the same day as EYEPIECE, OVNI's free Mac app. Same formats as before — VST3 + AU for macOS 11+, universal, signed and notarized by Apple; VST3 x64 for Windows 10+ as an unsigned ZIP — free and open-source (AGPLv3).

   • The DAW no longer stalls. In 0.1.0 the editor re-baked its background 30 times a second — 12–80 ms per frame — and 11 of the 13 lenses kept redrawing the same silence with the transport stopped. Now the background is baked once and a lens repaints only when something visible changes; at 125 % and 150 % it lands on a whole pixel instead of being resampled every frame.
   • A light theme, and labels you can read. Chosen in the lens strip (THEME); dark is still the default. The four data lenses — SPECTROGRAM, WATERFALL, STEREO SPECTROGRAM and FIELD — keep their dark screen, so the data reads the same. Every axis label is at 4.5:1 contrast or better, with an 11 px floor, in both themes.
   • Silence is no longer a measurement. DYNAMICS leaves it out of its histogram, the live TONAL BALANCE curve does not sink when the music stops, and VERDICT says “waiting for audio” — and nothing else — until the window has had audio above −70 LUFS.
   • VERDICT, in every language. It reflows at 125 % and 150 % in all six, its accents are back — capitals included, in any host — and its MODE button shows the whole name of the mode.
   • A section of the reference. In TONAL BALANCE, drag on the reference's waveform to compare against just one part of it; double-click to go back to the whole file. The section is saved with your session.
   • For whoever builds it. telescope-measure, a command-line tool on the same analysis engine, is in the source — not in the installer.
   • A card for EYEPIECE, once, on the Mac. The first time the window opens with 0.2 on a Mac, a card inside it introduces EYEPIECE. It blocks nothing, and its button opens a web page only if you click it. On Windows there is no card.
   • Known issues. At scale 2, WATERFALL draws dense lines as 2-pixel steps; and the per-second history VERDICT reads still counts whole FFT bins, so at 48 kHz its 25 Hz and 40 Hz bands read the floor.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
3. The catalogueSep 15, 2026

   The three that are out are free forever.

   A change of plan, and it is the good kind. Until today this site said the ready-to-use installers were free until November 23, 2026 and paid after that. That deadline is gone: ORBIT, SUPERNOVA and TELESCOPE stay free, with no date — the code under AGPLv3 as always, and the signed, notarized installers too. What may be paid are new products released later, which do not exist yet and have no date or price. Nothing you already downloaded changes, and nothing you download from here on will ask you for money later.

   • What is free forever. The three plug-ins published so far: ORBIT, SUPERNOVA and TELESCOPE — installers included, not just the source. The six still locked in the catalogue get decided when they come out.
   • Why it changed. The 90-day window was there to create urgency. It also meant anyone arriving later found a wall, and it put this site at odds with the places that only list permanently free plug-ins. A label that says “measured, not marketed” should not run a countdown.
4. TELESCOPE v0.1.0Sep 15, 2026

   TELESCOPE: an analyser that also concludes.

   The ninth OVNI plug-in. One analysis engine and thirteen lenses — loudness, dynamics, spectrum and sonograms, notes and key, stereo, pan and tonal balance against a reference — and a thirteenth, VERDICT, that writes what it found, each line with the number and the rule next to it. It never touches your audio: 0 samples of latency, bit-exact pass-through. VST3 + AU for macOS 11+, universal, signed and notarized by Apple; VST3 x64 for Windows 10+ as an unsigned ZIP. Free and open-source (AGPLv3), like the rest.

   • Thirteen lenses, one engine. LOUDNESS to ITU-R BS.1770, with LRA per EBU Tech 3342 and true peak per BS.1770 Annex 2; DYNAMICS (PSR, PLR, clip events); SPECTRUM, SPECTROGRAM and WATERFALL; CQT and SPIRAL by note; SCOPE with POLAR LEVEL; BAND CORRELATION, STEREO SPECTROGRAM, FIELD and TONAL BALANCE. Only what the open lens needs is computed — loudness is always on, so the integrated value never has a hole.
   • VERDICT says what it measured, and nothing more. 21 deterministic rules over a per-second history: it opens with what is within range, then how it will feel, where it translates, and what to check and where — every finding with its number and its rule. No model, no network, no telemetry: the same signal gives the same report, word for word. Measurement, not taste — and no findings is not the same as finished.
   • It does not guess where a sound is. FIELD and POLAR LEVEL show energy by pan direction — not localisation — and the label says so on screen. The per-device checks (phone, headphones, laptop, car, club, hi-fi) are generic definitions of each kind of system, not curves of real speakers.
   • Analysing a file is the live analysis, to the bit. Drop a track on TONAL BALANCE, or on VERDICT in FILE mode, and it is measured offline with the same classes: 60 s of audio in about a quarter of a second on an M4.
   • What it installs. A signed, notarized .pkg with VST3 + AU, universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 11 or newer. The standalone app is not in this installer. Six languages inside the plug-in — English and Spanish reviewed; Portuguese, French, German and Italian pending native review.
   • Windows too. VST3 x64 for Windows 10+ as an unsigned ZIP, in the same release — see README FIRST.txt inside.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
5. SUPERNOVA v0.4.0Sep 9, 2026

   SUPERNOVA: photos dissolve, and the clip looks like the window.

   A SUPERNOVA-only release, and it closes the two things you could see were missing. Photos now melt into each other instead of cutting, and the video you export finally looks like the window it came from. Its soundtrack is thirty seconds long now, not twelve, and the loop point no longer clicks. The seven audio plug-ins and ORBIT are unchanged. Run the installer over 0.3.2 — presets and sessions are kept. macOS only, as before.

   • Every photo change dissolves into the next. Until now the picture swapped in a single frame — a hard cut, and it showed the moment you filmed the screen. The incoming picture now melts over the old one, however the change is fired: the clock, a click, a number key, an arrow, a MIDI note, or dropping a photo on top of another one. There is nothing to switch on and nothing to set: the length comes from the clock itself — about 0.7 s at the usual pace, 0.11 s when photos change on every kick with the minimum gap — so it always finishes before the next change and a burst of kicks never trips over itself. Burst still explodes: what blows apart re-forms already wearing the new picture's colours. Two things still cut, on purpose: CLEAR, and opening a session onto an empty canvas.
   • The exported MP4 now looks like the window. You could set up a shot you liked, press EXPORT and get back something else: the same photo and the same knobs came out as a spray of dots piled against the edges of the frame, darker, with the figure gone. Four things were wrong and they stacked — the physics depended on your screen's refresh rate; 4K came out around half as bright as 1080p; the clip re-read your photo the plain way instead of the way the window reads it; and three kicks that were not in the music (one on the very first frame, one on every lap of the audio, and every real kick counted twice) fired the engine. All four are fixed. The clip also starts already in motion and keeps the tilt and colour drift ORBIT and HUE CYC have accumulated. What still does not travel: the clip freezes the knob values of the moment you press EXPORT, so an LFO or a preset morph in flight is not baked in.
   • The clip's soundtrack is the last 30 seconds you played, not 12 — and the loop no longer ticks. Twelve seconds was fine for a short social loop but too short for a 30–45 second piece: you heard the same bar come back. The repeat was also a hard cut — the last sample of the take followed by the first, wherever the waveform happened to be — which ticked on every lap. The join is now crossfaded over 10 ms, and the take stays exactly as long as the picture's loop.
   • The physics is anchored to 120 Hz now — which also changes what you see on a 60 Hz screen. The engine used to fade its pulses per frame, so a look dialled in on a ProMotion Mac and the clip rendered from it were two different worlds. Those fades are measured in seconds now, on the clock of a 120 Hz display. On a 60 Hz screen, and in the clip, pulses are shorter and the picture pulls itself back together sooner than they used to. Nothing was retuned — the worlds' numbers are untouched: both now look the way SUPERNOVA has always looked on a ProMotion Mac.
   • Exporting a photo sequence is fast again. The clip decodes each photo once, not once per lap of the loop. With two photos changing on the kick, a 30-second clip meant about 120 of those readings instead of two, and the window looked frozen for far longer than the clip lasts.
   • The hint bar in the standalone app no longer offers DAW automation. It read everything automatable from the DAW in both the plug-in and the app; in the app there is no host to automate anything. It now points at what actually moves a control there without your hands: an LFO, or a MIDI CC you learned.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
6. ORBIT v0.3.0Sep 7, 2026

   ORBIT: the binaural cues are real now.

   An ORBIT-only release, and the biggest one it has had. The cues your ears actually use to place a sound — the tiny delay between your ears and the level difference in the low end — were too small and, at some angles, pointing at the wrong ear. They were rebuilt from a spherical-head model. ORBIT also reports its latency now, so the host lines the dry signal up for you. SUPERNOVA and the other six plug-ins are unchanged. Read the rename note below before you install — the plug-in files have new names.

   • The delay between your ears is real. At 90° to one side it is now 656 µs — what a head does. It used to be around 90 µs, it barely grew as the source went to the side, and at some angles it pointed at the wrong ear. Sources to your left and right sit where you point them now, and they stay there.
   • The low end no longer leans to the wrong side. Below 250 Hz the level difference between your ears was inverted. Above 250 Hz nothing changed.
   • ORBIT reports its latency and your DAW compensates it exactly — 424 samples (8.83 ms) at 48 kHz, and it no longer moves when you turn DOPPLER up. Because the dry signal is delayed by the same amount, a MIX between 0 and 100 % no longer comb-filters: the worst notch below 1 kHz at MIX 50 % went from 4.7 dB to 0.1 dB. Before, ORBIT claimed zero and ran up to 9 ms late.
   • The tail is declared (0.104 s), so hosts stop cutting the end off a bounce.
   • Left Pocket and Right Pocket were swapped — they had been since the presets shipped. If a saved project uses one of them it will now sound on the other side: load the opposite preset.
   • The plug-ins are now called OVNI ORBIT (they were just ORBIT). macOS treats plug-in names case-insensitively, so our ORBIT.component and another maker's Orbit.component were the same file and overwrote each other. On macOS the installer retires the old one for you — only if it is ours — and moves it, never deletes it, to …/Library/Application Support/OVNI Audio/replaced/<date>/; then run killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar and rescan in your DAW. On Windows, delete C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\ORBIT.vst3 by hand before copying the new one in. Your saved projects keep working: only the file name moved.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
7. v0.3.2Sep 6, 2026

   SUPERNOVA is honest about older Macs.

   A small SUPERNOVA-only fix release. On macOS 11 and 12 the app now says System Audio needs macOS 13, instead of offering a permission it could never get — and a handful of things around system-audio capture that only bite in edge cases now behave. Nothing changed in the sound, the visuals or the worlds. The seven OVNI audio plugins and ORBIT are unchanged. Install it over 0.3.1. macOS only, as before.

   • On macOS 11 and 12 the app says so, instead of offering a button that could never work. Neither route to system audio exists on those versions — Core Audio taps need 14.2, ScreenCaptureKit needs 13 — so ALLOW raised no dialog and failed again, every time. The top bar now reads System Audio needs macOS 13 or later on this Mac — use an input device or MIDI, with no button, and SUPERNOVA no longer even tries to capture. The plug-ins are unaffected: VST3 and AU still run on macOS 11 and up.
   • Waiting for macOS permission… no longer gets stuck. Switching the source twice while the macOS dialog was still open left the notice frozen until you re-picked the source: the second attempt landed on one already in flight and nothing ever restarted it. The app now notices and asks again, once a second, without raising new dialogs.
   • The capture reports the rate the audio actually arrives at. With the output at 44.1 kHz the tap still declared 48 kHz — that was the number being passed along, and the reason a sample-rate change went unnoticed. The aggregate device's real rate is now read and used.
   • Plugging headphones in, or quitting while macOS is still asking, is tidier under the hood. The capture no longer starts the audio device for an instant when the attempt was already cancelled, and a late notification from the system can no longer reach an object that is already gone.
   • The packaging step refuses to build a package where any single bundle is missing its binary, instead of only checking that the payload contained some binary somewhere.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
8. v0.3.1Sep 6, 2026

   SUPERNOVA asks for audio, not for your screen.

   A SUPERNOVA-only release, all of it about the app's audio. On macOS 14.2+ the system-audio permission is now the small, exact one — System Audio Recording — and it's asked when you pick the source, not when the app opens. Plus a round of fixes for what broke around it: plugging in headphones, closing the window while macOS was still asking, and a REOPEN that built a shell command out of the folder name. The seven OVNI audio plugins and ORBIT are unchanged. Install it over 0.3.0 — your presets and sessions are kept. macOS only, as before.

   • The permission is audio, not screen. On macOS 14.2+ the app uses Core Audio process taps, so the prompt names exactly what it does — System Audio Recording Only. SUPERNOVA never looked at your screen; until now that was simply the only way macOS exposed system audio. macOS 13–14.1 keep the ScreenCaptureKit path, because those taps don't exist there yet.
   • It asks when you pick the source, not when you open the app. SUPERNOVA starts, the visual runs, and the top bar offers ALLOW — you see what's being asked before you answer. Say no and the app stays usable on an input device or MIDI, and the notice tells you which pane to open.
   • REOPEN relaunches the copy you're running. It used to hand the job to LaunchServices, which could resolve the bundle id to a different installed copy of SUPERNOVA and reopen that one.
   • REOPEN no longer builds a shell command out of your folder name. The app's path was pasted into a shell command, so a copy sitting in a folder with $(…) or backticks in its name — a perfectly legal folder name — ran that when you pressed REOPEN. The path now travels as a plain argument and is never parsed as code.
   • Plugging in headphones no longer leaves the visual deaf. Changing the output device — or its sample rate — used to silence System Audio until you reopened the app. It now notices and rebuilds itself in about a second, without asking for permission again.
   • Closing the app — or switching source — while macOS is asking no longer freezes it. The system's permission dialog blocks until you answer it, and the app used to wait for that on its main thread: a beachball for as long as the dialog stayed open.
   • The top bar says when it's waiting for macOS — Waiting for macOS permission… — instead of showing nothing while a system dialog appears out of nowhere.
   • If capture fails for a reason that isn't the permission — no output device, a broken audio chain — the notice offers ALLOW to retry, instead of leaving the app silently stuck. And switching the permission off with the app open brings the notice back, instead of the app pretending to listen.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
9. v0.3.0Sep 5, 2026

   SUPERNOVA becomes a playable instrument.

   A SUPERNOVA-only release: a MEDIA session you can cue, reorder and relink, a sequence clock that cuts on the beat, an LFO section that means what it says, and four kaleidoscope worlds swapped for a photographic family (still 50 worlds). The seven OVNI audio plugins and ORBIT are unchanged. Install it over 0.2.0 — your presets and sessions are kept. macOS only, as before.

   • A MEDIA strip of numbered thumbnails between the visual and the knobs: click or ← / → to cue, drag to reorder, ✕ to remove, ▦ to hide it.
   • Drop photos or a whole folder between two tiles and they land exactly there, instead of at the end.
   • Media that moved is marked missing instead of vanishing — Relink… one file, or a whole folder at once.
   • A canvas FORMAT chip: AUTO, FREE, 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 or 4:3, with FIT or FILL.
   • A sequence clock that advances by Seconds, Beats (cuts land on the bar) or every Kick — Loop or Shuffle, Cut or Burst.
   • 21 beat divisions for the LFO rates, each with its triplet and dotted, plus a free-running 0.05–20 Hz mode that ignores the tempo.
   • Per-LFO BI / UNI polarity, PHASE 0–360° and RETRIG, all saved with the project.
   • LFO depth means what it says: at 100 % it sweeps exactly the target's range and can no longer push it out of bounds.
   • LFOs are recalculated on every rendered frame, so fast modulation reads as a wave instead of a staircase.
   • Cue photos from a MIDI pad: notes 72–87 pick a tile, 88 / 89 step next / previous, 90 jumps to a random one.
   • A photo sequence is exported the way it plays — its clock, its order and its Burst transition.
   • Four kaleidoscope worlds become Parallax, Lantern, Meridian and Vantage: your picture stays your picture. Still 50 worlds.
   • Rotating a photo is instant — the decode is cached upright (a measured 45× on four turns).
   • Fixed: sessions saved with a comma decimal separator survive a host that switches the C locale.
   • Fixed: undo restores your LFO bank, MIDI-learn map and scenes.
   • Fixed: a click in the instant a project loads no longer overwrites the setting it just restored.

   Release notes & checksums ↗
10. v0.2.1Sep 4, 2026

    ORBIT: the AU installs again.

    The v0.2.0 installer declared its bundles as 0.1.1, so macOS skipped the Audio Unit on Macs that already had ORBIT — the VST3 landed, the AU didn't. v0.2.1 fixes the installer. No DSP changes: it sounds exactly like v0.2.0. The Windows ZIP is unchanged (byte-identical) — on Windows there's nothing to do.

    Release notes & checksums ↗

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The code is free forever (AGPLv3), and so are the installers for ORBIT, SUPERNOVA and TELESCOPE — no deadline. New products released later may be paid.