Cavitation Fractures

Input Gain changes the level entering the detector and wet processing. It therefore changes both distortion level and how readily the input triggers cavitation events.

Drive in Emission, increases gain into the asymmetric fold and saturation stages. In Erosion and Vacuum, it applies tube-style saturation before material is removed.

Tone tilts the processed spectrum. Negative values reduce high-frequency content and emphasize the lower body; positive values emphasize upper harmonics. It also changes the positive/negative asymmetry slightly.

Mix crossfades between the original input and the complete processed signal.

Output Gain changes the final level after the dry/wet blend and before the last soft limiter.

Emission adds new audio to the input. Each collapse injects noise-like burst energy and a short resonant shock, followed by asymmetric folding and saturation. This is the original, densest, and most obviously synthetic mode.

Erosion uses each collapse to open up to three narrow moving cuts in the input spectrum. Their center frequencies follow tracked input frequencies when analysis is confident, while Mass changes their bandwidth and event duration. The result is moving spectral holes rather than added resonances.

Vacuum uses the same tracked events to reduce the level of the complete wet signal for short periods. Three simultaneous event envelopes multiply together, producing pressure-drop shapes while retaining a 5% signal floor.

Mode is global. It is stored in the plug-in state and presets, but is not changed by slot selection, slot randomization, or sequencer stepping.

Rupture sets event activity. It raises transient sensitivity, lowers the event threshold, increases event rate and shock injection, and produces denser aftershock cascades. Most of its increase is concentrated toward the upper end of the control.

Mass increases bubble size, event duration, active population, and rebound strength. Higher values produce longer, denser, lower-weighted clusters; lower values favor shorter micro-events.

Friction inversely controls simulation movement. Turning it down increases swirl, timing jitter, population drift, bubble-size variation, and stereo coupling; turning it up restrains those changes.

Snarl sets the balance between input-derived pitch tracking and free resonant spread. Higher values hold detected spectral frequencies more closely; lower values widen detuning and allow the resonators to move independently.

Velvet lengthens the attack of each event and reduces shock level, fold/noise emphasis, event sensitivity, and cluster chaos. Higher values round the leading edge and damp the brightest bursts.

Internal safety scaling reduces the most unstable combinations of high Rupture, low Snarl, high Drive, low Friction, and low Velvet before final limiting.

The transient detector controls when events are launched. Silence or signal below the internal threshold does not generate an autonomous stream of particles.

The FFT tracker supplies candidate frequencies to the event resonators. Snarl determines how strongly those frequencies are retained versus replaced by randomized resonant frequencies.

The particles in the display are visual records of triggered cavitation events, not audio samples. Their position, velocity, age, and energy reflect channel, event strength, population size, movement, and decay.

The input, density, turbulence, and output meters are display summaries. They do not feed control data back into the audio engine.

1-4 select a slot and show its stored cavitation state.

Copy / Paste copies or pastes the complete selected slot state. Pasting applies the destination immediately and stops any active slew for those values.

Random generates new values for the seven slot-controlled parameters. Input Gain, Mix, and Output Gain are unchanged.

CLK OFF stops automatic stepping. Manual slot changes and randomization still use Slew.

CLK INT runs the sequence from the internal clock. Rate is displayed in Hz.

CLK HOST runs from DAW transport and changes Rate to musical divisions.

Slew sets interpolation time between slot states. Each parameter has an independent interpolation lane.

Rate sets internal speed or host-clock division, depending on the selected clock source.

Holding a parameter while slots advance writes that one value into every incoming slot and prevents that control from jumping. Other parameters continue their existing slew.

Preset arrows step through available presets and wrap between the first and last entries.

Preset name opens the preset browser.

Name generates a preset name.

Save writes the complete state. Saving without first generating a name creates one automatically.

Factory / User / Starting Points / Favorites filter the preset browser.

Versioned Save writes a numbered copy when the current preset has changed.

Folder opens the preset directory for external renaming or deletion.

Refresh reloads externally renamed or deleted preset files.