Reference

This chapter is the lookup layer of the manual: what Phaseburn One runs on, the engine-level settings, every parameter with its range and default, and the published research the engine builds on. Everything in the tables below is generated directly from the instrument’s own parameter definitions — when the synth changes, these tables change with it.

Formats and system requirements

Phaseburn One ships as VST3, CLAP and AU (macOS only) plug-ins and as a Standalone application you can play without a DAW. The installer offers every format for your platform; pick any combination. In AU hosts such as Logic Pro and GarageBand, Phaseburn One appears as a software instrument.

Any host that loads VST3, CLAP or AU should work. One AU-specific routing note: in Logic’s instrument slot, audio reaches AUDIO IN through the channel strip’s Side Chain menu rather than a track input — pick any track or bus there and it arrives on the input like anywhere else. If a specific host misbehaves, please report it through the contact form. The popup that opens from the logo names the copy you are running at its top — version, build and format — and that line can be selected and copied into your report.

The Standalone runs at its output device’s own sample rate and follows a change made in the system, but never changes a device’s rate itself; its Audio Output and Audio Input pickers in the cog menu apply at once, and the input has to run at the output’s rate (see The standalone audio device (Chapter 1 — Getting Started)).

Control conventions

A handful of behaviors are the same on every panel, so they are worth learning once here rather than meeting them one chapter at a time.

Knobs. Drag up or down to move a knob; hold Shift while dragging for fine resolution. Scrolling over a knob steps it. Double-click returns it to its factory default. Tick captions around a dial are click targets — clicking one jumps the knob exactly to that value, so a labelled ring doubles as a set of presets for that control — and so are the tick labels beside sliders, such as the mixer faders and the envelope sliders, and along the tempo-synced division rails. Percentage controls label their ticks in the readout’s own unit, −100 / 0 / +100 on a bipolar amount knob. A dial dragged to where its readout shows an end stop, or the center of a bipolar range, sits exactly there rather than a hair off it.

Typing a value. Click the number under any knob and it becomes an entry box. What you type is always in the unit the knob is showing you: a knob reading 50 takes 50, one reading 250 ms takes 250. Units are understood if you include them, so a frequency accepts 1500, 1.5k or 1.5 kHz alike, and a time accepts 250 ms or 0.25 s. Where a knob reads a word rather than a number you can type that word — OFF at the far end of the master high-pass or the bitcrusher’s filters, a filter mode like BP12, a waveform like SAW, or a note name such as C3 on the delay’s SHIFT while its snap badge is lit (note names follow the C3 = middle C convention, matching most DAW piano rolls). Values outside the knob’s range are pulled to the nearest end. Anything that is not a usable number — nan, inf, infinity, or a number too large to hold such as 1e40 — is refused and leaves the control where it was, on every knob, the Standalone’s tempo field and the Figure dial, and in your host’s own parameter text field too. To silence a level knob whose readout goes down to -inf dB — the Vector, Sub, MORPH and PLL volumes, the output volume, Dist level and the AUDIO IN gain — type -inf, -inf dB or off; on every other knob -inf is refused. Press Enter to commit or Escape to abandon the edit.

The S badge. Some knobs carry a small S just to the right of their caption. That is a snap switch, and it constrains the knob to a musical grid rather than to its own raw units: whole ratios on MULT and DIV of the Phase-Locked Loop (PLL), semitones against middle C on the delay’s SHIFT. Lit, the knob lands only on those stops and drags one stop at a time; unlit, it sweeps the full continuous range. Toggling the badge never moves the value — it changes how the knob travels, not where it is — so you can find a setting free-hand and then lock the dial to the grid. The badge is a real switch: it is saved with the preset, and a host can automate it.

In your host’s parameter list. Every control shows the same words there that it shows in the window: a mode selector reads Ladder or SVF, a morph mode reads Saw → Square, an envelope’s synced division reads 1/16T. An automation lane you draw against one of them is reading the same vocabulary as the panel, so a lane is legible without counting indices.

Modulation rings. A thin arc outside a knob’s own indicator shows the reach of the modulation aimed at it — the span its routes can push the value across from where the knob sits. Any source can draw it: an LFO, any of the four step modulators, the filter envelope, the custom envelope, note strength, velocity or the modulation wheel. Patch-bay cable knobs, the dials on the patch-bay boxes and the step modulators’ RATE draw the same ring. In the Modern theme a dot also rides the ring of a modulated knob, at the spot the modulation is playing right now — but only while it moves slowly enough to follow by eye, about once a second or slower. Faster movement, and the Classic theme, show the reach alone, and so do the cable knobs and the tempo-synced division dials in either theme. Switches a route can drive — the freezer’s LOOP, the sub’s NO FX and the PLL’s DIV LOCK and INJ LOCK among them — glow instead of drawing a ring. While routed, the PLL’s switches show the state the engine is running, LOOP lights whenever the freezer is holding a loop, and the PLL’s detector selector glows the same way and names the detector the loop is running.

The right-click menu. Every parameter control has one, and it carries the same entries everywhere: set to default, unlink modulation, MIDI learn and forget, and open in manual. The GENERATE dials Morph, Busyness, Variation, Line and Spread and the three Humanize knobs are not host parameters, so theirs offers MIDI learn and forget only. Any control a modulation route can reach opens with a MODULATION block above those entries — the routes already aimed at it, each with a depth slider, and Add modulation to assign a new one — and a patch-bay cable’s menu adds Remove connection. The MIDI entries are covered in MIDI learn (Chapter 10 — MIDI & Your DAW), the modulation block in Assigning from the control (Chapter 4 — Modulation).

The help line. The strip along the bottom of the window names whatever the pointer is over and describes it in one line. It is the single place the instrument explains itself — nothing ever floats over the control you are working on — and clicking DOCS opens the chapter that covers the control in a reader inside the plug-in.

Engine settings

Two settings govern the engine’s precision-versus-CPU trade: how many times the signal is oversampled, and what internal sample rate it runs at. Neither has a panel control and neither travels in a preset — both are instrument-wide host parameters, shipped at the values tuned for running inside a DAW (2x oversampling, Auto base rate). 2x is also the ceiling: a higher setting, whether automated by your session or restored from an old project, is treated as 2x, and the stages that need more than that — the ladder filter, the distortion, the sub saturator — oversample internally at their own rates.

The core signal path — oscillators, envelopes, filters — runs in 64-bit floating point, with strong alias suppression on the stages that need it. Internal figures quoted anywhere in this manual are our own measured targets, not third-party lab results.

Full parameter index

Every parameter the instrument exposes, grouped by module. Chapters embed the same tables with a “what it does” column; this index is the compact, complete listing.

Research credits

Phaseburn One implements published techniques together with algorithms of our own, and emulates no specific hardware or software instrument. Credited foundations: Vector Phase Shaping (Kleimola, Lazzarini, Timoney & Välimäki, 2011); zero-delay-feedback filter design after Zavalishin; nonlinear ladder filtering after D’Angelo & Välimäki (IEEE 2014); antiderivative anti-aliasing (Parker, Zavalishin & Le Bivic, 2016); feedback-delay-network reverberation in the Jot / Stautner–Puckette lineage; and single-sideband frequency shifting after Bode. Attribution of a published technique does not imply endorsement.

Trademarks

VST is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, registered in Europe and other countries. All other product names, brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners; any reference to them is descriptive only and implies no affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement.