Audio effect plugin / complete vocal-processing environment
Clean, shape, control and finish dialogue, vocals, podcasts, streams and creative voice effects without building a massive processing chain first.
BETA 0.9.0-BETA.1 / MACOS + WINDOWS / VST3 + AUDIO UNIT / OPEN BETA
Prepare the recording before the rest of the chain.
Reduce unwanted noise and artifacts before tone and dynamics work.
Add preamp-style tone and harmonic colour before the main shaping stages.
Shape tone, reduce resonant problems and add guarded colour.
Reduce harsh sibilance without darkening the whole vocal.
Control vocal peaks, consistency and density.
A complete tape-machine stage: saturation, tone and subtle movement.
Finish the chain and protect the final level.
Dialogue · Singing · Podcasts · Streaming · Content · Sound design
Built for spoken and sung vocals, from clean dialogue to heavily processed character voices.Why it works
Studio instincts in a box.
Room, noise, clicks and breaths are handled early, and dynamic cleanup reduces problems when they occur. Delta monitoring keeps the process honest: if the removed signal starts singing along, the cleanup is stealing lunch money from the performance.
Mic Pre adds density and focus. Tape adds rounding, tone and subtle motion. The character stages are gain-aware, because 'it got louder' is the oldest trick in the plugin sales department.
Auto tools make stable first-pass decisions and avoid forcing settings when evidence is weak. Master Auto works in order: gain, cleanup, tone, then loudness matching.
PublishMode is not trying to be a museum piece. It borrows useful behaviour from classic studio tools, then makes those ideas voice-aware and practical inside one chain. Think studio instincts in a box, not please admire this antique capacitor for six minutes.
The chain is built around a simple order of operations: prepare the signal, clean what should not be there, add tone and colour, control movement, then protect the output.
The analogue-style stages use broad tone curves, soft nonlinear drive, level-dependent smoothing and small time variations. Some of the colour comes from frequency-dependent saturation, where lows, mids and highs do not all hit the circuit with the same attitude.
Mic Pre is about harmonic density and focus before the chain gets serious. Tape adds compression-like rounding, tone tilt and tiny motion so the vocal can feel less pasted onto the track. Both are gain-aware, because 'it got louder' is the oldest trick in the plugin sales department.
EQ is split into jobs. Tone is broad and musical. Cleanup is subtractive and dynamic, so mud and boxiness are reduced more when they actually show up instead of carving a permanent hole through the whole performance.
Clean is placed early because removing room, noise, clicks and breaths before heavy tone shaping is usually less dramatic and more natural. The Delta buttons are there for honesty: if the removed signal starts singing along, the cleanup is stealing lunch money from the performance.
The Vocal Suite is where PublishMode stops being only a finishing chain and starts doing the fun studio tricks: tuning, harmony, character shifts, delay and reverb.
The time-based effects are designed to sit behind the lead instead of wrestling it for the microphone. Ducking, tone shaping, saturation, width and tempo sync are there so space can feel produced without turning the vocal into a weather system.
AUTO tools are intentionally conservative. They look for usable voice, make stable first-pass decisions and avoid forcing a setting when the evidence is weak.
Master Auto stages its decisions in order: gain first, cleanup and tone after, loudness matching last. The goal is not magic; it is a good assistant who sets up the console before you touch the faders, labels the tape and does not pretend silence is a lead vocal.
Vocal Suite
Correct pitch, build harmonies, reshape the voice and add produced space without leaving the plugin.
Correct, shape and stabilise sung vocal pitch before the creative FX.
Add up to three pitched vocal layers.
Change vocal identity with formant, pitch, sub, drive and body controls.
Add repeats and rhythmic space as a send-style wet return; the dry lead stays at unity.
Add room, plate, hall or chamber space as a send-style wet return.
Space can feel produced without turning the vocal into a weather system.
Hear it
Dialogue, singing and character-processing examples are coming soon.
These figures come from measured audio-thread load of the full processing chain with all sections enabled. PublishMode is a single track insert - one instance per voice track - so even the heaviest configuration leaves most of a modern machine free.
At 48 kHz with a 64-sample buffer: about 10% of one core on a 2021 Apple Silicon Mac.
Cleanup, tuning, harmony, character and 2x oversampling: about 20% of one core on the audio thread, with pitch engines doing additional work on background cores.
Clean, EQ, De-Esser, Dynamics, Tape and Limiter: about 12% of one core.
Everything enabled runs faster than real time at 44.1/48 kHz. At 96 kHz with oversampling, expect roughly real-time render speed per instance.
About
PublishMode is an independent plugin I have been designing, coding, testing and repeatedly changing my mind about for a very very long time. The beta is free, and honest feedback helps enormously. Progress is slow as a solo developer, but I am committed to finishing the project and making it a very useful tool for professional voice work.
FAQ
Yes. The beta is intended to be free while the product is still being tested.
Yes. It is built around the voice, spoken and sung, from dialogue and voice-over to podcasts, streams and stylised vocals. But the chain is capable enough that you can happily run it on almost any source.
Yes, but it is beta software, so treat it carefully and keep backups of important sessions. The site does not promise final release stability yet.
Use the feedback form. There is a Give feedback link in the footer, on the download page and on the installation page.
The longer-term plan is pay-what-you-want, including the option to pay nothing or leave an optional contribution.
The Bearded Beanie