LOUIS
The effects engines built for OTTO and IDA, packaged as standalone plugins for any DAW — the same processing, the same voicing, outside the instrument that first needed it.
The Idea
OTTO and IDA grew their own effects because nothing off the shelf did quite the right thing — a compressor that travels continuously between characters instead of offering a menu of them, a reverb derived from measurements of real spaces, a tape stage that models the magnetics rather than sampling the result. Those engines were built for a drum instrument, but nothing about them is drum-specific.
LOUIS is that work made available on its own: the same engines, unmodified, wrapped so they load on any track in any session. Nothing is reimplemented for the standalone versions — they compile the same source OTTO does, so a mix built with one behaves identically in the other.
The name is an acronym — Linear, Organic, Unified, Interpolated, Synthesis — which describes the approach the suite is built on: rather than offering a menu of discrete presets to pick between, each plugin travels continuously through the space those presets would occupy. It is the same instinct that produced the VectorMorph sampling engine, applied to effects.
The Suite
- Vector Compressor - A single always-stereo dynamics engine that morphs continuously through eight classic compressor characters along one signal path
- Vector Reverb - A living algorithmic reverb whose coefficients derive from measurements of real acoustic spaces, reaching rooms that could not physically exist
- Vector Tape - Algorithmic analog-tape coloration: magnetic saturation, tape-speed emphasis, wow and flutter, and program-dependent noise
- Vector Dist - A distortion in its own right, with a character sweep running from fuzz through grind and crunch to warm
- Vector Amp - A guitar amplifier and speaker solved together, competing on feel and response rather than static tone
- Vector Sampler - The instrument of the suite: a multi-timbral sample player built to play between an instrument's dynamic layers
Built as VST3, AU, CLAP, and AUv3 for macOS, Windows, and iOS. The suite is designed to grow well past these — the naming convention exists because there are a lot more coming.
Read More
Three of the four engines are documented in depth on their own pages, written from the perspective of the OTTO and IDA signal path they were designed inside:
Licensing
LOUIS is commercial, proprietary software — licensed, not sold. Music you make with it is yours, and no royalty is owed on it.