DOOF is a kick-drum synthesizer plugin (VST3 + Standalone). This guide reflects the plugin as built through Phase 4 (layers and the mixer).
DOOF is under construction, so parts of the interface describe features that exist and parts are still stubs. Where something isn't built yet, this guide says so rather than leaving you to find out.
- VST3: the build produces
DOOF.vst3. Install it in your system's VST3 folder (e.g.~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/on macOS) and rescan plugins in your DAW. - Standalone: run the built
DOOF.appdirectly. Standalone has no host play head, so the beat grid never appears there — that needs a real DAW host.
DOOF is played with MIDI notes. A note-on triggers the kick; retriggering while a note is still ringing chokes the old one and starts the new one cleanly.
Across the top are five layers. Each is an independent sound source with its own envelopes and its own place in the mix.
Each layer cell has:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Number | Which layer this is, 1–5 |
| Type | Off, Sub, or Click |
| M | Mute — lights red when on |
| S | Solo — lights amber when on |
| Level | That layer's contribution to the mix |
Click anywhere on a layer — its background, or any of its controls — to select it. The selected layer has a white outline, and the editing area below shows that layer.
Out of the box, layer 1 is a Sub and layers 2–5 are Off.
- Sub — the sine-based body of the kick, edited with the envelope canvas below.
- Click — not built yet (Phase 5). Selecting a Click layer shows a placeholder instead of the canvas.
- Off — the layer is not in the mix at all.
Solo is multi-solo: any number of layers can be soloed at once, and all of them stay audible.
| Layer's flags | Nothing soloed | Something soloed |
|---|---|---|
| neither | audible | silent |
| solo | audible | audible |
| mute | silent | silent |
| solo and mute | silent | silent |
The last row is the rule worth remembering: mute always wins over solo. A layer with both set is silent, but its solo still counts — so it goes on silencing everything that isn't soloed.
The strip shows you this directly:
- Soloed layers light up with an amber background.
- Layers silenced by someone else's solo are dimmed.
Dimming means specifically "silent, and nothing on this layer says why." A muted layer isn't dimmed — its red M is the visible reason. An Off layer isn't dimmed either, for the same reason.
One deliberate quirk: soloing an Off layer does nothing. An Off layer makes no sound, so letting its solo silence everything else would give you a silent patch with no visible cause.
Layers are summed straight, with no division by how many are active — so turning a layer on never changes how the others sound. Five layers at full level will therefore exceed full scale. That's expected; the master limiter arrives in Phase 9.
Selecting a Sub layer shows the canvas, which overlays two curves for that layer on one shared time axis:
- Cyan — the pitch envelope (Hz)
- Orange — the amp envelope (0–1)
Each curve is normalised to the canvas's full height independently, so despite their different units they share the same vertical space.
The canvas always edits the selected layer. Switching layers swaps the curves under you; your zoom and pan stay where they are, so you can compare the same time window across two layers.
- Move a node — click and drag its dot. A readout near the cursor shows its live value and time.
- Add a node — set the Editing dropdown to Pitch or Amp, then double-click empty canvas space. The node is added to the curve named there.
- Delete a node — double-click it, or right-click it and choose Delete Node.
- Reshape a curve — click and drag the curve line itself, between two nodes. The curve bends to follow your cursor at the point you grabbed. Hold Shift for finer control.
Right-clicking the canvas opens a menu:
- Delete Node — only when you right-clicked on a node.
- Reset Curve — returns that curve to its out-of-the-box shape.
- Copy Curve / Paste Curve — copies a curve's shape via the system clipboard. This works across curves and across layers, so you can paste a pitch shape onto an amp curve, or reuse one layer's envelope on another.
- Mouse wheel zooms the time axis, centred on your cursor.
- Click and drag empty space pans.
Both are view-only. Neither ever changes the envelope data.
Each curve has its own work-area length — how much time you're editing, distinct from the full 4-second range the engine can hold.
Set it either way:
- Drag the small triangle handle at the bottom of the canvas (one per curve).
- Type into the Pitch Len (s) / Amp Len (s) fields.
The two stay in sync. Adding and moving nodes is bounded to the work area, so Length is a way to zoom your editing into the part of the sound you care about.
Length is per curve and per layer.
Log Scale (Pitch) switches the pitch curve between linear and logarithmic vertical mapping. It's display-only — it never touches the envelope data or the audio.
It applies to the pitch curve alone. The amp curve is always linear, since its range includes exactly 0, where a log scale is undefined.
This setting is remembered per layer, along with the Editing dropdown — so each layer keeps the view you last used on it.
Faint vertical gridlines mark beat boundaries, synced to your host's tempo. VST3 in a DAW only; the Standalone app has no tempo source on macOS.
- Cmd+Z to undo, Cmd+Shift+Z to redo (Ctrl on Windows).
- The Undo / Redo buttons do the same thing.
All layers and both curves share one undo history, so undo always reverts whatever you did most recently, wherever you did it. A whole drag — however many small mouse movements it was made of — undoes in a single step. The history holds 30 steps.
Loading a preset clears the history: a freshly loaded patch isn't an edit you can undo your way out of.
Save… and Load… write and read a .doof file. It holds the complete patch: every layer's type, level, mute and solo, both envelopes for all five layers, each layer's Length and view settings, and the master gain.
This is the same state your DAW saves with its project, so a patch that sounds right in the plugin will sound right when you reopen the session.
Older .doof files still load. A preset saved before layers existed opens as the single-layer patch it described, with the other four layers returned to their factory state.
So you know where the edges are:
- Click layers (Phase 5) — selecting one shows a placeholder.
- Sub tuning and phase tools (Phase 6).
- FX, routing, EQ, analyzer, master limiter (Phases 7–9).
- Sidechain triggering (Phase 10).
- Preset browser and drag-out export (Phase 11) — for now, presets are plain
.dooffiles you manage yourself. - The finished skin (Phase 12). The current flat dark look is a working surface, not the intended design.