VINAIcore Manual

01Overview

VINAIcore splits the incoming signal into three frequency bands with Linkwitz-Riley crossovers at 200 Hz and 3 kHz (24 dB/oct, phase-coherent). The low band runs mono for a tight, centered punch; mid and high stay stereo to keep width and air intact. Each band carries its own envelope follower, with tanh saturation on the low and high bands and a 5 Hz DC blocker on each saturated path, then the bands recombine into a final safety ceiling.

The whole treatment is governed by the Adaptive Loudness Core and driven by one control. AMOUNT blends the processed bands in over the dry signal. From 0 to 100% it brings low, mid and high in together, in a single move. No band balancing, no threshold hunting: turn it up until it sits, then leave it.

02The interface

• AMOUNT knob (center): the one control, set in a milled recess with an LED corona that lights up to the pointer; 0–100% blends in the processing of all three bands at once.
• Meter bridge (IN · OUT): under the controls, input and output peak and RMS on a −48 to 0 dBFS scale with peak hold, how many dB louder the output reads, and a CLIP lamp that lights when the final clipper touches a sample.
• Final clipper switch: CLIP · ROUND · OFF, the last stage of the chain.
• Side strips: Pre In Gain and Out Gain on the left, Pre Low Cut above the final clipper on the right, with Bypass in the top bar.

03Knobs & buttons

04The final clipper

05Under the hood

Signal flow

Pre In trim → 20 Hz high-pass → 3-way Linkwitz-Riley split → per-band envelope-driven gain, with tanh saturation on low and high → band recombination, blended against the dry by AMOUNT → master stage (envelope gain, tanh saturation, DC block) → Pre Low Cut → Out trim → final clipper. The bands are reconstructed by complementary LR4 filters, so the magnitude sum is flat and phase-coherent across both crossover points. The whole chain runs at native rate with no lookahead: the plugin reports 0 samples of latency to the host.

• Crossovers are 4th-order Linkwitz-Riley (24 dB/oct), implemented as cascaded Butterworth sections, at 200 Hz (low/mid) and 3 kHz (mid/high). LR4 sums to a flat magnitude response with an allpass-equivalent phase, so reconstruction is gap-free.
• Band routing sums the low band to mono after its saturation and DC blocker, for a centered low end; mid and high remain fully stereo to preserve width and air.
• Per-band saturation gives each band its own envelope follower driving its gain, with a tanh saturation stage on the low and high bands. AMOUNT blends all three processed bands against the dry signal at once, so a single control brings low, mid and high in together, in lockstep.
• Safety ceiling: the final clipper is the last stage of the chain, after Pre Low Cut and Out trim, and runs at native rate. CLIP is a hard clamp at 0 dBFS, bit-transparent below full scale; ROUND is a soft tanh knee that bends earlier; OFF removes the clamp and lets the bands run hot into the next stage.
• DC blocking puts a first-order DC blocker (5 Hz corner) on the low, high and master paths, so asymmetric saturation can't accumulate a DC offset before recombination.
• Latency is zero: no lookahead, no oversampling, no linear-phase stage. The plugin reports 0 samples to the host in every mode.
• Output integrity means silence in yields silence out: the processor injects no idle tone, hiss or dither floor.

06Measured

Measured in-house (headless host + numpy/scipy), 48 kHz.

07Specifications