Borato Desire v0.0.1 - vst

Borato Desire v0.0.1

The first build of Borato Desire: a saturation/character plugin with a full
WebView2-hosted interface, a from-scratch DSP engine, presets, A/B, undo/redo,
and a CI pipeline that builds it on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

All artifacts are unsigned development builds. The macOS Audio Unit is
ad-hoc signed and validated in CI with auval -v aufx Dsre BoCo.

Highlights

• 🎛️ 9-stage character engine — Input trim → Body (low-shelf tone) →
  Heat/Desire (blended tanh/soft-knee waveshaper) → Motion (real stereo
  movement via phase-offset delay lines) → Silk (harshness-taming lowpass) →
  Width (mid/side, with a safety soft-clip) → equal-treatment dry/wet → Output
  trim.
• 🌐 WebView-hosted UI, not a mockup — the HTML/CSS/JS in Prototype/ is
  the shipped interface, embedded in the plugin binary with no runtime
  filesystem or network dependency, and it also runs standalone in a browser
  with mocked data for fast iteration.
• 📈 A response curve that's actually live — reflects Body/Silk in real
  time and has two draggable handles wired to the same parameters as the
  knobs below it.
• 💾 Presets, A/B, undo/redo — 4 factory presets across all 3 modes, user
  presets saved to disk, two independent A/B slots with copy, full undo/redo.
• 🛡️ Real-time safety, proven, not assumed — a dedicated test overrides
  operator new to prove the audio thread performs zero heap allocations
  across a varied parameter sweep.
• 🧪 22 automated tests — 10 C++ DSP invariant tests, 2 preset-manager
  integration tests (through the real APVTS → DesireEngine path), 12 JS
  tests for every pure UI math function (meters, curve, knob mapping).
• 🩹 A fallback that isn't an afterthought — NATIVE/AUTO UI backend
  modes mean a missing WebView2 runtime degrades to a diagnostic control
  panel instead of a blank or crashed editor.

What's in the plugin

DSP (Source/DesireEngine.cpp)

Parameter	Range	Default	What it does
Input	−24…+12 dB	−10 dB	Trim into the drive stage — the main gain-staging control.
Body	0–100%	65%	Low-shelf weight/density around 220 Hz, mode-biased.
Heat	0–100%	72%	Waveshaper hardness (blends a soft tanh knee with a harder knee).
Silk	0–100%	58%	Lowpass (5.5–20 kHz) that tames high-frequency harshness from saturation.
Desire	0–100%	76%	Main drive amount into the waveshaper — up to 12 dB of pre-gain.
Motion	0–100%	64%	Depth of two phase-offset (90°) fractional delay lines — real stereo decorrelation, not amplitude modulation.
Width	0–200%	128%	Mid/side stereo width on the wet signal, safety-clipped so anti-phase content at extreme width can't blow past a sane ceiling.
Mix	0–100%	42%	Dry/wet blend.
Output	−24…+12 dB	0 dB	Final trim, applied after the blend.
Mode	Intimate / Club / After Dark	Club	Biases Body/Heat tone-shaping per character.
Bypass	off/on	off	True unity passthrough (crossfades Output back to 0 dB too, not just the wet mix) — no click.

Every parameter has its own smoothing ramp (20 ms for Input/Output/Mix up to
225 ms for Motion, 200 ms for Mode changes) instead of one shared constant, so
a preset switch reads as a transition rather than a reset. All parameter
inputs are sanitized against NaN/Inf; AudioProcessor::reset() clears filter
and delay-line state on transport stop/loop.

Metering & analysis

• Peak + RMS meters for input and output, dB-scaled (not linear — a
  linear meter drew a signal at −6 dBFS, already close to clipping, at only
  half height). The input meter reflects the signal after the Input trim is
  applied, so turning that knob visibly moves it.
• Spectrum analyzer: lock-free SPSC FIFO → 2048-point Hann-windowed FFT on the
  message thread → 96 log-spaced bins, selectable PRE/POST tap, and it's
  fully inert (no FFT work at all) when switched off.
• Low/mid/high band energy, gain-reduction, and a composite "desire energy"
  value are sent to the UI for visual feedback — none of it feeds back into
  the DSP.

Interface

• 9 continuous knobs + Mode selector + Bypass, all bound through JUCE's web
  relay/attachment system — parameter changes are bidirectional with host
  automation, with one source of truth (the APVTS), never a second copy in
  JavaScript.
• Double-click any knob (or curve handle) to restore its true default value.
• Toolbar: preset prev/next/name/save, A/B + copy, undo/redo, bypass — built
  as transparent hit-targets over the baked SVG chrome, so nothing is drawn
  twice.
• Analyzer controls: Spectrum on/off, Pre/Post tap, LF/HF range.
• A JS error overlay + reportJavaScriptError native function surface UI
  bugs instead of failing silently.

Presets, A/B, undo/redo

• 4 factory presets — Late Night Confessions (default), Velvet Room, Main
  Floor, After Hours — spanning all three modes.
• User presets save/load/delete as XML files on disk.
• Two independent A/B slots holding the full parameter state, with a
  one-click copy between them.
• Full undo/redo via juce::UndoManager, wired into the APVTS.

Backend resilience

• BORATO_DESIRE_UI_BACKEND build option: WEBVIEW (default), NATIVE
  (diagnostic-only juce::Graphics editor, no WebView2 dependency), or
  AUTO (starts WebView2, falls back to the diagnostic editor automatically
  if the page hasn't reported ready within 3 seconds).
• The DSP never depends on the editor: audio keeps processing with the editor
  closed, and closing/reopening it can't affect sound.

Fixed during development

• Toolbar controls visually doubling up on top of the baked SVG chrome.
• A hidden heap allocation on the audio thread every block (filter
  coefficient updates) — now allocation-free, proven by test.
• Unbounded gain through the stereo width stage on anti-phase content at
  extreme Width settings.
• Bypass leaking the Output trim instead of being a true unity passthrough.
• An audible click on Mode switches from an unsmoothed tone-shaping bias.
• The default preset pushing already-mastered/hot material into constant
  ceiling saturation (halved the internal drive ceiling, dropped default
  Input to −10 dB).
• VU meters reading on a linear scale instead of dB, and the input meter not
  responding to the Input knob at all (it measured the signal before the
  knob's gain was applied).
• Motion using an inaudible mono amplitude-modulation trick instead of actual
  stereo movement.
• The response curve being fully decorative with two non-functional handles.

Downloads

Platform	Files
Windows (x64)	BoratoDesire-v0.0.1-Windows-x64-VST3.zip, -Standalone.zip
macOS (Apple Silicon)	BoratoDesire-v0.0.1-macOS-arm64-VST3.zip, -AU.zip
macOS (Intel)	BoratoDesire-v0.0.1-macOS-intel-VST3.zip, -AU.zip
Linux (Ubuntu)	BoratoDesire-v0.0.1-Ubuntu-VST3.tar.gz
All	INSTALL-*.md (per-platform install paths)

See README.md for building from source and
MANUAL.md for how to use the plugin.

Testing

cmake --build build --config Release --target DesireEngineTests PresetManagerTests
ctest --test-dir build -C Release --output-on-failure
node --test tests/graphics-mapping.test.js

22 tests, all green: 10 DSP engine invariants, 2 preset-manager integration
tests, 12 UI mapping-function tests.

Changelog

• feat: add JUCE WebView plugin with DSP engine, presets, and tests
• feat: add multi-platform CI release build workflow
• feat: add README, user manual, and license documentation

Initial release — no prior tag to diff against.