OVNI v0.3.2 — SUPERNOVA: honest on macOS 11/12, capture edge cases

SUPERNOVA v0.3.2 — macOS only (Universal: Apple Silicon + Intel), signed and notarized by Apple. Run the installer over v0.3.1 (or any earlier version): presets and sessions are kept.

A small SUPERNOVA-only fix release: on macOS 11 and 12 the app now says System Audio needs macOS 13 instead of offering a permission it cannot get, and a handful of capture edge cases (a stuck "Waiting for macOS permission…" notice, the real sample rate, device-change listeners) are fixed. The seven audio plugins and ORBIT are unchanged.

A small SUPERNOVA-only fix release. The app is honest about what it can do on older
Macs, and a handful of things around system-audio capture that only bite in edge cases now
behave. Nothing changed in the sound, the visuals or the worlds. The seven OVNI audio
plugins and ORBIT are unchanged and are not part of this release.

Fixed

• On macOS 11 and 12 the app now says System Audio needs macOS 13, instead of offering a
  permission it cannot get. Neither route to system audio exists on those versions — Core
  Audio taps need 14.2, ScreenCaptureKit needs 13 — so the old ALLOW button could never
  work: macOS showed no dialog and the attempt failed again, every time. The top bar now
  states the requirement plainly and offers no button, because an input device and MIDI are
  right there in the same bar and both work fine. On those Macs SUPERNOVA no longer even
  tries to capture. The plug-ins are unaffected: VST3 and AU still run on macOS 11 and up.
• "Waiting for macOS permission…" no longer gets stuck. Switching the source twice while
  the macOS dialog was still open left the notice frozen until you re-picked the source: the
  second attempt landed on one already in flight and nothing ever restarted it. The app now
  notices and asks again, once a second, without raising new dialogs.
• The capture reports the rate audio actually arrives at. With the output at 44.1 kHz the
  tap still declares 48 kHz; that was the number being passed along, and the reason a
  sample-rate change went unnoticed. The aggregate device's real rate is now read and used.
• Plugging headphones in, or quitting while macOS is still asking, is tidier under the
  hood. The capture no longer starts the audio device for an instant when the attempt was
  already cancelled, and a late notification from the system can no longer reach an object
  that is already gone.
• The packaging step refuses to build a package where any single bundle is missing its
  binary, instead of only checking that the payload contained some binary somewhere.

Source for this exact build (AGPLv3 §6): https://github.com/ovniaudio/ovni/tree/v0.3.2 · Checksums: SHA256SUMS.txt

OVNI v0.3.1 — SUPERNOVA: system-audio permission, no more screen prompt

SUPERNOVA v0.3.1 — macOS only (Universal: Apple Silicon + Intel), signed and notarized by Apple. Run the installer over v0.3.0: presets and sessions are kept.

A SUPERNOVA-only maintenance release: the standalone app now asks for the small permission — System Audio Recording Only on macOS 14.2+ — and only when you pick the source, plus the fixes around it. The seven audio plugins and ORBIT are unchanged.

A SUPERNOVA-only maintenance release, all of it about the app's audio. The system-audio
permission is now the small one — audio, not screen — and it is asked when you pick the source;
plus a round of fixes for the things that broke around it: plugging in headphones, closing the
window while macOS was still asking, and a REOPEN that built a shell command out of the folder
name. The seven OVNI audio plugins and ORBIT are unchanged and are not part of this release.

Changed

• System audio capture uses Core Audio taps on macOS 14.2+: the permission is now
  "System Audio Recording Only" — no more "screen" prompt — and it is asked when you
  pick the source, not at launch. SUPERNOVA never looked at your screen; until now it
  had to ask for screen recording because that was the only way macOS exposed system
  audio. On macOS 14.2 and later the app uses Core Audio process taps instead, so the
  prompt names exactly what it does. macOS 13 – 14.1 keep the ScreenCaptureKit path (and
  its screen permission) — that API does not exist there yet. Opening the app no longer
  pops a dialog: it starts, runs, and the top bar offers ALLOW; if you decline, the
  app stays usable on an input device or MIDI and the notice tells you which System
  Settings pane to open. macOS asks once — later launches re-check in silence.

Fixed

• REOPEN relaunches the copy you are running. It used to hand the job to
  LaunchServices, which could resolve the bundle identifier to a different installed
  copy of SUPERNOVA and reopen that one instead. It now relaunches the exact bundle on
  disk, as a new instance.
• REOPEN no longer builds a shell command out of the folder name. The path of the app was
  pasted into a shell command, so the name of the folder you keep SUPERNOVA in was executed:
  a copy sitting in a directory with $(…) or backticks in its name — a perfectly legal folder
  name — ran that when you pressed REOPEN. The path now travels as a plain argument and is never
  parsed as code. If the relauncher itself fails to start, the app no longer quits on you.
• Plugging in headphones no longer leaves the visual deaf. Changing the output device — or
  its sample rate — used to silence System Audio until you reopened the app, because the capture
  stayed bound to whichever output was default when it started. It now notices the change and
  rebuilds itself, in under a second, without asking for permission again. The same self-repair
  covers any other way the capture dies; and if you switch the permission off in System
  Settings while the app is open, the notice comes back instead of the app pretending to listen.
• Closing the app — or switching source — while macOS is asking no longer freezes it. The
  system's permission dialog blocks until you answer it, and the app used to wait for that on its
  main thread: a spinning beachball for as long as the dialog stayed open. It no longer waits.
• The top bar says when it is waiting for macOS. If the permission was already asked for once
  but macOS has not answered yet (say you reset your permissions), the app used to show nothing
  while a system dialog appeared out of nowhere. After two seconds it now says
  Waiting for macOS permission…. And if the capture fails for a reason that is not the
  permission — no output device, a broken audio chain — the notice offers ALLOW to retry
  instead of leaving the app silently stuck, which is what happened before.

Source for this exact build (AGPLv3 §6): https://github.com/ovniaudio/ovni/tree/v0.3.1 · Checksums: SHA256SUMS.txt

OVNI v0.3.0 — SUPERNOVA: media session, four new worlds, real LFOs

SUPERNOVA v0.3.0 — audio-reactive visual synth · macOS (Universal, arm64 + Intel) · VST3 · AU · standalone app · free, AGPLv3.

Signed and notarized installer: OVNI-SUPERNOVA-v0.3.0.pkg (SHA-256 in SHA256SUMS.txt). Run it over v0.2.0; your presets and sessions carry over.

What's new

SUPERNOVA becomes a playable instrument. A SUPERNOVA-only release: the MEDIA
session — a strip of photos and video you can cue, reorder, relink and drive from
a MIDI pad — a sequence clock that cuts on the beat, an LFO section that means
what it says, and four kaleidoscope worlds swapped for a photographic family
(still 50 worlds). The seven OVNI audio plugins and ORBIT are unchanged and are
not part of this release. macOS-only, as before.

Added

• MEDIA strip — see your session. A filmstrip of numbered thumbnails between
  the visual and the knobs shows every photo/video in order, the current one with
  a countdown to the next change. Click to cue (← / → too), drag to reorder,
  ✕ to remove, right-click for rotate / move to start / reveal / clear, + to
  add. Number keys 1–9 / 0 cue a tile straight away. Thumbnails are
  decoded in the background with the same orientation the engine uses. ▦ in
  the top bar hides/shows it; drop a folder to load all its photos in name
  order; iPhone HEIC, WebP and TIFF are accepted (macOS). Removing,
  reordering, rotating and clearing the session are all undoable (Cmd+Z).
  The session — a sequence, or a single photo or video with its rotation — is
  saved with the project and with user presets, so reopening brings it back.
  Loading a project always wins: if the host restores one while you are playing,
  the session it carries takes over, and a cue that lands in that same instant is
  applied to the freshly loaded session instead of being written back over it.
• Drop photos between two tiles. The MEDIA strip is now its own drop target: files or a folder
  dropped on it are inserted at that position (an insertion line shows where), instead of always
  landing at the end of the session. The photo on screen keeps playing — only its number changes.
• Missing media is marked, not dropped. If a photo or video has moved, its tile stays in the
  session marked missing (red !, greyed name) instead of silently disappearing when the
  project reopens; the sequence skips it, and right-click offers Relink… for that file or
  Relink folder… to recover every missing item of that folder at once. A file that returns to
  its place heals itself. Nothing cuts to a missing tile — the sequence, ← / →, the number keys
  and the MIDI cues all step over it, and clicking one opens its relink menu instead.
• Canvas format (FORMAT chip). The canvas now has a shape, like a project
  format: AUTO follows the first item (vertical photo → 9:16, square →
  1:1, landscape → 16:9), or pick FREE / 16:9 / 9:16 / 1:1 / 4:5 / 4:3. The
  visual is drawn letterboxed to it in the editor, the app, fullscreen output and
  the Syphon feed; the EXPORT menu lists the matching preset first. FIT / FILL
  chooses letterbox vs. crop-to-fill. Pure layout — the render engine and its
  byte-exact goldens are untouched.
• Sequence clock, order and transition. The sequence can advance by
  Seconds, by Beats of the tempo (host BPM / TAP — cuts on the bar) or on
  every Kick with a minimum gap; Loop or Shuffle (Shuffle is the order
  the clock advances in — stepping by hand with ← / → or notes 88 / 89 always
  walks the strip in order, so next-then-previous puts you back where you were); Cut or
  Burst (the old photo explodes and re-forms as the new one). Persisted with
  the project and presets. In Beats, a cue waits for the next bar (the armed
  tile shows a dashed outline) instead of cutting mid-phrase — the armed photo is
  decoded while it waits, so the cut lands on the beat — and holding Shift
  cuts right now. A cue asked for just before a downbeat lands on that downbeat:
  it carries the beat it was armed at (for MIDI, the beat of the note itself),
  not the beat of the editor tick that picked it up.
• LFO rates: 21 beat divisions plus free-running Hz. Every division from a
  sixteenth to four bars now carries its triplet (·T) and dotted (·D)
  variant, and a FREE / Hz mode (0.05–20 Hz) runs an LFO off the clock instead
  of the tempo — it keeps moving with the transport stopped or with no host.
• Per-LFO polarity, phase and retrigger. BI / UNI picks whether the LFO
  swings both ways around the knob or only adds from it; PHASE (0–360°) offsets
  where the cycle starts; RETRIG restarts the cycle on the current beat without
  disturbing your phase setting. All three persist with the project.
• LFO depth now means what it says. At 100 % an LFO sweeps exactly the target
  parameter's range, and the result is clamped to that range — several LFOs on the
  same target can no longer push a parameter out of bounds.
• LFOs are recalculated on every rendered frame instead of 30 times a second,
  so fast modulation reads as a wave rather than a staircase on a 60/120 Hz display.
• Cue your photos from a MIDI pad. Notes 72–87 cue tiles 1–16 of the media
  session, 88 / 89 step next / previous and 90 jumps to a random photo
  (never the one on screen) — so the session stays playable in immersive or
  fullscreen, where the strip isn't visible. Cues follow the sequence clock (in
  Beats they wait for the bar, like clicking a tile); MIDI cue: now in the
  SEQ menu makes every note cut immediately.
• A photo sequence is exported the way it plays: the clip follows the sequence
  clock (Seconds / Beats / Kick), its order (Loop / Shuffle) and its
  Burst transition, starting from the photo on screen — and the visuals react
  at the speed you saw them, with the muxed audio covering the same stretch.

Changed

• Four worlds swapped for a photographic family. The kaleidoscope presets
  (Kaleidoscope, Hypnosis, Cathedral, Hologram) mirrored your picture into a
  mandala and the material stopped reading. Their slots now hold Parallax,
  Lantern, Meridian and Vantage — built on the same idea as Satellite: the
  image is preserved and reinterpreted with depth, parallax, a slow orbit, a
  subject cut-out or light, with faithful (or subtly graded) color. Still 50
  worlds. The KALEIDO control itself is untouched — turn it on in any world.
• Rotating a photo is instant. The ⟳ button used to re-read the file, decode
  it again and re-run both Vision passes on every quarter turn — hundreds of
  milliseconds with a 12-megapixel photo. The decode is now cached upright and
  rotations are derived from it (a measured 45× on four turns). As a bonus, a
  photo reopened from a project at a given rotation and the same photo rotated by
  hand now produce exactly the same image.

Fixed

• Sessions saved with a comma decimal separator survive. LFO banks, MIDI-learn
  maps and scenes are written and read independently of the process locale, so a
  host that switches the C locale (common in Qt/GTK apps) can no longer destroy a
  saved performance setup.
• Undo restores your LFO bank, MIDI-learn map and scenes. They were captured in
  the undo snapshot but never re-read on undo/redo, so they stayed put.
• A click in the instant a project loads no longer overwrites its settings.
  Toggling the canvas format, FIT/FILL, the MEDIA strip or MIDI cue: now inside
  the 33 ms between the host restoring a project and the editor picking it up
  used to overwrite the setting that had just been restored — and it did not
  correct itself. The host wins, as it already did for the session itself.

Source for this exact build: branch feat/supernova, tag v0.3.0 — https://github.com/ovniaudio/ovni/tree/v0.3.0
ORBIT lives in its own repo: https://github.com/ovniaudio/orbita

OVNI v0.2.1 — ORBIT: the AU installs again

ORBIT v0.2.1 — the Audio Unit installs again (macOS)

A fix release for ORBIT only. Free and open-source (AGPLv3), signed and notarized, as everything OVNI ships.

What was wrong

The v0.2.0 macOS installer declared its ORBIT bundles as version 0.1.1 (the plug-in had been rebuilt without bumping its version). On a Mac that already had ORBIT installed, the Installer saw "0.1.1 already present", skipped the Audio Unit and only refreshed the VST3 — so ORBIT disappeared from AU hosts such as Logic. Thanks to the user who reported it the same day.

What changed

• OVNI-ORBIT-v0.2.1.pkg — VST3 + AU, universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 11+. Both bundles now declare 0.2.1 and the installer no longer compares bundle versions: it always writes both formats, over any previous install. Verified on a Mac that already had ORBIT 0.1.1 installed.
• No DSP or UI changes. Built from the same source as v0.2.0 (ovniaudio/orbita at tag v0.2.1), rebuilt with a current toolchain; deployment targets unchanged (macOS 11 on Apple Silicon, macOS 10.14 on Intel).
• The installed NOTICE.txt now carries the CIPIC HRTF Database copyright notice, as its terms of use require.
• OVNI-ORBIT-v0.2.1-Windows.zip — VST3 x64, byte-identical to the v0.2.0 ZIP (Windows was never affected), re-published under the new name so every ORBIT download carries one version.

If you were affected

Run the new .pkg — it installs over the old one. Then rescan plug-ins in your DAW (Logic: Settings → Plug-in Manager → Reset & Rescan Selection).

SUPERNOVA

Unchanged — get it from v0.2.0 or from ovniaudio.com.

Signed & notarized (Developer ID). Checksums: SHA256SUMS.txt. Source: ovniaudio/orbita (ORBIT) · ovniaudio/ovni (catalog, packaging).

OVNI v0.2.0 — first transmissions: ORBIT + SUPERNOVA

First transmissions: ORBIT + SUPERNOVA

Wave 1 of the staged launch. Free and open-source (AGPLv3), as everything OVNI ships.

ORBIT — binaural movement engine (macOS · Windows)

• OVNI-ORBIT-v0.2.0.pkg — double-click installer, VST3 + AU, universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 11+.
• OVNI-ORBIT-v0.2.0-Windows.zip — VST3 x64, Windows 10+ (unblock the ZIP, copy the .vst3 folder to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3).
• Binaries are bit-identical to the QA'd v0.1.1 build (ORBIT is unchanged; repackaged per-plugin).

SUPERNOVA — audio-reactive visual synth (macOS-only) · first public release

• OVNI-SUPERNOVA-v0.2.0.pkg — VST3 + AU plug-ins and the standalone app (→ /Applications), universal, macOS 11+.
• The app hears your Mac's system audio with zero drivers (ScreenCaptureKit) — point it at anything playing. Audio path in the plug-in is bit-exact pass-through.

The rest of the catalog

PULSAR, NEBULA, DUST, HALO, HORIZON and AURORA are coming soon — follow the signal at ovniaudio.com.

First open (unsigned, for now)

The installers are unsigned: if macOS blocks the .pkg, right-click → Open (macOS ≤ 14) or System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway" (macOS 15+). What the installer places is not quarantined — no xattr dance needed. The SUPERNOVA app additionally asks once for Screen Recording — that's how it hears the system audio.

Checksums: SHA256SUMS.txt. Source: ovniaudio/ovni (catalog) · ovniaudio/orbita (ORBIT).

OVNI v0.1.1 — headroom, cleanups & fully open (no IPP)

Seven free, open-source spatial-audio plugins for macOS & Windows — grab all seven with one installer, or each plugin on its own.
macOS: VST3 + AU, universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), 11+. Windows: VST3, x64, 10+. AGPLv3.

What's new in v0.1.1

• ORBIT is now fully open, no proprietary libraries. The macOS build no longer links Intel IPP — every platform runs pure JUCE, so the whole catalog is cleanly AGPLv3 across the board. No audible change (ORBIT already ran this path on Apple Silicon and Windows).
• HORIZON — cleaner headroom. The live widener no longer pushes the internal limiter into steady-state compression on hot material; the limiter is back to being a pure safety net.
• AURORA — cleaner Motion at the extremes. The barber-pole no longer over-drives internally at max Motion/Spread; the audible motion in mono is unchanged.
• HALO — internal dead code removed (bit-identical output).
• Third-party font attributions added to NOTICE; CI/tooling hardening.

What's inside

• ORBIT — the binaural movement engine the whole family is born from: place sound in real 3D, orbit it, fly it past.
• PULSAR — auto-pan that throws your sound into real orbit: chaos, Doppler and binaural width.
• NEBULA — reverb of impossible, infinite spaces: an FDN cloud that breathes and freezes.
• DUST — binaural echoes scattered as bubbles orbiting the head.
• HALO — shimmer that orbits: an endless choir of octaves and fifths.
• HORIZON — spectral freeze with a pulse: eternal pad to rhythmic stutter.
• AURORA — spectral panning: every frequency to its own place in the field.

Install — macOS (double-click installer)

Download OVNI-v0.1.1.pkg (all 7 plugins) — or just the one you want: OVNI-<PLUGIN>-v0.1.1.pkg from the assets below. Double-click, follow the installer, done: it places VST3 + AU in the system plug-in folders (/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins) and asks for your password itself. No dragging, no Terminal — files installed this way carry no quarantine flag, so your DAW loads them with no Gatekeeper warnings. In the full installer you can click Customize to pick specific modules.

The installer itself is unsigned (no paid Apple certificate yet), so macOS may block it on first open — that's the only extra step, once: right-click → Open (macOS 14 or earlier) or System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway" (macOS 15+).

Prefer manual install? OVNI-v0.1.1.dmg has the raw bundles + LÉEME PRIMERO (that path needs the xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine … step described inside).

Install — Windows

Download OVNI-v0.1.1-Windows.zip (all 7) or a single OVNI-<PLUGIN>-v0.1.1-Windows.zip — VST3, 64-bit, Windows 10+. Before extracting, right-click the ZIP → Properties → tick Unblock → Apply. Then extract and copy the .vst3 folder(s) into:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3

The plugins are unsigned, so SmartScreen may warn the first time — choose More info → Run anyway. Full steps (English + Español) are in LEEME PRIMERO.txt inside each ZIP. Windows is VST3 only (AU is macOS-only).

Verify your download (optional)

SHA256SUMS.txt (attached below) lists the SHA-256 of every asset in this release. Check with shasum -a 256 <file> (macOS) or certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256 (Windows).

Source & license

Free and open-source under AGPLv3:

• The 6-plugin catalog → https://github.com/ovniaudio/ovni
• The flagship ORBIT → https://github.com/ovniaudio/orbita

🛸 https://ovniaudio.com

OVNI v0.1.0 — the whole catalog, free & open

Seven free, open-source spatial-audio plugins for macOS & Windows — one download, all seven.
macOS: VST3 + AU, universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), 11+. Windows: VST3, x64, 10+. AGPLv3.

What's inside

• ORBIT — the binaural movement engine the whole family is born from: place sound in real 3D, orbit it, fly it past.
• PULSAR — auto-pan that throws your sound into real orbit: chaos, Doppler and binaural width.
• NEBULA — reverb of impossible, infinite spaces: an FDN cloud that breathes and freezes.
• DUST — binaural echoes scattered as bubbles orbiting the head.
• HALO — shimmer that orbits: an endless choir of octaves and fifths.
• HORIZON — spectral freeze with a pulse: eternal pad to rhythmic stutter.
• AURORA — spectral panning: every frequency to its own place in the field.

Install — macOS

Download OVNI-v0.1.0.dmg and open it. Drag the .vst3 files onto the VST3 alias and the .component files onto the Components alias inside the DMG (they point straight to the right folders). Full steps are in LÉEME PRIMERO inside the DMG.

The plugins are unsigned (no paid Apple certificate yet), so macOS Gatekeeper blocks them the first time. The reliable fix is to clear the quarantine flag in Terminal — for example:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/ORBIT.vst3"

Repeat per plugin, or run it once over the VST3 and Components folders, then rescan plugins in your DAW.

Install — Windows

Download OVNI-v0.1.0-Windows.zip (VST3, 64-bit, Windows 10+). Before extracting, right-click the ZIP → Properties → tick Unblock → Apply. Then extract and copy the seven .vst3 folders into:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3

The plugins are unsigned, so SmartScreen may warn the first time — choose More info → Run anyway. Full steps (English + Español) are in LEEME PRIMERO.txt inside the ZIP. Windows is VST3 only (AU is macOS-only).

Verify your download (optional)

SHA-256 of OVNI-v0.1.0.dmg:

56bdaa837e664f8a20271b763211faca79254a78634175da2775067456804edf

SHA-256 of OVNI-v0.1.0-Windows.zip:

8f0a25308c7e60967d9e80d8a007c1da8abf4935b676462fd6e7bca11ceb4770

Check with shasum -a 256 <file> (macOS) or certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256 (Windows).

Source & license

Free and open-source under AGPLv3:

• The 6-plugin catalog → https://github.com/ovniaudio/ovni
• The flagship ORBIT → https://github.com/ovniaudio/orbita

🛸 https://ovniaudio.com