Drums
Preset Parallel Drum Crush
A crushed parallel layer under the loop. ENERGY raises the grit and the grain; the dry path keeps the attacks.
13X COLONYCOLOR & MOVEMENT PROCESSOR
Six effects. One ENERGY.
Add warmth, width, space and movement to drums, keys, bass and loops — six effects in one plugin, moved together by one ENERGY knob.
Warmth, width and movement for drums, keys and bass — six effects on one knob.
Coming October 2026FreeVST3 · AU · Standalone
The plugin's real interface, lifted into 3D. Colony is software, not hardware.
13x Colony with the preset Analog Air: ENERGY at 45 %, DRIVE, SPACE, WIDTH and COLOR active, MOTION and PUMP bypassed
Hear what Colony does.
Three loops, each through a factory preset. Switch while it plays: the original, then Colony at ENERGY 0 and at 100. A fourth loop compares PUMP on the grid with PUMP on the kick. Afterwards every file was brought to the same integrated loudness, which helps reduce loudness bias when you compare.
Keys
Preset Dreamy Chords
Chords that drift: slow filter motion, chorus width and a long Dream tail. ENERGY opens all of it at once.
Bass
Preset Dirty Groove Bass
A hard-clipped garage bass with a step filter and a swung pump. ENERGY pushes the drive, the filter and the pump together.
Pump
Preset Minimal Pump
A held pad and sub under a broken 2-step beat. On the grid, PUMP ducks on every beat, kick or not. On the kick, it ducks with each hit, the off-grid ones included.
Synthesised test loops, 4 bars at 120 BPM, no samples. Rendered offline by the development build 123eb38 with the plugin's defaults, Level Match on. Afterwards each file got one fixed gain to -18 LUFS integrated — an offline normalisation, separate from the plugin's dynamic Level Match — and was encoded as AAC 160 kbps. In the Pump loop only the pad runs through Colony; the beat is mixed in afterwards, unprocessed, and its kick also feeds the sidechain. Colony isn't out yet; its sound can still change before release.
Turn one knob. Watch the colony move.
Real captures of the preset Breakdown Bloom. As ENERGY rises, DRIVE and PUMP step back while SPACE, WIDTH and COLOR open up — every Cell along its own range, set in BUILD.
- DRIVEWarm12 %
- MOTIONBypassed in this preset
- SPACEDream22 %
- PUMPDeep26 %
- WIDTHEnsemble34 %
- COLORAir11 %
The pale band is each Cell's range from ENERGY 0 to 100.
What each Cell does.
Pick a Cell for its types, its editor and a preset that uses it.
DRIVE
Saturation, from warm to broken.
Five types from Warm and Analog Tube to Hard Clip and Crunch, with character, focus and tone. 2× oversampling by default.
- Types
- Warm
- Analog Tube
- Soft Clip
- Hard Clip
- Crunch
Shown with Parallel Drum Crush
Three views. One window.
PLAY for playing, TWEAK for every control, BUILD for how far each Cell travels. The honeycomb stays in the middle in all three.
Pick a preset, turn ENERGY, compare.
Beside the presets, the output spectrum shows each frequency band as a column; the lit cell's height is its level. Hear Original switches to the latency-aligned input; Level Match, on by default, slowly trims the output toward the input's loudness, which helps reduce loudness bias when you compare.
51 presets. Start with eight.
Sorted by what you're working on.
Filter by type, genre and character, keep favourites, and export or import packs. CHARACTER → Signature narrows the bank to eight presets that show what each part of Colony does.
Signature presets
- Warm House ChordsKeys
- Dusty KeysKeys
- SP DrumsDrums
- Vocal PresenceVocals
- Solid BassBass
- Parallel Drum CrushDrums
- Room in MotionAtmosphere
- Breakdown BloomPads
All genres and types
Presets per genre
- House18
- Lo-Fi12
- Hip Hop9
- Deep House7
- Garage7
- Tech House6
- Ambient3
- Techno2
- Trance2
Presets per type
- Keys11
- Bass7
- Drums7
- Vocals6
- Synth6
- Loops5
- Pads4
- Atmosphere3
- Master2
Specifications
- Status
- Coming October 2026 · free
- Formats
- VST3 · AU (macOS) · Standalone
- Platforms
- macOS · Windows · Linux
- Cells
- DRIVE · MOTION · SPACE · PUMP · WIDTH · COLOR + ENERGY
- Sidechain
- Stereo input for PUMP · Kick trigger or Sidechain style
- Presets
- 51 factory presets · 8 Signature presets
- Parameters
- 109 · 78 automatable
- Latency
- 75 samples at 48 kHz (default 2× oversampling)
- CPU
- 0.8–1.3 % of one core at 48 kHz / 512 · all six Cells active · 1×–4× oversampling · measured on a 2024 laptop
Get the launch email
COLONY comes out in October 2026, free for macOS, Windows and Linux. Leave your email and we'll write once when it's out. Tick a box if you'd also like to beta test it before release, or hear about new free plugins.
Meanwhile, AURORA, our dynamic EQ, is free to download. See AURORA
Before it ships
When does Colony come out?
In October 2026. There's no exact day yet — join the list and we'll email you when it's out.
Will it be free?
Yes. Colony will be free, like AURORA.
Which systems and formats?
macOS, Windows and Linux, as VST3 and Standalone, plus AU on macOS.
What happens with my email?
We send one email when Colony launches. If you tick the boxes, also a beta invite before release and news about new free plugins — nothing else. Every email has a link to leave, and unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted after 30 days.
Is Colony hardware?
No. Colony is a plugin. The 3D view at the top of this page is its real interface, built from the plugin's own UI layers and lifted into 3D — every label, value and colour on it comes from the plugin.
What does Level Match do?
It is on by default and slowly trims Colony's output toward the loudness of the incoming signal — gated, weighted RMS over about two seconds, at most ±12 dB, before Safe Output — which helps reduce loudness bias in comparisons. While it is on, level changes from INPUT are matched too; OUTPUT comes after the match, so it stays exactly where you set it, on both sides of the comparison. It is not an integrated LUFS measurement, and not a guarantee of equal perceived loudness on every source. The listening examples on this page were rendered with it on and then normalised offline to -18 LUFS integrated — one fixed gain per file, a separate step.
How is ENERGY different from a mix knob?
Mix blends the processed and the original signal. ENERGY moves each Cell along its own range — some up, some down — as set in BUILD. Dry / Wet is a separate control.