WARM / plugin 02

harmonic saturation done right.

tape, tube, transformer. three characters with distinct harmonic signatures. Chebyshev polynomial waveshaping with per-character asymmetric soft clippers.

KERN WARM plugin interface

features

what makes WARM different.

three real characters

tape is warm and odd-harmonic. tube adds rich even harmonics via bias-shifted clipping. transformer goes deep with quadratic asymmetry. they actually sound different.

Chebyshev waveshaping

each harmonic is controlled independently using Chebyshev polynomials. not random distortion — precise harmonic architecture.

spectral-aware drive

per-band spectral pre-gain shapes the signal before saturation. the spectral display shows exactly what's happening.

program-dependent response

an envelope follower modulates drive with input level. louder signals push harder — like real analog circuits.

under the hood

the signal path.

1

spectral pre-gain

STFT analysis with 40 ERB bands shapes the signal before saturation. each frequency region gets independent drive control via the spectral display.

2

per-character soft clipping

tape uses symmetric tanh. tube uses a bias-shifted sigmoid that naturally generates even harmonics. transformer adds a quadratic asymmetry term for deep even-harmonic richness.

3

Chebyshev polynomial waveshaping

7th-order Chebyshev polynomials give independent control of each harmonic. the fundamental is always protected — only harmonics 2-7 scale with drive.

4

4x oversampling

pushes Nyquist to 88.2 kHz. even the 7th harmonic of audible content stays below the aliasing threshold. clean saturation, no artifacts.

5

K-weighted auto-compensation

loudness-matched output using ITU-R BS.1770 weighting. the saturated signal never sounds louder than the dry — you hear the character, not the volume.

specifications

the numbers.

3 saturation modes
7th-order Chebyshev
under 3% CPU
34 factory presets
4 controls
$29 forever
VST3 / AU
4x oversampling
K-weighted auto-comp

system requirements

macOS macOS 12+, Intel or Apple Silicon
windows Windows 10+, 64-bit — coming soon
DAW any VST3 / AU compatible host

go deeper

full documentation.

controls, presets, how the Chebyshev waveshaping pipeline works, character guide, quick start recipes, and technical specs.

read the docs

$29

one-time. yours forever.

buy warm / $29