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Blue Cat's Destructor
"The distortion and amp sims factory that goes to 11, and beyond!" Price: 99€ or $99 (tax incl.) Blue Cat's Destructor is a powerful distortion and amp sim modeling tool capable of replicating a vast spectrum of distortion styles, from the edgiest digital mayhem to velvety smooth compression, and even pristine guitar amp recreations (yes, it nails those pristine clean tones too!). The best part? It helps you discover and forge your own signature sound for guitars, bass, drums, synths, vocals, or even full mixes! Experience Destructor, the ultimate tone-sculpting tool, loaded with hundreds of presets and ready-to-rock models. Inspired by iconic gear like guitar and bass amps, cabinets, compressors, pedals, and tape machines, or crafted by our destructive minds, these presets will serve as your sonic playground to build your own tone.
But here's where the magic truly happens: Destructor's customizability knows no bounds. Tweak every parameter of existing presets to create a limitless universe of distortion simulations - no need to purchase additional presets or amp models. And if you want to keep it simple, use tone maps to create new sounds without diving into the details.
Our approach, rooted in perceptual modeling rather than electronic designs or impulse responses, streamlines the tone-tweaking process, ensuring it seamlessly fits into your mix. You can also load and transform your own impulse responses to add color to your tone.
Destructor boasts an exclusive adaptive shaper, providing an organic, analog-like responsiveness that musicians yearn for. Yet, it also ventures into uncharted digital territory, offering a realm of effects that transcend the boundaries of the "real" world.
Tailor the plug-in's appearance with over 600,000 visual styles, selectable module by module. Choose "EZ mode" for rack or guitar pedal-style control with just a handful of parameters.
For precision tone matching, import reference curves measured with Blue Cat's FreqAnalyst Multi.
If you are seeking a comprehensive amp simulation package with built-in effects, check out Blue Cat's Axiom. To delve into frequency-selective or multiband distortion, you can seamlessly pair the plug-in with Blue Cat's MB-7 Mixer.
Main Features
- Powerful distortion and amp modeling tool for versatile sound sculpting.
- Distortion diversity: wide spectrum of distortion types, from analog to digital, guitar and bass amps, saturation, clipping, bit crushing, compression, and even clean tones.
- Works for "clean" sounds too.
- Inspired Presets: Kickstart your creativity with hundreds of editable presets, many inspired by real-world gear, providing a solid foundation for your own sound.
- Tailor your user experience by crafting unique racks and pedals from a vast selection of knobs, backgrounds, faceplates, and handles, with over 600,000 style options.
- Control the dynamics with the input gate and compressor.
- Control the tone with the pre and post filters.
- Exclusive shape dynamics control: adapt the tone to the dynamics of the signal.
- Tone maps: explore and morph presets in 2D to create new tones.
- Side Chain Creativity: Trigger distortion using either the internal or external side chain, infusing rhythmic and dynamic nuances into your music.
- Impulse Responses Integration: Load and transform your own cabinet or reverb impulse responses, seamlessly blending them with built-in simulations.
- Protect your ears with the output brickwall limiter.
- Comprehensive visual feedback: real-time spectrum analysis, dynamic distortion curve display with embedded signal histograms.
- Load reference curves for precise tone matching.
- No latency.
Blue Cat Audio Standards:
- Available in most plug-in formats for Mac and Windows.
- Full MIDI control and automation support, MIDI Learn.
- No CPU load on idle: processing shuts down when fed with silence (optimal CPU usage).
- Customizable user interface with transparency & zoom.
- Smooth Bypass: noiseless plug-in activation / deactivation.
- Undo/Redo.
- Full featured integrated presets manager.
- Copy/paste the state of the plug-in between instances.
- Any sample rate supported.
Typical applications: Distortion modeling, guitar amp simulation, non-linear tone shaping channel strip, overdrive, bit crushing, analog compression, hard & soft clipping, coloring, tape saturation, Lo-fi, fuzz, digital noise, aliasing, filter effects. Credits: this plug-in includes several factory presets created by Sink and Hans Van Even. User Comments & ReviewsTo add your own comment about this product, please contact us. Demo Downloads
Need help with downloads? Click here!
Demo Limitations:
- 5 instances of the plug-in allowed per session.
- The effect is bypassed for half a second every minute.
System Requirements
MacOS
- An Intel or Apple Silicon processor.
- Mac OS 10.9 or newer.
- Any VST / Audio Unit / AAX compatible application (64-bit) .
Windows
- An SSE2-enabled processor (Pentium 4 or newer).
- Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8 or 10.
- Any VST / AAX compatible host software (32 or 64 bit).
For more information about supported platforms, see our Knowledge Base. Versions History V2.02 (2024/09/09) |
- Windows: Multi monitor High DPI scaling support for high resolution displays (4K monitors, hi-res laptops...) for Windows 10 version 1607 (Anniversary Edition) and newer.
- Mac: Improved Retina display support, with crispier graphics at all resolutions and zoom levels.
- Mac: fixed random GUI refresh issues in Reaper on Retina displays.
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V2.0 (2023/11/07) |
- Revamped 3D HD Graphics: Enjoy an enhanced visual experience with additional knobs and backgrounds that add a touch of sophistication to your sound crafting journey.
- Rack Designer: Customize presets like never before with our brand-new Rack Designer, offering a staggering selection of over 600,000 styles. Tailor the look and feel of your presets to match your unique artistic vision.
- Random GUI Component Selection: Get creative effortlessly with the option to randomly select GUI components in the Rack Designer.
- Enhanced Filtering Precision: Elevate your sound precision with added peak and comb filters in the Preamp and Post Filter modules, giving you more control over your sonic canvas.
- Drive Dynamics Parameter: Fine-tune your distortion dynamics by adjusting the influence of the drive parameter on the waveshaper curve, ensuring your tones hit just right.
- Perceived Loudness Control: Choose the gain reduction applied when increasing the drive parameter to keep perceived loudness equal.
- Tailored EQ Controls: Select the EQ controls to display in easy view (pre, post filter, or no EQ).
- New BASS/MID/TREBLE parameters that follow the eq displayed in easy view for MIDI or automation control.
- Hundreds of presets and module settings have been updated to take advantage of the new DSP capabilities.
- Guitar & Bass Presets Overhaul: We have given our guitar and bass amps and pedal presets a makeover, enhancing filtering, drive response, EQ frequencies, and EQ placement for an even more authentic and satisfying experience.
- High-Gain Tone Revamp: Explore high-gain guitar tones that have been meticulously rebuilt from the ground up
- New Guitar Amps and Pedals: Dive into new creative possibilities with our latest additions to the guitar amps and pedals presets.
- Improved tone maps computation efficiency.
- Synchronize multiple MIDI controllers: when "all channels" (0) is used for MIDI input control and "send MIDI events when parameters values change" is active, the plug-in now sends MIDI events to all other channels.
- Fully compatible with Destructor V1.
- Fixed Graphical User Interface performance issues on Mac OS Sonoma (caused by an Apple bug)
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V1.62 (2022/12/12) |
- Added Apple Silicon support for AAX Plug-in Format.
- Fixed VST3 version not always loading properly in Ableton Live 11.
- Improved VST parameter value display in some host applications.
- Added an option in global & preset input settings to send MIDI events when MIDI-enabled parameters are modified in the plug-in (to update control surfaces accordingly).
- Improved undo management and automation when using the mouse wheel to move knobs.
- AAX: Fixed erratic mouse behavior in Pro Tools on Mac.
- Mac: installers and plug-ins have been notarized to avoid security warnings on Mac OS Catalina and newer.
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V1.61 (2021/10/19) |
- Single Installer on Mac (all plug-ins formats).
- Fixed issue with volume knob in EZ mode not using the right parameter in some cases.
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V1.6 (2021/06/29) | New Features & Improvements:
- New "Guitar Pedal" mode: build your own effect pedals with Destructor.
- New drive range parameter to adjust the range of distortion available in a preset.
- Revisited all 707 factory presets and related tone maps, with adjusted drive range and improved tone.
- Added 19 new distortion and compression pedals presets.
- Improved tone maps navigation, with updated user interface.
- The opacity of the tone map window can now be adjusted.
- Arrow keys can now be used to navigate presets, in the main view or in the presets browser.
- Smoother presets switching.
- Improved smooth plug-in bypass (faster and smoother transition).
- Added MIDI control support (MIDI CC) for Next and Previous Preset commands, with MIDI learn.
- Improved MIDI & automation control settings with lock, reset and "save as global setting" capabilities.
- Preset files can now be dropped onto the preset LCD area to be loaded.
- reduced time to load the plug-in.
- Level meters, spectrum analyzers and tuner stop processing when the user interface is closed, reducing CPU usage.
- Reduced the number of threads used by the plug-in.
- Improved global and preset settings window loading time on Windows.
- Full unicode support.
Compatibility:
- Native Apple Silicon (M1 processor) support.
- Dropped 32-bit support on Mac.
- Now requires MacOS 10.9 and newer.
Fixes:
- Fixed VST3 (and sometimes VST) version freezing Ableton Live upon save on Windows.
- Mac: fixed GUI performance issues on native P3 displays and improved performance on other displays.
- Mac: fixed mouse wheel that required large movements to change parameter values.
- Mac: fixed mouse cursor flickering issues.
- Mac: fixed Esc key not closing fine edit parameter dialog.
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V1.52 (2020/05/28) |
- New high resolution graphics for knobs.
- Improved impulse response convolution performance (long reverb tails are now supported, with low CPU usage).
- Reduced disk footprint.
- Mac: faster GUI rendering on recent Mac OS systems (up to 5x faster).
- Mac: fixed user interface not properly shown on retina displays in some applications built with the 10.14 Mac OS SDK (Cubase 10.5 or Logic 10.5 for example).
- Mac: fixed settings panel rendering issues in dark mode on Mac OS Mojave and newer.
- Mac: Fixed keyboard not responding in registration panel in some host applications (LUNA, Garage Band...).
- Mac: Fixed demo version that could hang Logic when reloading projects using the plug-in.
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V1.51 (2019/09/25) |
- Fixed tone maps presets morphing that did not work on Mac.
- Fixed tone maps "reload from presets" when the map was created on another platform (Mac vs PC).
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V1.5 (2019/09/23) |
- New tone explorer with presets morphing: explore presets on predefined or custom visual maps, and morph tones in 2 dimensions to create unique new sounds easily.
- Added more than 100 factory "tone maps" for the new tone explorer.
- New presets (and sub-presets) browser with built-in search.
- New guitar factory presets: classic guitar amps, metal and signature guitar presets.
- New bass guitar factory presets, including 45 new bass cabinet models.
- Each instance of the plug-in can now have its own MIDI Program Change settings.
- MIDI Program Change preference is now saved into session instead of global preferences, so each instance can now use different MIDI channels. It is also saved in the user default preset.
- VST3: added support for MIDI program change messages to change presets via MIDI.
- VST: the user interface is now properly resized in Cubase on Windows.
- Hovering the mouse on the current preset name now displays a tooltip with the full path of the last loaded preset file.
- Performance improvement: the user interface now only loads modules that are visible.
- Mac: faster GUI rendering on recent Mac OS systems (up to 5x faster on level meters).
- Mac: fixed user interface not properly shown on retina displays in some applications built with the 10.14 Mac OS SDK.
- Changing the slope of lowpass and highpass filters in pre and post filters is now smoother.
- Improved plug-in listing in Windows 10 start menu.
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V1.41 (2018/12/06) |
- Spectrum analysis is now performed in the background and does not affect audio performance.
- Improved convolution performance for the impulse response loader on multicore processors.
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V1.4 (2018/10/09) |
- Load custom impulse responses (cabinets, reverbs) into the pre or post filters.
- Shape impulse responses in the edit view to match the perfect tone.
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V1.32 (2018/05/15) |
- New "randomize" feature to create new sounds using random destruction and pre/post presets.
- New factory presets imported from the new Axiom software.
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V1.31 (2018/03/29) |
- Fixed missing sliders in the "LCD Sliders" style.
- Updated the user manual.
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V1.3 (2018/03/19) |
- New minimized view (displays only the main "Guitar Amp-style" controls).
- New clean guitar amp presets.
- Faster GUI loading / instantaneous GUI display after it has been opened once.
- Limiter on/off state is now independent from presets ("always locked").
- Ui lock now also includes control settings display (green arrows).
- Performance and memory usage improvements (both GUI and DSP).
- Improved automation recording (and undo) in many host applications when controlling the plug-in with MIDI.
- Fixed: changing bypass in the Audio Unit version did not update host application's bypass state.
- Win: fixed copy/paste that sometimes stopped working until next app restart.
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V1.21 (2017/11/24) |
- Fixed issue with dynamics source selection in the destruction module (worked only with preamp signal in version 1.2).
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V1.2 (2017/11/21) |
- The GUI can now be zoomed from 70% to 200%.
- Last loaded preset is now remembered in session and displayed in the presets menu.
- Plug-in state can now be reverted to the last loaded preset.
- Default preset now also saves the state of locks (when using "save as user default").
- New installer on Mac.
- Now supports retina displays on Mac.
- Misc performance enhancements.
- VST3: factory presets are not exposed to the host application anymore.
- Fixed: the state of the plug-in was not fully restored when loading presets while bypassed.
- Fixed minor compatibility issues with Mac OS High Sierra.
- Dropped support for legacy RTAS and DirectX plug-in formats.
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V1.11 (2016/12/29) |
- Memory usage optimization: unused graphical elements are now unloaded on plug-in window close instead of next time the window is opened.
- Fixed (Windows): on older versions of Windows 7 with auto update turned off, the plug-in could fail to load.
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V1.1 (2016/12/15) |
- Lock each module or the user interface to prevent changes when loading presets.
- Bypass, input and output gain parameters are now independent from presets.
- Added more than 200 new visual styles with vintage knobs.
- New contrast setting for spectrogram display.
- Spectrogram display is not reset anymore when resized.
- Touch screen support improved: enlarged shape dynamics arrows and shape controls.
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V1.01 (2016/11/22) |
- Changed demo limitations: up to 5 instances allowed, bypass time changed to half a second, and bypass parameter is not affected anymore.
- Fixed: no more comb filtering when using the mix knob with oversampling.
- Fixed smooth bypass crossfade (used to produce clicks).
- Plugin now requires Mac OSX 10.7 and newer.
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V1.0 (2016/10/11) | |
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"In summary, Destructor is a revelation, bringing awesome distortion and tone shaping to your DAW at a great price.[...] Guitarists will get right down with this authentic amp simulation, and electronic producers will find endless sound design potential behind its intuitive interface." - Computer Music Magazine - December 2016 - [read review on musicradar].