Driftlab Audio — Cabs, Seaside Clean, and Polisher (VST3, Windows)

[driftlabaudio]

Hi everyone,

I'm the developer behind Driftlab Audio — a small, one-person plugin company. I've been building these tools for my own use and have spent the past year getting them production-ready. Today I'm making them available publicly, and I wanted to introduce them here properly rather than just drop links.

What Driftlab is about

Every plugin I release is DRM-free. No iLok, no activations, no internet check, no seat limits. You buy it, you own it, you install it on every machine you have. No subscriptions. There's no activation server behind any of this — if Driftlab disappeared tomorrow, your plugins would keep working exactly as they do today.

I offer real 10-day trials on the paid plugins — the full plugin, no limitations, no noise bursts. After 10 days the trial stops passing audio, but the UI stays fully functional so you can still browse presets and see what you'd be getting. If you decide to buy, you just replace the trial file with the paid version.

Each plugin is sold as a complete, finished tool. I don't promise a roadmap of future features — what you see is what you get. But if a bug or compatibility issue comes up, I'll fix it at no cost. Lose your files? Email me and I'll resend it. No tickets, no hoops.

Right now everything is VST3 on Windows. That's where my testing is solid, and I'd rather ship something I trust than rush a half-tested Mac build. If there's enough interest I'll look into AU/Mac down the road.

Three plugins are available now:

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Polisher — Signal Conditioning (Free)

https://driftlabaudio.com/polisher

Polisher is a one-knob utility that cleans your signal before anything else touches it. Drop it at the top of your chain and turn up the Polish control.

What it does: a Goertzel-based detector listens for a few seconds, identifies whether your environment runs on 50 Hz or 60 Hz mains, then locks narrow notch filters onto the fundamental and first two harmonics. A high-pass rumble filter (scales from 5 Hz to 30 Hz with the Polish knob) clears sub-sonic noise from handling and room vibration. A transparent auto-leveler provides up to ~1 dB of smooth gain correction to keep takes consistent without pumping or coloring the signal.

A "What's Happening" panel on the UI gives you a live readout of what each module is doing — detected hum frequency, rumble filter status, and whether the leveler is idle or correcting. Simple enough for a podcast chain, useful enough for a tracking session.

This one is completely free. No trial, no registration, no strings.

Download Polisher (free)

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Seaside Clean — Tube Amp Simulator ($60, or $30 with code DRIFTLAB)

https://driftlabaudio.com/seaside-clean

Seaside Clean models a British clean amp — the kind of thing you'd use for cleans and edge-of-breakup tones. The signal chain goes: input stage → two preamp stages with envelope-sensitive compression → cut-style tone stack → EL84-style power amp section with low and high frequency saturation.

Four cabinet modes (standard, bright, warm, bypass) with smooth crossfading between them. Up to 8x oversampling that adapts automatically to your session sample rate. Built-in reverb with a parallel dry/wet mix. Input and output metering on both sides of the chain.

This one is aimed at guitarists who record DI and want real amp character without navigating a complex UI. The controls respond the way a real amp does — the tone stack is cut-style, not a shelf EQ approximation.

10-day free trial | Buy ($60, use code DRIFTLAB for 50% off)

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Cabs — Cabinet Simulator ($40, or $20 with code DRIFTLAB)

https://driftlabaudio.com/cabs

Cabs is a filter-based cabinet simulator. No IRs to load, no file management, zero convolution latency.

The approach: each of the 12 cabinet models (1x8 combo through 4x12 stacks, an 8x10, and an iso cab) is built from independently tuned filter stages — body resonance, low-mid shape, mid scoop, presence peak, speaker breakup, and a rolloff. Five mic voicings (condenser, dynamic, ribbon, vintage, off-axis) change the proximity and high-frequency character the way real mic placement does.

A few things under the hood that I think matter:

- Cabinet/mic switching uses dual filter banks with a cosine crossfade — no clicks or pops when you change settings mid-session.
- Spectral Density adds midrange harmonic fullness via a 6-band EQ chain (low shelf through air shelf) for DI signals that sound too thin.
- Room simulation uses 3 early reflections tuned per cabinet type. Not a reverb — just enough space to take the "plugged straight in" feeling off.
- Dry/wet mix is built in for parallel blending without extra routing.
- Silence detection with fade-in/fade-out prevents pops on transport start/stop. Filter states are preserved across loop points so there's no transient overshoot when the host restarts playback.

56 factory presets across clean, crunch, high gain, bass, acoustic, vintage, modern, and special categories. Full user preset system — save, load, delete. All parameters save and restore with your DAW session.

10-day free trial | Buy ($40, use code DRIFTLAB for 50% off)

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A few notes

- All three plugins are built in JUCE and output VST3 only. Developed and tested in Ableton on Windows 11.
- State save/restore has been through a lot of iteration — preset recall, DAW program changes, offline rendering with large block sizes, and various host-specific edge cases are handled in the code. That said, my primary testing has been in Ableton, so if you hit something in another host, let me know and I'll sort it out.
- CPU usage is reasonable. Cabs pre-computes per-sample gain curves outside the channel loop to avoid std::pow calls on the audio thread. Seaside Clean's oversampling adapts to your session rate.
- I'm a working musician first, developer second. These exist because I wanted them for my own sessions and couldn't find exactly what I needed. If you run into issues, I'll fix them.

Website: https://driftlabaudio.com
FAQ: https://driftlabaudio.com/faq
Contact: contact@driftlabaudio.com

Happy to answer questions about the DSP, the approach, or anything else. Thanks for reading.

[driftlabaudio]

Hey all — just wanted to say thanks again for all the love and support on our first releases. It really means a lot.

I put together a quick little sound clip of Polisher, our free signal‑conditioning plugin. It’s nothing fancy — just some bluesy guitar while I twist knobs and move through a few settings so you can hear what it actually does in a real context.

Polisher – Short Demo Clip:


If you’ve already grabbed Polisher, I’d love to hear how it’s working in your mixes. And if you haven’t tried it yet, it’s totally free — no activations, no restrictions.

Thanks
— Chris @ Driftlab Audio