Retrospect

Retrospect is a curve-driven time-warping effect. It continuously captures your audio into a rolling buffer and replays it through a curve you draw — a curve that maps real time to read position. A straight line is passthrough. Bend it, and time bends with it: freeze and snap, stretch and glide, stutter, reverse, or all of those inside a single beat.

The curve's steepness is the playback speed. Flat sections hold the audio still; steep sections race through it or run it backwards; the shape in between glides between the two. Lock it to your host's tempo grid, or re-fire it on every transient so each drum hit gets its own warp.

How it works

At each moment of playback, Retrospect reads from curve(t) × buffer length. Because the read head follows your curve instead of the clock, the slope of the curve becomes the instantaneous playback speed:

• Flat read head holds the sound freezes.
• Gentle slope slow scrub time-stretch and glide.
• Steep slope fast scrub skip and stutter.
• Downward slope reverse.

Features:

• Freeform curve editor — two fixed endpoints plus per-segment shaper handles. Double-click to add anchors; right-click to toggle smooth Bézier vs. hard-angle segments. A live cursor traces the warped read position and brightens with input level.
• Tempo-locked or transient-triggered — phase-lock the curve to the host grid (4 bars to 1/32), or reset it on every detected onset with adjustable sensitivity.
• Cycles (1–8) — repeat the curve multiple times per rate interval for fast stutter patterns at slow note values.
• Feedback — feed the wet signal back into the buffer for swells and self-oscillation.
• Wet-only FX chain — read drive filter bitcrush mix: tanh drive, a state-variable filter (LP/BP/HP), and a bit-depth + sample-rate crusher.
• Presets & theming — built-in and user presets, four accent themes, a resizable editor.

Formats: macOS (VST3, AU, CLAP), Windows (VST3, CLAP), Linux (VST3, LV2, CLAP). Installs under Conceptual Machines Retrospect.