Temper manual

Saturation, drive and fuzz on one engine. Six models, from a gentle tube warmth to full fuzz, on a 4× oversampled waveshaper, with bias for even harmonics and a gate that makes the dirt sputter and die with the note.

Warren Labs · Character line · VST3 · AU · Standalone · macOS

What it's for

Adding harmonics on purpose: warmth on a bass DI, thickness on a vocal, grit on drums, drive on a synth, or a guitar-pedal fuzz. Temper is a colour tool. Unlike the Trueness line, it is meant to change the sound.

The waveshaping runs at four times your session's sample rate, which keeps the harsh, inharmonic aliasing that cheap distortion produces out of the audible band.

The controls

Model

The on-screen transfer curve shows the selected model's shape at your current settings: input across, output up. A straight diagonal would mean no distortion; the more it bends, the more harmonics you get.

Drive

0–60 dB, default 0. How hard the signal hits the curve. The first 15 dB are where the subtle settings live; everything past 30 dB is deliberately extreme. At Drive 0 the curve is still a curve: every model already shapes the signal a little, and Tape and Fuzz a lot. Use Power or Mix 0 % for a clean comparison.

Bias

0–100 %, default 0. Pushes the curve off-centre so the positive and negative halves of the wave distort differently, which adds even harmonics: the warmer, more "tube" part of distortion. The standing offset this would create is subtracted, so silence stays silence.

Tone

−100 to +100, default 0. A tilt applied after the saturation: left is darker (lows up, highs down), right is brighter, by up to 6 dB each way around 250 Hz and 3.5 kHz. Use it to tame fizz from heavy drive, or to brighten a saturated bass back into the mix.

Output

−24 to +12 dB, default 0. Level after the saturation. Driving harder makes things louder, and louder always sounds better, so turn Output down until bypass and processed match before you decide anything.

Mix

0–100 %, default 100 %. Dry/wet. Below 100 % is parallel saturation: the clean signal keeps its transients and the saturated copy adds density underneath. The dry path is delayed to line up with the oversampled wet path, so blending never combs.

Gate

0–100 %, default 0 (off). The velcro gate. It watches the clean input, and when a note decays below its threshold it chokes the distorted signal off. Low settings close slowly at a low threshold (−60 dBFS, about 90 ms); high settings close fast at a higher one (−22 dBFS, about 8 ms), so the fuzz sputters and cuts out as the note dies. On Fuzz and Crunch it also clears the hiss those models bring up between notes.

Power

Bypass, with a click-free crossfade.

A worked example: a bass DI that disappears on small speakers

1. Model: Tube. Drive up to about 10 dB.
2. Listen on small speakers, or switch Scribe to Phone after Temper. The harmonics Temper adds are what let a bass line read where the fundamental can't be reproduced.
3. Bias up to 20–30 % for more even-harmonic warmth.
4. If the top end starts to fizz, turn Tone left a little.
5. Pull Output down until toggling Power doesn't change the loudness. It should still sound more present, not just louder.
6. Too much? Mix to 50–60 % keeps the clean low end and adds the harmonics on top.

For parallel drum crush: Crunch, Drive 25 dB, Mix 25 %. For a dying fuzz: Fuzz, Drive 20 dB, Gate 60 %.

Presets

PRESETS saves and recalls every control. Files live in ~/Music/Warren Labs/Temper/Presets/.

Licence

Drag the .wllicense file from your purchase onto the plugin window, or open the About panel (ⓘ, top right) and choose Import License.

Specifications

Warren Labs. Tools that tell the truth. · warrenlabs.com