Dynamics, Gating & Mixing · Audio effect
Interleaver
Weaves two stereo inputs into one, by slicing them in time (free or locked to the tracked pitch of either input) or by trading phase-vocoder bins.
Opinion
Not yet auditioned in a host. It is deliberately more strange than useful: the goal was “interesting” rather than “musical”. Fused with a pitched source on one side, Time mode with Track A makes a formant-ish stutter that follows the note; at the shortest slice it becomes a sample-by-sample zipper with sidebands. Spectral mode with Bins and a small width is a comb of two spectra; Loudest is a spectral gate that lets each source win where it is strongest.
Functionality
Input A is channels 1/2 and input B is channels 3/4 (a second bus; in REAPER, send a track to channels 3/4 of the Interleaver track). The output is stereo.
Time
The two inputs are cut into alternating segments of one cycle: A for Balance percent, then B. The cycle is twice the Slice (0.02-200 ms), or, with Sync on Track A or Track B, twice Periods times the fundamental period found on that input by autocorrelation (the Slice is used when no pitch is found). Edge shape and Crossfade choose how the join is made: hard cuts, a linear ramp or a raised cosine, all equal-power. Jitter varies each cycle at random, and Stereo split delays the right channel’s pattern by up to half a cycle so that left and right take opposite sources.
Spectral
A 2048-point phase vocoder (4x overlap). Bins takes whole bins from A or B in groups of Bin width; Mag/Phase takes each group’s size from one source and its phase from the other, swapping every group; Loudest picks the louder source in every bin, tilted by Balance by up to 24 dB. Drift rotates the mask across the spectrum.
Display
The Pattern panel draws the mask the engine is using, from the same functions: three cycles of the time pattern (A up in amber, B down in teal) or the first 128 bins of the spectral pattern. The panel header and the Time panel show the tracked pitch and cycle length as the plugin reports them.
Status
Core covered by about 180 checks: exact pass-through at Balance 0 and 100, share and cycle length, edge continuity, pitch accuracy and fall-back, latency in both modes, every control audible, spectral reconstruction, tone survival and rejection per bin, stability under random parameters and at 44.1 to 192 kHz. Not yet listened to or validated in a host.