Ghostlight
A reverb whose four decay bands swell toward what's loud in your source, or invert to reveal what isn't — the reactive engine at the centre of Ghostlight Pro, on its own.
A reverb that listens back
Where a conventional reverb has a single decay time, Ghostlight splits its tail into four frequency bands and continuously re-weights how long each band rings, based on what the input signal is actually doing — in real time, with zero added latency.
It is also simply a good reverb. With the spectral engine at rest, you get a smooth, dense, modulated feedback-delay-network tail comparable to a classic algorithmic hall or plate. That's the baseline everything else is built on: turn the signature features off and the plugin still earns its place.
The same clip, dry and wet
8 sources, each run through the factory preset built for it. Toggle Dry/Wet mid-playback — it crossfades from the same instant rather than restarting.
Reactive spectral decay
One bipolar control, two different instruments. Bloom rings the loud bands longer; Ghost dies them fast and lets what's hidden ring on instead.
Zero added latency
The entire spectral analysis runs side-chain. Reported latency is 0 samples.
Freeze, and play into it
Holds the tank indefinitely for pads and live layering, while new input ducks quietly underneath rather than piling on top.
Same trusted core as Ghostlight Pro
An 8-line Hadamard-mixed FDN, modulated and diffused inside the feedback loop — the exact same reverb core Ghostlight Pro is built on, not a cut-down version of it.
Kill the tail
A small stop button beside Decay empties the reverb in 10 ms, without a click, so a long decay doesn't have to ring out every time you try a setting. Automatable — and an optional menu setting does it on every preset change.
Lock the mix while you audition
A padlock beside Mix holds Mix, In and Out through every preset change, so each preset is heard at your blend and level rather than its own. Saved with the session, per instance.
Bipolar, and it's two different instruments
The Bias knob is bipolar, and its two directions are two different instruments. In each diagram below, the left bars show the input's spectrum; the right bars show how long each band of the reverb tail rings.
Bloom
BIAS → +100Bands that are loud in your source ring longer. The reverb amplifies what's already dominant — chords swell around their own harmonics. Resonant, agreeable, "the room agrees with you."
Ghost
BIAS → −100The inverse — and the sound nobody else has. Loud bands decay fast; quiet bands ring long. The tail carries what your source is not emphasising: on a vocal, the mid presence dies instantly while the air and low body linger.
Centred at 0, the spectral engine is exactly neutral and Ghostlight behaves as a plain — but high-quality — reverb.
A display that shows the reverb
A continuous cloud shows the reverb's real wet spectrum, live — so the display means something even when the spectral engine is neutral. Bars grow up in amber when a band rings longer than your Decay setting, down in cyan when it dies faster — logarithmic, so ×2 and ÷2 are equal and opposite. At Bias 0 every bar sits flat — the display goes quiet exactly when the feature is off, but the cloud keeps showing you the reverb itself.
Ghostlight vs. Ghostlight Pro
| Ghostlight | Ghostlight Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Space (Size, Decay, Pre-Delay, Diffusion, Low Cut, Damp) | Yes | Yes |
| Reactive spectral decay (Bias, Reactivity — Bloom/Ghost) | Yes | Yes |
| Granular tail (Scatter, Grain, Shimmer, Air, Link) | — | Yes |
| Dynamic EQ (3-band, static + level-reactive, movable Freq/Q) | — | Yes |
| Advanced drawer | — | Tilt, Low/Mid/High Crossover, Low Width, Grain Size, Density, Jitter, Spread, Reverse, Pan Rate, Shimmer Pan Amount, Link Flux, Link Band, De-Ess, De-Ess Frequency, De-Ess Threshold |
| Tempo sync | Pre-Delay | Pre-Delay + Shimmer Pan Rate |
| Freeze | Holds the tank | Holds the tank and latches the grain buffer |
| Live parameters | 18 | 53 |
| Factory presets | 45 | 45 |
Ghostlight is Ghostlight Pro's reactive spectral engine at its core — the same Bloom/Ghost decay behavior, without the granular tail or the deeper control set. Ghostlight Pro adds a second, completely different kind of tail and the detail controls to shape both — reach for it when you want the full instrument. Ghostlight is for when you want a reverb that's just really good at the one thing, with nothing in a drawer you'll never open.
Specifics, stated plainly
| Engine | 8-line FDN, Hadamard mixing, Lagrange-interpolated modulated delays |
|---|---|
| Bands | 4-band decay, fixed crossovers at 300 Hz / 1.2 kHz / 4.8 kHz |
| Spectral analysis | 1024-point FFT, Hann window, 50% overlap, side-chain only |
| Latency | 0 samples |
| CPU | 4.74% idle, 4.82% worst case, 5.17% worst case with display active — one core, 48 kHz stereo |
| Licensing | Free UDI DSP account, one-time online activation — no subscription, works offline for a week between checks |
| Footprint | Lightweight binary, zero background services or daemons |
Compatibility
- VST3, 64-bit — Windows 10/11 (a Standalone app is included in the installer). AU, AAX and macOS are coming soon.
- Verified: Cubase 15 (full checklist), FL Studio (use the panel's own power switch — FL's mixer bypass deactivates the plugin instead of crossfading it)
- Not yet tested: Reaper, Ableton Live, Studio One, Bitwig
- Internet needed once, briefly, to activate (a short browser sign-in) — day-to-day use after that works offline for up to a week between checks