Advanced neural and DSP synthesiser and effect processor

NeuralDream

NeuralDream is two plug-ins - an Instrument and an Effects Processor that share the same extraordinary audio processing capabilities and framework. Nearly a year of design and development went into building an extensible architecture that offers an instrument with an incredibly powerful Synthesiser, Sampler and Particle Generation System for creating audio, alongside advanced effects processors, some of which are entirely unique in the marketplace.

Choose one of more than 340 presets and play or open it up and build sounds that do not exist yet. Every sound is a stack of up to eight layers, each with its own sound source and its own chain of DSP and neural engines.

Every one of over 346 controls can be modulated internally by over 42 modulation sources or from your DAW's automation.

Free 14-day trial Read the manual

The introductory price will rise on 1st January to £129 incl. VAT.

The NeuralDream Instrument window with three layers. The first holds the synthesiser, the second is a Particles layer and the third runs the Resonance Field and the FDN Reverb. The modulation strip runs along the bottom.

40+DSP and neural engines

340+factory presets

8layers in every sound

32voices of polyphony

Sounds

Audio demos

All demos are purely NeuralDream Instrument and built-in neural and DSP effects.

Each demo is of a single Preset without any additional effects or processing. Each demo will play in turn automatically, if you just want to sit back and enjoy!

Alien Machine

This is a test of whether the text appears in the player when it is present...

Video

See it at work

Introduction to NeuralDream Neural Dream Instrument Wavetables - An introduction to the basics

Wavetables - the basics Neural Dream Instrument Wavetables - An introduction to the basics

Wavetables - advanced warping Advanced Wavetable realtime processing - wavefolding, phase distortion, symmetry, depth and harmonics

Wavetables - grit modifiers More advanced and unique techniques for Wavetable processing

Grains

Beat-slicing grains and layers

Partials oscillator

Library and modal oscillator

Sequencer

Particles

Sampler

Presets or pure exploration

Play it straight away or build it from scratch

Some musicians want to open a plugin, find a sound that inspires them and start writing. Others want to know how every sound is made and to make their own. NeuralDream is built for both.

Start with a preset

NeuralDream comes with more than 340 factory presets. The preset browser finds sounds by category, tags, sound source and engine and a single click loads each one while you keep playing. Every factory preset is a finished sound that you can use as it is or treat as the starting point for your own.

Build your own

Underneath every preset are three oscillators with four kinds of synthesis, two filters with six circuits, per-voice modulation, two step sequencers, Starling and more than forty engines to process the result. Every knob on every panel can be modulated and everything is saved with your preset.

The instrument

A synthesiser at the heart of it

NeuralDream Instrument is a polyphonic synthesiser and sampler with up to thirty-two voices. Each voice is a complete copy of the whole signal path, with 3 oscillators, 2 filters, 4 envelopes and 4 LFOs. That is why every note you play moves on its own. Because the synthesiser is a layer's sound source, the whole processing chain is available after it and two layers can each carry a synthesiser of their own!

Three oscillators, four ways of making sound

Each of the three oscillators can run as a Wavetable, Granular, Partials, FM or Modal Source and each has its own phase distortion, wavefolding and grit. You can drag your own audio straight onto the granular, wavetable and partials oscillators (the last two use sophisticated re-synthesis) and the modal oscillator is a physically modelled exciter and resonator, with editable harmonics and ADSR hammer.

Two filters, six circuits

Each of the two filters can be a ladder, a zero-delay state-variable, a comb, a low-pass gate, a frequency shifter or a vowel formant filter. The two are chosen independently so one filter can be a ladder while the other speaks vowels.

Starling

Starling is a generative engine that listens to what you play and develops it, accompanying you while your hands are on the keys and taking the lead when they are not. It also listens to the audio it is causing so it knows whether a note it played was heard or was lost under the tail of the last one.

Two step sequencers

Each sequencer plays looping gate, pitch and velocity patterns from the keys you hold, with its own rate, swing, direction and length. Each can drive different oscillators so one can play a bass line on the first oscillator while the other runs a faster figure on the other two, both locked to your DAW's tempo.

Particles

Particles is a sound source that gives birth to clouds of short tones, up to 1024 at once, each with its own pitch, wavetable, length, loudness and place in the stereo field. Set wide and fast it becomes a shimmering noise and set to a scale and slowed down it becomes a music box.

Played with expression

The synthesiser is fully MPE-aware so controllers such as the Expressive E Osmose, ROLI Seaboard and LinnStrument can bend, press and slide each note on its own. On an ordinary keyboard the same pressure and slide sources still work across the whole instrument.

Starling shows the key and scale it has detected, the phrase it is on and how strongly each of its controls is shaping what it plays.

Each of the sixteen steps carries its own gate, pitch and velocity. The sequencer's rate, swing, direction and other settings sit beside the steps.

The Particles panel sets how particles are born, how they drift in pitch and across the stereo field and which notes they may land on. A particle can even leave a shower of children behind when it dies and the visualiser draws the whole cloud as it plays.

The effect

Engines that want two sounds

NeuralDream also provides a separate effect plugin that processes the audio on any track in your DAW, with the same engines, modulation and presets as the instrument. Many of its engines are not effects in the usual sense. They take two sounds, a carrier and a modifier. The result depends on how the two meet.

The carrier can come from the plugin's input, its sidechain, a sample or the output of another layer. The modifier can be a time and/or pitch shifted sample, any impulse response/convolution or a trained neural model, such as an accurate capture of a real guitar amplifier. Layers can run side by side and be blended or one layer can feed the next and the whole arrangement is saved and recalled as a single preset inside one plugin.

Modulation brings it to life. For the effects engine, NeuralDream includes 4 Global LFOs, 4 envelope followers and 4 macros that can be routed to any control in any engine, through a pool of 1024 parameters that your DAW also sees as automation lanes. Every knob on every panel is a possible modulation target!

Samples are treated as a first-class sound source. The sample player has six playback modes, follows your DAW's transport, stretches time without changing pitch and detects the tempo of what you load.

This layer runs the Exciter, then Lustre, then the Spectral Gate, which uses the sample loaded in the same layer as its modifier.

The catalogue

More than forty engines

Every engine is a self-contained processor with its own controls, its own visualiser and its own colour. The colour tells you how many sounds it takes and whether a neural network runs inside it.

One sound, DSP One sound, neural Two sounds, DSP Two sounds, neural

01
LP/HP Filter
A resonant low-pass or high-pass filter whose slope runs from a gentle two-pole curve to a steep eight-pole cut.
02
VCF
A characterful filter modelled on the voltage-controlled filters of analogue synthesisers.
03
Parametric EQ
Three bands can each boost or cut by up to 24 dB, with adjustable centre frequency and width.
04
Noise Gate
The gate silences audio that falls below a threshold, for removing bleed and low-level noise.
05
Delay
A multi-tap delay can lock to your DAW's tempo, with feedback, stereo placement and saturation.
06
Stereo Echo
Two independent delay lines, one for each channel, give everything from subtle widening to ping-pong.
07
FDN Reverb
An eight-line feedback delay network builds anything from a small room to a large space.
08
Superspace
A large reverb and delay hybrid offers five algorithms, from lush reverbs to cascading echoes and dense clouds.
09
DarkSky
A diffuse, atmospheric reverb with shimmer is built for drones, ambient spaces and evolving textures.
10
Chorus
A bucket-brigade style chorus thickens a sound, with WIDE and HYPER modes for extreme stereo.
11
Phaser
A multi-stage phaser sweeps notches through the spectrum for the classic swooshing sound.
12
Auto Pan
Its own LFO moves the sound between the left and right channels.
13
Binaural
It places a sound in three-dimensional space around the listener's head, for headphone listening.
14
Stereo Widener
It widens a sound by decorrelating its left and right channels, after splitting it into low and high bands.
15
Granular
It slices incoming audio into tiny grains and rebuilds it, with control of density, size, pitch, direction, spread and envelope.
16
IR Convolver
An impulse response gives your sound the character of a real space or a piece of equipment, from concert halls to speaker cabinets.
17
Pitch Shifter
It shifts pitch by spectral processing, with a choice of four analysis sizes that trade precision against delay.
18
Tape Simulation
It models the whole signal path of a tape recorder and a neural mode plays back a trained capture of a real machine.
19
Neural Amp
It runs downloaded neural captures of real amplifiers, cabinets and pedals.
20
Neural FX
It generates a unique neural network effect from a single seed number, with no download needed.
21
RAVE
A neural network transforms your audio through what it has learned from another body of sound.
22
Spectral Morph
It blends the spectra of two sounds, a carrier and a modifier.
23
Spectral Gate
The carrier is let through only where the modifier has energy, frequency by frequency.
24
Vocoder
The spectral envelope of the modifier is imposed on the carrier, as in the classic talking synthesiser.
25
Live Convolve
Two live sounds are convolved together, the modifier acting as a constantly changing impulse response.
26
Ring Modulator
Two sounds are multiplied together, for inharmonic, metallic and bell-like tones.
27
Spectral Style Transfer
The spectral envelope of the modifier is transferred onto the carrier.
28
Octave Filter
A ten-band stepped octave filter is modelled on a precision laboratory octave analyser.
29
Level/Pan Utility
It provides an output level and a pan that your DAW can automate.
30
Cross-Synthesis
It fuses two sounds by morphing their spectral envelopes and their spectral detail separately.
31
BITFOLD
Wavefolding, bit crushing and sample-rate reduction are combined in one engine.
32
Lustre
A bright, modern reverb is built on an eight-line feedback delay network.
33
Dream Delay
A three-tap tape echo places its taps left, centre and right, each locked to tempo.
34
Aperture
It passes audio inside an adjustable frequency window and silences everything outside it.
35
Resonance Field
It turns any incoming audio into a tunable field of harmonic resonance.
36
Flow
It freezes a moment of sound and holds it as an endless, evolving pad.
37
Compressor
A stereo compressor is built on the modern published reference design for dynamic range control.
38
Darkhole
A vast reverb models no real space at all, from gentle three-second halls to endless, slowly turning cathedrals.
39
Filament
It re-tunes a sound's harmonics without moving its note.
40
Flanger
A bucket-brigade flanger sweeps very widely, with feedback that can be taken close to runaway.
41
Exciter
It adds new harmonics above the highs, weight below the bass and air at the top, without simply turning up the treble and bass.

Presets

Find a sound by what it is

The preset browser fills most of the plugin window and is where you find, audition, describe and save presets.

You can search by a preset's name, description, author or tags. You can narrow the list to presets that use a particular sound source or a particular engine so it is easy to find every preset that uses RAVE. Tags can be combined so choosing PAD and MOTION together shows only the presets that carry both.

A single click loads a preset and leaves the browser open so you can audition one after another. Your own presets sit alongside the factory library and you can keep your own version of a factory preset without losing the original.

Every preset carries a category, tags and a description, which the preview strip along the foot of the browser shows as you point at it.

The four neural engines

Machine learning in the signal path

Four engines run neural networks on your audio as it plays, to do things that conventional signal processing cannot.

Neural FX

Neural FX builds a neural network from a seed number so every seed is a different effect and the same seed always gives back the same one. It needs no model file and no download.

Neural Amp

Neural Amp runs neural captures of real amplifiers, cabinets and pedals. The capture files are small and hundreds of free, community-made ones can be downloaded.

Tape Simulation

Tape Simulation models the whole path of a tape recorder, including the magnetic behaviour of the tape itself and a neural mode can play back a trained capture of a particular machine instead.

RAVE

RAVE encodes your audio into a model learned from another body of sound and decodes it back so a guitar played through a model trained on violins takes on a string-like quality while keeping its own phrasing.

Neural Amp, RAVE and the neural mode of Tape Simulation use model files that are not included in the installer, because of their size and their third-party licences. The manual explains where to download them.

Specs

System requirements

macOSNeuralDream needs an Apple Silicon or Intel Mac running macOS 11 Big Sur or later and it runs natively without Rosetta.

WindowsNeuralDream needs 64-bit Windows 10 or later.

FormatsIt is available as AU and VST3 on the Mac and as VST3 on Windows and AAX is coming soon on both.

MemoryAt least 8 GB of RAM is recommended and long samples, impulse responses and neural models use more.

HostsIt works in any DAW that supports AU or VST3, including Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper and Bitwig.

Questions

Before you buy

Is NeuralDream a subscription?

No. You pay once and the licence is yours to keep, with no subscription and no yearly fee. The launch price is £79 including VAT.

What does one licence cover?

One licence covers both the instrument and the effect on up to three of your computers. Reinstalling on a computer that is already activated does not use up another of the three.

What is in the free trial?

The trial is the complete plugin with both the instrument and the effect. It lasts 14 days and needs no payment card. A trial can be started once on each computer. When it ends, NeuralDream still loads but makes no sound until it is activated with a licence.

Does NeuralDream need the internet?

Only twice: once to start the trial and once to activate a licence. After that it never needs a connection so it works in a studio that is kept offline.

Which computers and DAWs does it work with?

On the Mac it needs an Apple Silicon or Intel Mac with macOS 11 or later and runs as AU and VST3. On Windows it needs 64-bit Windows 10 or later and runs as VST3. AAX is coming soon on both. It works in any DAW that supports AU or VST3, including Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper and Bitwig.

Can I use my own sounds?

Yes. You can drag your own audio onto the granular and partials oscillators and play it through the sample player, which has six playback modes and follows your DAW's tempo. You can also use your own impulse responses in the convolution engines.

Does it work with MPE controllers?

Yes. The synthesiser is fully MPE-aware so controllers such as the Expressive E Osmose, ROLI Seaboard and LinnStrument can bend, press and slide each note on its own.

Are the neural models included?

Neural FX needs no model at all. Neural Amp, RAVE and the neural mode of Tape Simulation use model files that are not included in the installer, because of their size and their third-party licences. Hundreds of free captures are available for Neural Amp and the manual explains where to download them.

Can I read the manual before I buy?

Yes. The manual is free to download and describes every engine and every control in full. Download the manual (PDF)

How do I move NeuralDream to a new computer?

Email support@dreamdeepcr.com from the address you bought with and we will free one of your three activations so you can activate the new computer.

What if it will not run on my computer?

If NeuralDream cannot be made to run on a supported system, email us within 14 days of buying and we will refund you in full. The licence terms explain your other refund rights.

Getting it

One licence, both plugins, three computers

One licence covers both the instrument and the effect, on up to three of your computers. The trial is the complete plugin for 14 days and it needs no payment card.

The manual is free to read before you buy and it describes every engine and control in full.

Download the manual (PDF)

£79 including VAT

This is a one-off payment with no subscription, for the instrument and the effect on up to three computers.

Start the 14-day trial

Free 14-day trial

Download and install NeuralDream and open it in your DAW. In the licence panel choose Try it free for 14 days, type your email address and press CONTINUE. We email you a 6-digit code. Type it in and your trial starts. Starting the trial and activating a licence are the only two moments NeuralDream ever needs the internet. When you buy, choose I have a licence in the same panel and enter your licence key.

Download for macOS Download for Windows

Please note that the Windows version of NeuralDream does not include the RAVE engine.