Turn a library sound into one nobody can place.
GIMZWARE builds audio plugins that each do one job properly, for composers and sound designers working to picture. The first is Spall, a frequency shifter. It moves every partial in the signal by the same number of hertz, so the harmonic series breaks instead of transposing, and a familiar source turns into metal, glass or a struck object.
Everything we say about a plugin will be something you can check for yourself. When Spall goes on sale the audio examples will be downloadable, the settings printed next to them, and every figure we publish will carry the method it was measured by.
GIMZWARE Spall. A frequency shifter that breaks the harmonic series. Coming soon.
A pitch shifter multiplies. Ask for an octave and 100 Hz and 200 Hz become 200 Hz and 400 Hz, still an octave apart, still the same instrument a note higher. Spall adds. Ask for 50 Hz and the same pair becomes 150 Hz and 250 Hz, a 5:3 ratio where there was a 2:1, and the sound stops being a note. That is the whole idea, and it is why no amount of pitch shifting gets you to the same place.
It gets reached for on a pad, a drone or a sustained vocal that will not sit still, where a chorus detunes and a phaser sweeps a notch and both leave a signature the ear names within a bar. A shift of a fraction of a hertz, played against the dry signal, moves the whole spectrum instead. On a synth or a sample that is too clean and too harmonic, where a ring modulator gives two sidebands and twice the clutter, and distortion adds partials that are mostly harmonically related and so does not address the problem. On a drum loop that needs its tonality broken and its timing left alone. On a stereo source that is too narrow, widened by shifting each channel against the other rather than by delaying one against it.
What it is not for. Spall has no delay, no feedback and no barber-pole cascade. If the reason you want a frequency shifter is the infinite rising sweep, this is not the plugin for it.
Spall's quality claim reduces to one number, the suppression of the unwanted sideband in decibels, and that figure will go on the product page with the method, the conditions, the build it came from and the date it was taken. It goes on sale when it runs on Windows and macOS, with the audio, the settings and the plot in place on the day.
Everything we publish can be checked
Every figure this company publishes will carry four things: what was measured and how, the conditions it was measured under, the build that produced it, and the date it was taken. A number without those is a number you have to take on trust, and this is not a brand anybody has a reason to trust yet. If one ever turns up here without them, it is a mistake and we would rather hear about it.
Every before and after comparison is level-matched, and the page says how the match was made. Louder sounds better, so an unmatched comparison is a lie whichever way round it falls. The untreated side is a real, competently produced starting point. Nothing gets made worse so a plugin can look clever, and the dry file will be published next to the processed one so you can run it through yourself and get our result.
The demo is the whole plugin
The demo we are building is the whole plugin: thirty days, the full version, every feature working, on your own material in your own session. No account, no sign-up and nothing to activate. Nothing will be done to the audio to remind you it is a demo, because a plugin sold on how clean it is has no business putting noise in your mix to prove a point.
When the period ends the plugin will not break. It loads, it tells you what has happened, it keeps your settings, and it bypasses rather than muting, so nothing it does can end up in a bounce. A project built during the demo will open intact when you buy.
When Spall goes on sale this paragraph will describe the shipped build rather than our intentions, and if any part of it has changed by then it will say so.
Windows and macOS, together
A GIMZWARE plugin goes on sale when it runs on both, and not before. Somebody who reads about a plugin, wants it, and finds it will not run on their machine does not come back three weeks later to check again, so we would rather ship once than ship half.
System requirements go on the product page in real numbers, including where something is expensive to run, because the truth costs one sale and the alternative costs a sale and a review.
Where GIMZWARE comes from
Before GIMZWARE existed there were more than ten years of writing, producing, mixing and mastering, and this company came out of that rather than out of a software business. It teaches you which tools get reached for at two in the morning and which ones sit in the folder unopened, and that is a different education from the one that produces a long feature list.
The plugins are that work carried into code. One job each, no adjectives on the box, and a number where a number belongs.
GIMZWARE LTD is a company registered in England and Wales, and Spall is written here.