Press — CNTRLLD SPECTRA

Descriptions, ready to use

One line

SPECTRA is an adaptive spectral shaper for mixing and mastering, with a target curve you can draw yourself.

50 words

CNTRLLD SPECTRA is an adaptive spectral shaper. It measures your mix as it plays and evens out what does not belong — resonances, masking build-ups, holes — while Follow blends between an absolute reference and your material’s own balance. Six draggable nodes let you redefine the target the correction steers towards.

120 words

CNTRLLD SPECTRA combines two ideas that usually come in separate plug-ins: a spectral balancer that compares your music to a reference curve and steers towards it, and a perceptual corrector that leaves your macro balance alone and only evens out what sticks out of it. The Follow control blends between them without steps.

What neither of those offers is here as well: the target is editable. Six draggable EQ nodes are added to the target itself, so the automatic correction works with the shape you drew instead of fighting it.

Three variants share one curve — Live at zero latency, Standard at 4 ms, Master in full linear phase — and every one of them can work on mid and side separately.

The facts

Developer	CNTRLLD, the Netherlands
Product	SPECTRA — adaptive spectral shaper
Formats	VST3 and AU on macOSWindows VST3 in preparation
Requirements	macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon · 44.1–192 kHz · mono or stereo
Latency	Live 0 ms · Standard 4 ms · Master 100 ms+1.35 ms with the true-peak limiter on
CPU	About 7 % of one core at 48 kHz on an Apple M2 Pro, with everything turned up
Copy protection	A signed licence checked on the user’s own machineNo activation server, no iLok, no dongle. Works offline.
Trial	30 days, nothing held back
Price	€149 · €99 while version 1 is being finished
Release	To be announced
Contact	support@cntrlld.com

What makes it different

The target is editable. Most adaptive tools decide the goal for you; here six nodes change the goal itself, so the correction and your decision pull in the same direction.
One curve, three ways to realise it. Live at zero latency, Standard at 4 ms, Master in full linear phase — switching changes how, never what.
It knows what a break is. When a build-up drops the bass, SPECTRA does not read the track as thin, so the drop does not come back louder than the rest.
It renders the way it plays. The output is identical at every buffer size, tested bit for bit from 1 to 2048 samples.
Stereo width that leaves the mono sum alone. Only the side signal is filtered; mid comes out bit for bit untouched, and there is no saturation.

Screenshots

The real interface, 1600 px wide, unretouched. All four are in the press kit.

At work

Two resonances caught and cut in steel blue, the balance around them gently lifted in amber.

The editable target

The mint line is the user’s part of the target; the correction bends to meet it.

Master in M/S

Mid and side analysed and corrected separately; the side is drawn in lavender.

Logo

Wordmark

SVG and PNG, in dark, light and transparent. Please keep the proportions and the colours as they are.

Using all this

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