Orbit

Drop Orbit on anything that sounds too stationary and launch it into space. It gets louder and brighter as it swings to the front. It darkens and pulls back as it falls behind. Your ears catch a tiny timing difference between left and right that tells your brain the source is somewhere in the room. Guitar solos orbit the listener. Pads circle the mix. A bass hit in a hip hop track stops feeling glued to the center. Anything stuck benefits from the kind of movement that feels like physics instead of a plug-in.

Why It Sounds Like More Than Panning

Three things move at once from the same LFO position. Pan sweeps left and right using equal-power curves. Volume rises as the sound reaches the front and recedes as it moves behind – the same contour a real sound source makes as it moves around you. High-frequency character shifts from full brightness at the front to a softer 4kHz quality at the rear, matching the spectral change your ears use to place sounds in three-dimensional space. Run all three at Depth noon and it stops reading as an effect and starts reading as motion.

Rate and Sync

Rate runs from a single rotation every 20 seconds – barely perceptible, just a sense of breathing – up to 8 orbits per second in tremolo territory. Lock to tempo and seven subdivisions are available: 4 bars, 2 bars, 1 bar, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. A hi-hat sample orbiting in quarter notes. A pad gliding through the field across two bars. Direction reverses the rotation clockwise to counter-clockwise – automate it mid-track for a spatial flip.

Width, Phase, and Mix

Width runs to 200%, extending the orbit past normal stereo boundaries into territory that sounds genuinely wide on headphones. Phase sets the LFO start position from 0 to 360 degrees – put two instances on two tracks at 0 and 180 and they orbit against each other. Mix blends wet against dry for when you want the motion felt more than heard.

9 Factory Presets

Planetary Orbit loads by default – a medium-rate clockwise rotation at moderate depth and full width that works on almost any sustained source. The other eight cover quarter-note rhythmic panning, slow two-bar ambient drift, a 200%-wide headphone preset, reverse-direction counter orbit, narrow-width motion for instruments that need movement without hard panning, and more. Start from any preset and adjust, or build from scratch with controls at noon.

• Rate: 0.05 to 8.0 Hz free, or tempo sync (4 bars to 1/16 note)
• Depth: 0-100%, power-curved for immediate impact at noon
• Width: 0-200%
• Shape: sine to triangle LFO morph
• Phase: 0-360 degree LFO start position
• Offset: +/-50% pan center shift
• Mix: 0-100% wet/dry blend
• Direction: clockwise / counter-clockwise
• 9 factory presets
• VST3 – Windows, macOS, Linux | AU – macOS
• Perpetual license, 3 activations