Deriva

Concept

Deriva is a sound-design plugin about unstable preservation. You generate a Fragment, listen to what the Engines reveal, and decide whether to Offer it to The Keeper. If preserved, the Fragment becomes a Remnant in the Archive. If lost, it disappears.

The Keeper

• The default decision chance is 50% Preserved / 50% Lost.
• Repeated Lost results make a future Preserved result more likely.
• Repeated Preserved results make a future Lost result more likely.
• The bias is subtle and capped, so The Keeper never becomes fully predictable.
• The aura hints at the bias: warmer amber favours preservation, deeper red favours loss.

Main Flow

• Idle: audio passes through normally until a Fragment exists.
• Fracture: generates hidden Engine parameters and visible tag values.
• Liminal: the Fragment is active and the Engines process incoming audio.
• Offer: submits the current Fragment to The Keeper.
• Result: Preserved saves a Remnant. Lost discards the Fragment.

Engines

Erosion

Saturation, tone damage, drive and destructive colour.

Scatter

Granular clouds, octave fragments, texture and suspended motion.

Veil

Creative filtering, resonant movement and spectral colour.

Mirror

Ambient shimmer, reverse bloom and wide ethereal reverb. In supported hosts, Mirror exposes an optional external sidechain input that ducks only the wet reverb tail while the dry input keeps feeding the ambience normally.

Controls

• Left-click an Engine to mute or unmute it.
• Right-click an Engine to solo it.
• Drag Engine blocks to change the processing order. Without a selected Remnant, that order remains across new Fractures. With a selected Remnant, the order is saved only into that Remnant.
• The circular reset icon above Mute Persistence restores the original order: Erosion, Scatter, Veil, Mirror.
• Mute Persistence keeps muted Engines muted after Fracture. When off, Fracture wakes all Engines again.
• Mix controls the global dry/wet amount of the plugin. Scarred or Extinct Remnants can lower the maximum Mix; moving from a limited Remnant to one with a higher maximum raises Mix to that new maximum, and host automation is clamped to the active maximum.
• Click ACTIVE to enter DELTA mode. DELTA removes the dry track and plays only Deriva's actual effect contribution at the current Engine and Global Mix values.
• The central waveform is Deriva's animated ritual waveform. It reacts to the active Fragment, dominant Engine colour, result states and Delta/Morph modes.
• Engine mute, solo, Fracture and Offer are available for host automation.
• If the DAW bypasses, disables or suspends Deriva, the interface fades into a BYPASSED view.

Live Performance

Live Performance Mode is planned for a future Deriva update. The version menu currently marks it as Soon.

• C2 / note 36: Fracture.
• C#2 / note 37: Offer.
• D2 / note 38: momentary Delta while held.
• D#2 / note 39: toggle Morph for the selected Remnant.
• E2-G2 / notes 40-43: toggle Engine mutes for Erosion, Scatter, Veil, and Mirror.
• C3-D#3 / notes 48-51: momentary Engine solo for Erosion, Scatter, Veil, and Mirror.
• CC1: Global Mix, clamped to the current Remnant maximum.
• CC74: temporary Veil performance macro.
• CC71: temporary Mirror performance macro.
• Aftertouch / pressure: temporarily intensifies Veil and Mirror without changing the saved Remnant.

The mappings are editable from the Live setup window and are saved with the plugin state, so a performance session can keep its own controller layout.

Tags

Each Engine is described by a level tag. Tags are calculated from Engine parameters and Mix, so they describe effective sound strength rather than only raw parameter values.

Archive & Vessels

• Preserved Fragments appear as Remnants.
• Click a Remnant to recall its sound, Engine mutes, Engine order and Morph state.
• Remnants can be renamed, favourited, deleted and recalled.
• The Archive search field filters Remnants by name. Use the X button beside it to clear the search quickly.
• Tags filter by Engine level; Vessels filter by user category.
• Right-click Remnants directly to select 2-4 of them for Merge, then press Merge to create a purple Merged Remnant. On Merged Remnants, the delete button becomes a purple Sever icon that restores the hidden source Remnants.
• Morphed Remnants remember their source. In the Archive, subtle layered wires connect a Morphed Remnant to the Remnant it came from; selecting or hovering either side brightens the connection.
• Vessels do not change the sound.

Morph

• Morph appears after selecting a Remnant from the Archive.
• When enabled, the selected Remnant stays attached while you press Fracture.
• Each new Fracture creates a 50/50 blend: half selected Remnant, half newly generated Fragment.
• The active hybrid state is called Flowing.
• If Morph is turned off before offering, Deriva returns to the selected Remnant.
• If a Flowing result is found, turning Morph back on can restore that cached Flowing state.
• Offering a Flowing result can create a new Remnant marked Morphed.
• If the source Remnant was Scarred or Extinct, the new Morphed Remnant inherits that mark too.

Morph Risk

Merged

Created by joining 2-4 Archive Remnants. Severing it restores the hidden source Remnants.

Morphed

Created from Morph rather than a normal Fragment.

Scarred

Affected by a lost Morph Offer; its maximum Mix has been reduced by 10%.

Extinct

A Scarred Remnant that reached 0 maximum Mix.

Storage, Updates & Offline Use

• Remnants are saved locally and also stored with DAW sessions.
• The persistent Archive is designed so removing and re-adding the plugin does not erase Remnants.
• Mirror's sidechain is optional. If your DAW exposes Deriva's sidechain input, route another track to it to make the reverb tail duck around that signal.
• Deriva does not need internet access to process audio or use the Archive.
• Internet is only used by external links and update checking.
• Check Updates opens a small status window and compares the installed version with the latest version published on the Deriva download site. When an update is available, the window shows a Download button that opens the current Mac or Windows installer link.

Version Menu

• Click the version number to open Deriva's system menu.
• UI Scale changes the plugin size from 75% to 200%.
• Guidance enables short explanations when hovering important controls on the main interface. The Archive keeps Guidance disabled to stay faster and cleaner while browsing Remnants.
• Live Performance is reserved for a future MIDI performance update and is marked as Soon.
• Low Performance Mode removes visual glows and animations, leaving a simpler static UI while keeping important information visible.
• Website, User Manual and Check Updates live in this menu.

Installation Notes

• Close the DAW before installing or updating.
• On macOS, Deriva installs as VST3 and AU.
• On Windows, Deriva installs as VST3 and needs WebView2 Runtime.
• After updating, rescan plugins in the DAW if needed.