Melbourne developer Sentinel AV and UK drum and bass producer Bladerunner have co-developed Folda, a distortion and movement plugin that lets producers blend between four distinct saturation scenes in real time using a 2D grid.
Melbourne developer Sentinel AV has released Folda, a distortion and movement plugin that lets producers blend between four distinct saturation scenes in real time using a 2D grid. Folda was co-developed with UK drum and bass producer Bladerunner, who originated the morphing distortion concept. A free YouTube tutorial series featuring Bladerunner is in production. Distortion plugins tend to fall into one of two camps: the ones you set and forget, and the ones that actually move. Folda is firmly in the second category.
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The concept is built around four blendable distortion “scenes,” each called a GROUP. Each GROUP can be loaded with its own distinct saturation character, and morphed between in real time on a 2D GRID – making Folda as useful as a performance and sound design tool as it is a straight-up distortion unit.
Across those four GROUPs, there are 34 algorithms to draw from, spanning wavefold, clip, saturate, overdrive, fuzz and digital categories – a significant amount of sonic range in a single plugin.
Folda’s modulation system is extensive. Up to 16 modulators with 32 targets each can be assigned across the plugin, with types including WAVE (LFO), NOISE, ENVELOPE (audio follower), ADSR and NOTE (MIDI). The GRID position itself is a modulation target, meaning the morphing between your four scenes can be driven automatically, turning static distortion into something that evolves with the track.
Folda samples:
On the global side, Folda includes Auto-Gain for level-matched driving, Input Gain from -12 to +12 dB, M/S stereo processing with sub-bass mono protection, oversampling up to 16x and a 3-band EQ with pre/post selection per band. A real-time vectorscope and oscilloscope visualiser rounds things out, giving you a clear picture of exactly what the distortion is doing to your signal.
A working in-browser demo at sentinelav.com – a WASM build of Folda’s primary interface – lets producers try the GRID morphing concept directly in their browser, with real-time audio across guitar, drums and bass. No download or signup is required.
Folda runs as VST3 on Windows and AU/VST3 on macOS, and is available now here.
