Space Dust - JUCE Synthesizer Plugin

August 4, 2026 · View on GitHub

A pure CMake-based polyphonic synthesizer built with JUCE 8, shipping as a VST3 plugin, an Audio Unit (AU), and a standalone app. Cosmic particles of sound.

Repository: github.com/gadalleore/Space_Dust_Synthesizer

git clone https://github.com/gadalleore/Space_Dust_Synthesizer.git
cd Space_Dust_Synthesizer

Known Good With: Ableton Live 10, 11, and 12 (heavily tested for stability as of 2026).

Versions and branches

Two versions of Space Dust are maintained side by side in this one repository, on separate branches. Neither is abandoned — pick the branch for the version you mean to work on.

BranchVersionProduct nameStatus
main2.0.0Space Dust V2In development. Installs alongside V1 rather than replacing it — different product name, different preset folder.
v1-maintenance1.0.18Space DustThe released version, in the wild. Still maintained: fixes for shipped users land here.

Because the two install under different names, both can be loaded in the same project at once, which is what makes it safe to develop V2 while V1 is in use.

Going back to a released version. Releases are marked with annotated tags on v1-maintenance:

git checkout v1.0.18      # the current V1 release
git checkout v1.0.17

Tag every release as it ships — git tag -a v1.0.19 -m "Space Dust v1.0.19 - Version 1 release" on the commit that bumps the version in CMakeLists.txt, then git push origin v1.0.19. Only v1.0.0, v1.0.17 and v1.0.18 carry tags today; the versions in between were bumped without one and can only be found by reading the log, which is exactly the situation the tags exist to avoid.

Screenshots

MainModulation
Main tabModulation tab
EffectsSaturation Color
Effects tabSaturation Color tab
Spectral
Spectral tab

Features

  • Plugin formats – VST3, Audio Unit (AU), and standalone app (macOS universal: Apple Silicon + Intel)
  • 8-voice polyphony – Dual oscillators (with sub oscillator), filter, and ADSR per voice; voice modes Poly / Mono / Legato (last-note priority stack)
  • Effects chain – Reverb, delay (with filter), phaser, flanger, trance gate (post-effect), grain delay, parametric EQ, bitcrusher, soft clipper, compressor, transient shaper, lo-fi (with Analog Drift: subtle per-note pitch/filter variation and slow wander when Lo-Fi is enabled)
  • Modulation – Two LFOs with On toggles; LFO1 targets filter, LFO2 targets pitch (25% depth default)
  • Master volume – 0–2.0 range for headroom
  • MIDI input – Full MIDI note and control support, including MPE (per-note pitch bend, pressure, and timbre via Lower Zone or Legacy modes — see MPE Support)
  • Custom UI – SpaceDust look and feel with compact tabbed layout (Main, Modulation, Effects, Saturation Color, Spectral) and meter-linked glow
  • Real-time safe – Parameter updates without allocations in the audio thread
  • Ableton stability focus – Significant hardening against common VST3 crash patterns in Ableton (state restore, automation, editor lifecycle). Includes automated QA checks and runtime safety logging (optional).

MPE Support

Space Dust is a fully MPE-aware synth: per-note pitch bend goes to the oscillators, channel pressure / aftertouch modulates amplitude, and CC74 / slide ("timbre") sweeps the filter cutoff. The MPE controls live on the Modulation tab (Mode: Legacy / Lower Zone, Bend Range, Pressure depth, Timbre depth).

Important: No DAW currently auto-enables MPE for third-party VST3 instruments — you have to flip a per-track toggle once per project. The plugin handles the rest.

Ableton Live 11 / 12

  1. Right-click the Space Dust title bar in the device chain → Enable MPE Mode. The header will show "MPE" on the right side once enabled.
  2. (Optional) Right-click again → MPE Channel Settings to configure zone (Lower / Upper) and member-channel count.
  3. In Space Dust's Modulation tab → MPE strip, set Mode = Lower Zone for the standard MPE spec, or leave on Legacy for non-MPE keyboards / classic pitch-wheel + aftertouch.
  4. Drive it from a Seaboard/LinnStrument, the Attila Magyar MPE Emulator VST3 (MIDI effect placed before Space Dust on the track), or Live's per-clip MPE envelopes ("E" button → category MPE → Pitch / Pressure / Slide).

Bitwig Studio

  1. Click the Space Dust device's small triangle → Enable Note Expressions (or use the per-track MPE toggle on the track header).
  2. In Space Dust set Mode = Lower Zone.
  3. Per-note PB/AT/timbre from a Seaboard/LinnStrument or Bitwig's note expression editor will flow through.

Cubase / Studio One

  • External MPE controllers (Seaboard, LinnStrument, Sensel, etc.) plug in and work out of the box — Space Dust accepts MIDI on all 16 channels and routes per-note expression internally.
  • Cubase's native "Note Expression" inspector does not surface per-note curves for Space Dust because the plugin does not expose INoteExpressionController (a separate VST3 interface, not the same as MPE-over-MIDI). Hardware MPE controllers and MPE-emulator plugins still work fully.

Verifying it's working

Hold a note and move your controller's pitch wheel — pitch should glide; move pressure / aftertouch — amplitude should swell; move CC74 / slide — the filter should brighten or darken. Lower / raise the Pressure and Timbre knobs in the Modulation tab to confirm the attenuation.

Prerequisites

  • Visual Studio 2022 or newer with "Desktop development with C++" workload
  • CMake 3.22 or newer
  • JUCE 8 – juce.com or GitHub

Setup

juce_path.local is gitignored—create it only on your machine (it may contain a local filesystem path to JUCE). Never commit it.

  1. Install JUCE and point the project to it (choose one):

    • Copy juce_path.local.example to juce_path.local and put your JUCE path in it, or
    • Set the JUCE_DIR environment variable, or
    • Pass -DJUCE_DIR=... when running CMake

  2. Generate and build (recommended): The easiest and most reliable way is to use the provided build script:

    .\build-and-launch.ps1
# Use -NoLaunch to skip launching Ableton
.\build-and-launch.ps1 -NoLaunch

    This script will:

    • Configure with the correct Visual Studio generator (with fallback between 2022 and 2026)
    • Build the Release VST3
    • Automatically copy the plugin to all common VST3 locations (system folder + Ableton User Library, etc.)

    Manual alternative:

    cmake -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release

    (Use Visual Studio 18 2026 if you have VS 2026 installed.)

  3. Plugin output: build\SpaceDust_artefacts\Release\VST3\Space Dust.vst3 (when building manually)

Building the Windows installer

Critical: Before building any installer or final Release binary, you must produce a completely clean build with all logging compiled out.

Run this first (it forces ENABLE_MEMORY_SAFETY_LOGGING=OFF, turns off VLD/ASAN, and does a binary scan as a safety net):

.\disable-all-logging-for-release.ps1

Then continue with packaging:

A signed-and-sealed Inno Setup script ships in installer/SpaceDust-Setup.iss.

  1. Install Inno Setup 6 (one time).
  2. Save the factory presets you want to ship from inside the plug-in UI. They land in %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Space Dust\Presets\ (or wherever you configured via the installer wizard / %ProgramData%\Space Dust\config.xml).
  3. Run the packaging script: 
    # Recommended full flow (ensures zero logging leaks):
.\disable-all-logging-for-release.ps1
.\package-installer.ps1

# Or for fast iteration on installer-only tweaks (assumes you already ran disable):
.\package-installer.ps1 -SkipBuild
    The script rebuilds the Release VST3, syncs your *.xml presets into installer/Files/Presets/, and compiles installer/Output/SpaceDust-Synthesizer-1.0-Setup.exe.
  4. Test the produced .exe. Customer-side, the installer:
    • Prompts for a VST3 folder and a presets folder.
    • Writes %ProgramData%\Space Dust\config.xml so the plug-in finds the chosen presets folder on first run.
    • Ships the factory presets with onlyifdoesntexist, so re-installing or upgrading never overwrites a user's modified copies.

The installer's UAC prompt shows "Publisher: Unknown" because the .exe isn't code-signed; that's expected for indie distributions. See installer/Files/Presets/README.md for more on the preset workflow.

Project Structure

Source/
├── PluginProcessor.*        # Main audio processor
├── PluginEditor.*           # Plugin UI (tabbed: Main, Modulation, Effects, Saturation Color, Spectral)
├── SynthVoice.*             # Voice implementation
├── SynthSound.*             # Sound definition
├── SpaceDustSynthesiser.*   # Synth engine
├── MemorySafetyLogger.*     # Runtime safety & crash diagnostics logging (optional)
├── PresetManager.*          # Preset saving/loading system
├── Goniometer.*             # Stereo correlation meter
├── OscilloscopeComponent.*  # Lissajous / waveform display
├── SpectrumAnalyserComponent.*  # Spectrum analyzer
├── SpaceDustReverb.*        # Reverb
├── SpaceDustGrainDelay.*    # Grain delay
├── SpaceDustPhaser.*        # Phaser
├── SpaceDustFlanger.*       # Flanger
├── SpaceDustTranceGate.*    # Trance gate (post-effect)
├── SpaceDustBitCrusher.*    # Bitcrusher effect
├── SpaceDustSoftClipper.*   # KClip-style soft clipper (Saturation Color tab)
├── SpaceDustCompressor.*    # SSL/1176/LA-2A style compressor (Saturation Color tab)
├── SpaceDustTransient.*     # 808/909 transient shaper (Saturation Color tab)
├── SpaceDustLofi.*          # Lo-fi effect (Saturation Color tab)
├── SpaceDustParametricEQ.*  # Parametric EQ
├── SpaceDustFinalEQ.*       # Final mastering EQ (DSP)
├── FinalEQComponent.*       # Final EQ UI component
├── VoidVerbReverb.*         # Additional reverb (Dattorro plate)
├── SpaceDustLookAndFeel.*   # Custom UI styling
└── CheezeGuyGame.h          # Easter egg (optional)

Recent fixes

  • Ableton stability hardening (2026): Major pass to eliminate classes of crashes that could occur during session restore, preset loading, and rapid automation. Key changes:
    • Introduced safeGetParam() helper on the editor (and equivalent helpers in the processor) to safely read parameters without risking null dereferences when IDs are missing or during state restore.
    • Replaced dozens of direct *getRawParameterValue() and getParameter()->getValue() calls throughout the UI with the safe wrappers.
    • Hardened Grain Delay read buffer against floating-point index drift (common with pitch shifting + automation), preventing potential out-of-bounds reads into the delay buffer.
  • Build & deployment reliability: build-and-launch.ps1 now reliably copies the VST3 to all common locations (system VST3, Ableton User Library, etc.) and includes fallback logic between Visual Studio 2022 and 2026 generators.
  • Host automation vs. Link to Master (filter): When LFO filter sections follow the main filter, the editor previously mixed normalized APVTS values with convertTo0to1 as if they were Hz, and called setValueNotifyingHost on the master when mod-filter parameters changed (including from host automation). That could corrupt cutoff and fight automation on the main filter. Link toggles now copy master→mod using normalized getValue(); while linked, the mod page mirrors the main filter visually without extra host notifications, and user edits on the mod page update the master through normal control gestures.
  • Pink noise generator: The Voss–McCartney implementation uses 16 filter rows; the row index must stay in range. The counter is now wrapped so it cannot produce an out-of-bounds row (which could cause rare harsh digital glitches after sustained play, for example on long chords with pink noise). Non-finite oscillator frequencies and filter outputs are also clamped or zeroed; developers can read SpaceDustAudioProcessor::getDspSanitizeEventCount() if investigating edge cases.

Additional documentation

Development & Testing

This project includes significant tooling focused on stability and quality:

  • run-full-qa.ps1 — Runs static analysis checks, pluginval validation, installer smoke tests, and crash-marker hygiene.
  • enable-safety-logging.ps1 / disable-all-logging-for-release.ps1 — Toggles the built-in MemorySafetyLogger for detailed runtime diagnostics (voices, grains, buffer access, audio-thread safety, etc.).
  • The plugin has undergone extensive hardening specifically against common Ableton Live VST3 crash patterns (state restore crashes, dangling parameter listeners, etc.).

See QA-README.md for details on the QA suite.

References

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 - see LICENSE for details.