Highlights
- Fractal and classic oscillator sources now use the FM-modulated effective frequency to pick the mipmap level, killing the above-16k hash that fast FM produced on those carriers. Wavetable carriers already had this and are unchanged.
- FM amount and ring-mod blend now lerp per sample instead of stepping at every audio block boundary. Audible on SEQ-bank patches where a sequencer source modulates FM depth, like Sacred Steps.
- macOS installer now writes to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins via the standard macOS administrator dialog. Multi-user studio setups see Laura on every account on first scan.
- If you previously ran the v1.0.6 installer, you have a copy at ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins from that run. Delete those two Laura entries after installing v1.0.7 so your DAW does not pick the plugin up twice.
Details
v1.0.7 is an audio quality pass on the FM signal path plus a cleaner macOS installer. No new features, no preset changes. If a patch sounded clean in v1.0.6 it sounds clean now. The patches that were on the edge of aliasing or clicking are now clean too.
The wavetable carrier already derived its effective frequency from the rate of phase change so the table never read brighter harmonics than the modulated rate could support. Fractal and classic carriers fell through to the static base frequency. Heavy FM into Osc B set to Fractal or Classic (FM Punisher in BASS, Fractal Lead in LEAD, Sacred Steps in SEQ) read a mipmap level that was too bright for the actual instantaneous frequency, and the harmonics above Nyquist folded back as broadband hash above 16 kHz. Unison stacked N copies of that aliased signal, so the voice count multiplied the hash. The fix is symmetric: all three oscillator sources now derive the effective frequency from the rate of phase change.
FM depth and ring-mod blend are updated by the modulation matrix once per audio block. In most patches nothing modulates them so the per-block update is a no-op. SEQ-bank patches like Sacred Steps route a sequencer source onto FMAmount, and the sequencer playhead moves continuously between block edges. That meant FM depth made a small step at each block boundary, which stepped the carrier's phase offset by the same amount, which printed as a quiet periodic click every five milliseconds. Both values now lerp per sample across the block so the carrier phase stays continuous.
The macOS install.command now writes to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components and /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3 using the standard macOS administrator password dialog. Previously it wrote to ~/Library, which works on a single-user laptop but means a studio with a second user account had to install once per user. After running the v1.0.7 installer, if v1.0.6 was previously installed to ~/Library you can delete the two old Laura folders so your DAW does not see the plugin twice on its next rescan.