// EST. 1986 · AU · VST3 · STANDALONE
Tough love
for your mix.
Plugins that fix the stuff your mix won't admit is broken. Rhythm, punch, space, groove, squelch, and whatever we're working through next. $1.99 each. No subscription. No iLok. No excuses.
PICK WHAT YOU WANT:
The whole family> VST DADDY: _
PLUGIN 01 // RHYTHM
GATE DADDY
Trance gate, volume shaper and sidechain in one plugin.
Healthy boundaries, 16 steps at a time.
Trance gate
16 steps, 1/4 to 1/64 with triplets and dotted notes. Swing, per-step volume, and pattern presets from 4-on-the-floor to CHAOS.
Draw your pump
A volume shaper you can draw: click to add points, drag to bend them. One-click shapes, snap, and a pencil mode.
Real sidechain
Ducks to your actual kick from Ableton's sidechain input. Lookahead lets it duck before the hit.
Trigger it 4 ways
Tempo sync, free Hz, audio hit, sidechain hit, or a MIDI note. Off-grid kicks still pump on time.
Low-end duck
Ducks just the bass under a frequency you pick. Kick and bass stop fighting; the highs stay put.
Mood Swings
Two LFOs plus a filter: wobble the cutoff, auto-pan, breathe the width.
Pro workflow
Undo/redo, A/B compare, save your own presets, copy and paste curves, and a help bar that explains every control.
Simple by default
One module on screen at a time. The deep stuff waits behind MORE until you want it.
PLUGIN 02 // TRANSIENTS
VELVET PUNCH
A transient designer for drums that adds snap or softness
without pumping, wobble or distortion.
Attack + Sustain
±15 dB of snap and ±24 dB of tail. Amber rings on the knobs show exactly what each hit is getting.
No threshold
It reacts to how sharp a hit is, not how loud. Ghost notes and rimshots get the same treatment.
Clean on 808s
A peak-hold detector keeps sub bass from wobbling the gain. A 45 Hz sine at max settings measures −153 dB distortion.
Lookahead
1.5 ms lookahead puts every gain move just before the hit. Latency is reported, so Ableton lines everything up.
Soft clip
A 4× oversampled clipper catches boosted peaks before 0 dBFS, without the harsh aliasing.
Parallel mix
Dry/wet blend that stays phase-aligned, for New York-style smack without the comb filtering.
PLUGIN 03 // SPACE
REVERB DADDY
Seven reverbs in one plugin, with ducking built in.
Plate, hall, room, 1986, shimmer, supernova and gated.
Seven rooms
Bright vocal plate, smooth hall, natural room, grainy 1986 rack, shimmer, an endless supernova, and the gated '86 drum sound.
Built-in duck
The reverb dips while your vocal plays and blooms in the gaps. Follows the track itself or any sidechain. No extra compressor needed.
Shimmer
Tails that climb an octave, a fifth, an octave and a fifth, or two octaves. Or drop an octave if you want spooky.
Supernova + Freeze
Decays up to 60 seconds. Hit FREEZE to hold a tail forever and play right over it.
Gated, in time
Big reverb that slams shut after every hit. Set the gate length and it chops each one cleanly.
Tempo pre-delay
Pre-delay in milliseconds or locked to note values, so the reverb sits in the groove.
One CHARACTER knob
A knob that changes job with the mode: diffusion, early reflections, grit, shimmer, density or gate length.
Clean + light
Tested for metallic ringing and runaway feedback. Zero latency, and switching modes keeps the volume steady.
PLUGIN 04 // GROOVE
LOOP DADDY
Drop in your sample packs. Loop Daddy sorts every loop into nine lanes,
locks them to your tempo and key, and rolls you a groove.
Nine lanes, auto-sorted
Kick, bass, hats, clap, two percs, tops, lead and vocal. It reads your file names and files every loop. One-shots and FX stay out.
Generate. Hold. Roll.
GENERATE rolls a fresh groove. HOLD what you love and roll the rest, or step through a lane's loops with < >.
Tempo lock
Every loop is stretched to your exact tempo, seamlessly. Tested sample-accurate against Ableton's downbeat.
Key lock
Pick a root and scale; bass, lead and vocal are retuned to fit. Vocals keep their natural tone.
Drag into Ableton
Drag any lane onto a track to drop in the loop at your tempo and key. DRAG ALL drops the whole groove.
Mix your packs
Load as many packs as you like and they all blend into one pool. WAV, AIFF, MP3, FLAC and OGG.
Mixer with reset
A volume and tone knob for every lane. Double-click any knob to reset it, or hit RESET MIX.
Transients S / M / L
Tighten every drum hit with one click. Your session is saved with your Ableton project.
PLUGIN 05 // SQUELCH
ACID DADDY
A 303-style acid bass synth with an acid line generator built in.
Hit GENERATE, ride the cutoff, drag it into Ableton.
The real squelch
A diode ladder filter modelled on how the 303 actually behaves: rubbery resonance, bass that thins out as it screams, and sweeps that never zipper.
Acid generator
GENERATE writes a new line in your key. Or re-roll just the notes, the rhythm, the accents or the slides and keep the rest. MUTATE tweaks a few steps.
Accents that climb
Stack accents and each one gets brighter than the last, then the wow fades out over the next notes. Just like the box.
16 acid presets
From BASIC ACID THERAPY to WAREHOUSE AT 4AM and PHRYGIAN FEELINGS. Each is a sound, a line and a key.
Draw it yourself
Click notes into the grid and drag them; they snap to your key. Paint accents and slides. Swing, triplets, 1/32 and odd lengths for polyrhythms.
8 pattern slots
Eight patterns per session, switched right on the beat. Copy and paste between slots, and automate the slot in Ableton to arrange a whole track.
Drive + delay
Soft, crunch or fuzz drive, and a ping-pong delay locked to your tempo. The 3/16 echo that every acid record has is one knob away.
Drag MIDI or audio
Drop the line onto any track as MIDI (accents as velocity, slides as overlapping notes) or as a seamless audio loop with the echoes. Or play it from your keys.
PLUGIN 06 // SIZE · COMING SOON
BIG DADDY
One knob makes your mix bigger and fuller.
Bigger, not louder: the output stays as loud as the input.
One BIG knob
Turn up BIG and four stages work together: WEIGHT, THICK, WIDE and AIR. Each one has its own trim when you want more of it.
Weight
Adds the harmonics of your bass, so the low end still reads on phones and laptop speakers. Plus a low shelf.
Thick
Upward and parallel compression with saturation in the mids. Density without the squash.
Wide
Lifts the sides above the bass and keeps the lows in mono, so the low end stays solid on any system.
Air
An exciter and a high shelf put the sparkle back on top.
Same loudness
MATCH holds the output at the input's loudness, so you hear bigger, not just louder. DENIAL MODE (bypass) is level-matched too.
See the difference
A live before/after spectrum at matched loudness, a stereo scope, and IN, OUT and EGO meters.
Clean and safe
4× oversampled, with SOFT CLIP to round off peaks before 0 dBFS. 13 factory presets, and you can save your own.
PLUGIN 07 // HARSHNESS · COMING SOON
SMOOTH DADDY
Finds the harsh, ringing, whistly and boxy frequencies
and turns down only those, only while they stick out.
Only the bad parts
It compares every part of the spectrum with what's around it and cuts whatever pokes out, by how far it pokes out. Balanced sound passes straight through.
Depth, sharpness, selectivity
How hard it cuts, how narrow the cuts are, and whether it smooths everything a little or only the worst offenders.
Focus curve
Drag six nodes to tell it where to work harder or back off. LO and HI flags set the range it's allowed to touch.
Hear what it removes
DELTA plays only what it's cutting. FAIR A/B matches the bypass loudness, so quieter can't win the comparison.
Sidechain
Let another track decide where to cut, like a vocal carving its own space out of the music bus.
Worst offender
A readout of the frequency it's cutting hardest right now, the nearest note, and how much is coming off.
Stereo modes
Linked, left/right, mid/side, mid only or side only.
Soft or hard
Attack and release knobs, plus a HARD mode that cuts deeper and narrower. 14 factory presets.
PLUGIN 08 // ECHO · COMING SOON
DELAY DADDY
Six delays in one plugin, with ducking built in.
Digital, tape, ping-pong, slapback, dub and reverse.
Six machines
Clean digital, warm tape with up to three heads, ping-pong, slapback with an optional double, gritty dub, and reverse swells.
Built-in duck
The echoes dip while you play and bloom in the gaps. Follows the track itself or any sidechain.
One CHARACTER knob
A knob that changes job with the mode: spread, tape age, bounce, double, space or smear.
Feedback that behaves
Push FEEDBACK past 100% and it keeps going at a safe, fixed level instead of blowing up.
Drive the repeats
DRIVE saturates only the echoes, never your dry track. Every trip around the loop gets grittier.
Freeze
Locks the echoes into an endless loop and keeps anything new out. Play right over it.
Locked to your tempo
Note values synced to the song, 1/8 dotted and all. Wobble, high cut, low cut and width up to 200%.
Zero latency
Nothing to compensate, so it lines up in any session. 13 presets, from DUCKED VOCAL THROW to BACKWARDS APOLOGY.
THE FULL INTERVENTION
The whole family. $14.99.
Every plugin on this page, including the ones still cooking: you get those the day they're out. The family keeps growing, and VST Daddy refuses to pick a favourite. One price, zero group therapy fees.
Get the whole family · $14.99Instant download · free updates · installer + PDF guide included
FRIENDS & FAMILY
Got a code?
Enter it, then pick your medicine: one plugin, a few, or the whole family at once.
PICK WHAT YOU WANT:
The whole familyEach download has the plugin's installer and a step-by-step PDF guide. The everything zip also has START HERE.txt.
Formats
AU, VST3, standalone app (Mac).
Gate Daddy also ships a Windows VST3.
Mac
macOS 11 or newer.
Apple Silicon and Intel.
Hosts
Built and tested in Ableton Live 12. Works in any AU/VST3 host: Logic, FL Studio, Studio One, Bitwig.
Updates
Free. Every plugin tells you inside the window when a new version drops.
FAQ // THE INTAKE FORM
How do I install it?
After checkout you get a zip with a Mac installer and a step-by-step PDF guide. Run the installer, then in Ableton go to Settings → Plug-Ins → Rescan. The plugins show up under VST Daddy Labs.
My Mac says the installer "can't be verified." Is it safe?
Yes. That's macOS being cautious with independent plugins. Click Done, then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway. The PDF guide walks you through it.
Do I get updates?
Yes, free, forever. Each plugin shows an UPDATE button when a new version is out. You can always re-download the latest version from your purchase email.
Does it work on Windows?
Gate Daddy includes a Windows VST3. The rest of the family is Mac-only for now. We're working through our Windows issues.
Can I use it in commercial releases?
Obviously. Make hits. VST Daddy doesn't take royalties, just credit for your personal growth.
Why so cheap?
Because a $199 sidechain plugin is a cry for help. Good tools shouldn't cost more than your coffee.
Who is VST Daddy?
Our chief mix therapist. He lives in every VST Daddy Labs plugin, and he has opinions about your low end.