Issue 03 July 16, 2026 Sydney, AUS v2.1Shipping
It knows a hiss from a cymbal
Most de-essers hear energy in the 5–8 kHz band and duck it, which is why they also duck cymbals, breath, and the top of a bright vowel. Sibilance now identifies the actual phoneme first, and only acts when it's really an ess.
New
- Phoneme-aware detection, real-validated: a small classifier tells s from sh from f/th from t before anything moves. Measured on real speech (s 97%, sh 93%, f/th 76%, t 57%), and we publish the honest numbers, not the synthetic-only ones.
- A temporal model, not a single frame: it reads a short sequence rather than one instant, so a burst like a 't' is caught by its shape in time. Real 't' detection climbed from 17% to 57% over the work.
Refined
- Surgical resonance bells: the Smooth engine's cuts got narrower (Q 6.5 to 8.0): more precise, less collateral on the surrounding tone.
- De-Pop and Breath, on by default: the two things every close-mic'd vocal needs, working out of the box.
- A preset browser that's actually organised: categorised, source-specific presets, now 16, so you start from something near your voice.
Notes from the roadmap
- Lifting plosive and fricative detection further. t and f/th have the most headroom left.
- More source-specific starting points. As always, validated on real voices before it ships.
Issue 02 July 16, 2026 Sydney, AUS v2.1Shipping
Aerospace-inspired safety
The detection path is now aerospace-inspired: it fails safe, and tells you when it has. Before it acts, two independent paths must agree that a sound is sibilant, the command-and-monitor redundancy that flight-control computers rely on.
New
- Command/monitor redundancy: two independent paths agree on whether a sound is sibilant before the plugin acts, the same command/monitor pattern flight computers use. If they disagree, it defaults to caution.
- A fail-safe input guard: pathological input (NaNs, denormals, dead silence, clipping) can't push the engine into a bad state; it detects and rides through.
- A signal-integrity annunciator: a little cockpit-style lamp on the panel: a lamp-test on load, and a caution light if a lane ever goes unhealthy. You can see the plugin watching itself.
Refined
- New character options: a Warmth flavour, plus a Tracking Assistant for setting up while you record.
Issue 01 June 18, 2026 Sydney, AUS v2.0Shipping
A new face, machined
A full visual rebuild, and the installer to match.
New
- A physical, machined interface: canvas-drawn knobs with real material, a brushed-metal surface, and Human Engine's own typeface. The plugin looks like one object, milled rather than drawn.
- A spectral painting field: the old spectrum readout became something you can actually read the voice in.
- One installer, every format: v2.0.0 ships VST3, AU and CLAP in a single macOS package.