Blue Cat's Late Replies

Blue Cat's Late Replies

The Creative Delay Workstation

Blue Cat's Late Replies is a powerful delay and multi-effect plug-in that can be indefinitely extended by hosting third party VST, VST3 or AU plug-ins anywhere in the signal path.

With its unique topology, the plug-in is a full-featured delay machine with unlimited powers: both the 8 taps pattern module and the two nested feedback loops include plug-in slots that can host built-in effects or third-party plug-ins.

So it's not just about delays! The plug-in includes 25 built-in effects to further manipulate the delay lines: modulation effects, EQ and filters, dynamics processors, pitch and frequency shifters, waveshaper...

With the integrated ducker and its side chain input, ducking delays or reverbs has never been so easy.

Blue Cat's Late Replies is delivered with hundreds of presets producing many kinds of audio effects: classic delays, rhythmic or melodic patterns, reverbs, vintage echoes, shimmer effects, sci-fi sounds... Browse and edit them quickly with only a few parameters in "easy mode", or expand the user interface to "full edit" mode to create your own creative delays, reverbs and effects, with complete control over the entire signal chain.

Credits: This plug-in includes several factory presets created by Sink and Hans Van Even.

Features:

• Powerful delay with built-in effects and third-party plug-ins support.
• 8 taps pattern section with integrated mixer and plug-ins slots.
• 2 feedback loops with crossfeed and plug-ins slots.
• 30 built-in effects: EQ, filters, pitch & frequency shifter, delays, modulation effects, compressor, gate, bit crusher, wave shaper and more.
• Dual user interface: browse and quick-edit presets in easy mode, or create your own delays and reverb with the full editor.
• Supports third party VST, VST3 and Audio Unit plug-ins, with latency compensation.
• Tempo/Host Synchronization.
• Global stereo spread control.
• Several hundreds of fully editable presets.
• Integrated ducking, with internal and external side chain.
• Comprehensive visual feedback with detailed impulse response display.
• Protect your ears with the included feedback and output brickwall limiters.
• No latency.

Blue Cat Audio Standards:

• Available in most plug-in formats for Mac and Windows.
• Full MIDI control and automation support, MIDI Learn.
• No CPU load on idle: processing shuts down when fed with silence (optimal CPU usage).
• Customizable user interface with transparency & zoom.
• Smooth Bypass: noiseless plug-in activation / deactivation.
• Undo/Redo.
• Full-featured integrated presets manager.
• Copy/paste the state of the plug-in between instances.
• Any sample rate supported.

What's new in Late Replies 1.7

Audio / DSP

• New quiet update mode for silent delay length changes (instead of tape-style pitch shifting effect).
• Smoother transition between presets.
• Drastic DSP performance improvements (up to twice faster on some presets).
• All factory presets have been updated.

User Interface

• Late Replies' background color can now be customized (tip: choose a color matching your track).
• Enhanced presets browser:
• Displays results in real time while typing.
• Supports full-text search within presets (find presets containing a specific plug-in or keywords).
• Performs searches without blocking the user interface.
• Both the plug-in and preset browsers now match files containing all search terms (AND logic) instead of just one (OR logic).
• Windows Multitouch support (manipulate multiple controls at the same time with several fingers).
• Windows accessibility: native system widgets are now scaled according to text size settings on Windows 8 and newer in settings windows.
• Multiple performance improvements.
• Fixed window opacity changes not shown in plug-in when host application modifies it.
• Fixed selected text in text edit box sometimes not easy to read on Mac depending on the color scheme.
• Fixed text edit boxes sometimes loosing focus when hovering mouse over other controls.
• Fixed Mac installers not showing brand image in dark mode.
• Fixed macro params issues when back-inserting a plug-in (via drag an drop) in a chain that overwrites its previous position.
• Windows: fixed context menu not always displayed in the right position when the window spans across several screens with different DPI.
• Windows: fixed return key sometimes unexpectedly forwarded to host while typing in a text edit box.

Macro Parameters

• Choose Macro params control style: knob or switch.
• Macro params default/neutral value can now be chosen (the value set upon right click or alt-click).

Plug-ins Hosting

• New Plug-ins Scanner: scan third party plug-ins and load them directly from the plug-in menu.
• New Plug-ins Browser: browse and search plug-ins once scanned, with optional full text search inside saved plug-ins.
• Added support for Audio Unit V3 (AUV3) plug-ins on MacOS.
• A missing plug-ins report is now displayed in case plug-ins are missing upon loading a session or presets.
• Plug-ins user interface is now opened automatically when dragged and dropped from the file system.
• VST3 plug-ins editor loading deferred and called only when user interface is displayed.
• Improved synchronization of hosted plug-ins sychronized to host transport when using plug-ins with latency.
• Built-in plug-ins can now follow host zoom.
• Recently updated VST, VST3 and Audio Unit plug-ins can now follow Late Replies' zoom like built-in plug-ins.
• Plug-in format is now displayed in the title bar of the plug-in window.
• Hitting the Escape key now closes the plug-in window that currently has focus.
• It is now possible to use different oversampling options for realtime and offline rendering.
• Fixed two memory leaks in VST3 plug-ins host (causing potential crashes upon VST3 plug-in unload too).
• Fixed plug-in latency not always fully compensated when using plug-ins with latencies of more than 1024 samples.
• Improved undo management with built-in and VST3 plug-ins, now detecting non-parameter changes (for Axiom: Destructor skin changes etc.)
• Fixed built-in multitap delay high DSP usage upon first load when syncing delay to host BPM.
• Fixed offline rendering mode not always reported to hosted plug-ins.
• Fixing built-in harmonizer crashing when manually configured with more audio outputs than inputs.
• Fixed some VST3 plug-ins taking a long time to load (a couple of plug-ins with multiple audio busses)
• Fixed built-in harmonizer crashing when manually forcing more audio outputs than inputs.
• Added recording status support for Audio Unit format.
• Fixed unexpected bypass control behavior with some Audio Unit plug-ins.
• Fixed VST3 plug-ins not loading when moved to a directory with the same name as the original .vst3 library file.

MIDI Control

• All plug-in parameters can now be controlled with MIDI notes, pitch bend, NRPN, 14-bit CCs, aftertouch or channel pressure, in addition to MIDI CC.
• MIDI settings window can now be resized to display more parameters.
• Optimized MIDI settings window display on Windows (load time and scroll).
• MIDI Settings window now splits parameters into multiple pages for faster access.
• MIDI Settings window now shows custom display names if any.
• Optimized preset load upon MIDI messages when using several hundreds of user presets.
• Fixed plug-in sending Bank number 0 when loading a preset that is not located in a bank.
• Fixed audio dropouts when navigating presets via next/previous and plug-in set to send MIDI Program Change messages.