Spotlight
An intuitive stereo shaping audio plugin
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Spotlight - An intuitive stereo shaping audio plugin

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Spotlight lets you to pan and focus a sound using a single control. Move anywhere on the polar surface to pan in that direction. Move inwards to widen the sound, and outwards to focus it. An arc visualizes the real direction and spread of the audio. It changes to warmer colors if the sound becomes too wide, to guide you to ensure mono compatibility. Together, these features support you in shaping the stereo image of a track quickly and confidently, freeing up your mind for higher-level tasks.

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Initially, I wanted to create a panning plugin as a way to learn audio plugin development in Rust. But as I dug deeper, I found that not all pan knobs behave the same. If you pan completely to the left, one pan knob will silence the right channel, but a different pan knob will bring content from the right channel into the left one. This is likely done so the audio from the quieter side doesn't disappear, but it is equivalent to reducing stereo width, and it doesn't play nicely with sounds that are meant to be wide, eg. pads. Spotlight gives you an interface for controlling the stereo balance and stereo width independently yet simultaneously in a way that makes sense. You can perform stereo shaping moves quickly and confidently, without distractions. I hope you enjoy using the plugin!