Gothic Chorus Plugin (VST3)

A minimalist VST3 audio plugin designed to generate dense, dark, and stereo spatial modulations. This project emulates the characteristic "dreamy" guitar tone of 90s gothic metal (style of Type O Negative on albums like October Rust), prioritizing Digital Signal Processing (DSP) quality over redundant graphical interfaces.

Developed in C++ using the JUCE framework and CMake.

Architecture and Philosophy

This project follows a strict design philosophy: one tool, a single responsibility.

• DSP Engine: Utilizes juce::dsp::Chorus to guarantee industrial-grade performance and prevent CPU bottlenecks.
• State Management: Implements juce::AudioProcessorValueTreeState (APVTS) to bridge the audio logic with the user interface, enabling full DAW automation and data persistence (preset save/load).
• UI: Purely functional rotary controls. Zero visual noise.

Controls (APVTS Parameters)

1. Rate: Controls the Low-Frequency Oscillator (LFO) from 0.1 Hz to 10.0 Hz. Defines the speed of the modulation.
2. Depth: Adjusts the detuning intensity from 0.0 to 1.0.
3. Mix: Dry/Wet balance (0.0 to 1.0). For the optimal dense tone, a setting above 50% is highly recommended.

Build Requirements

The build system is centrally managed via CMake, ensuring cross-platform compatibility without cluttering the repository with temporary files or local environment binaries.

• CMake (v3.15 or higher)
• C++ Compiler with C++20 support (MSVC, Clang, or GCC)
• JUCE Note: The CMakeLists.txt is configured to search for the JUCE framework locally at C:/JUCE. If not found, it will automatically fallback to FetchContent to dynamically download version 8.0.0 from GitHub during the configuration step.

Build Instructions

Open your terminal at the root of the repository and execute the following commands sequentially:

# 1. Generate the build files (Automatically creates the build/ directory)
cmake -B build

# 2. Compile the plugin in Release mode for maximum performance
cmake --build build --config Release