Questions people have actually asked us, with short answers. The manual covers everything in full.
It's an instrument that you feed with your own sounds. You record or load audio into its eight channels, and it plays that material back as a blurred texture when you play a note or press Play in the toolbar. It comes with 17 factory presets, so you can play it straight away. In your DAW, look for it among the instruments, not the effects.
Polecat Blur is a VST3 plug-in on Windows and Mac, and also an Audio Unit on a Mac. It loads in 64-bit hosts that support those. It also runs as a standalone app, with no DAW at all. It needs Windows 10 (64-bit) or later, or an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 12 or later. Intel Macs are not supported. There is no native AAX version, so use a plugin wrapper such as Plugin Buddy to load it into Pro Tools. We've used it in REAPER, Logic Pro and Ableton Live, and the fourteen-day trial is the surest way to check your own set-up.
Yes. Polecat Blur works in Komplete Kontrol.
No. Polecat Blur works in stereo and mono as well as surround, and it adapts to the track it's on. In stereo, the Depth and Height controls are switched off because there are no speakers for them. You still place sounds from left to right, and the eight channels, four delays and modulators all work as normal. Presets don't store a speaker set-up, so the same preset plays on whatever speakers you have.
No. MPE is optional and is switched off when you first install. You can play Polecat Blur from any MIDI keyboard, a MIDI part in your DAW, the on-screen keyboard or your computer keyboard. The Play button in the toolbar sounds a note with no MIDI at all. If you do have an MPE controller, switch on MPE Enable in Settings, and each note then follows its own bend, pressure and timbre.
Anything from mono up to 7.1.4, which is twelve speakers. Polecat Blur doesn't send anything to the subwoofer (LFE, the ".1") channel. That channel is left free for something else in your mix. For 7.x systems, a switch in Settings chooses between the ITU and SMPTE speaker arrangements.
mono, stereo, LCR, LRS, LCRS, quad, 5.0, Pentagonal, 5.1, 6.0, 6.0 Music, Hexagonal, 6.1, 6.1 Music, 7.0, 7.0 SDDS, 7.1, 7.1 SDDS, Octagonal, 5.0.2, 5.1.2, 5.0.4, 7.0.2, 5.1.4, 7.1.2, 7.0.4 and 7.1.4.
No. In a DAW, set your track to the surround format you want and insert Polecat Blur. It matches the track by itself, and the panner redraws to show your speakers. In the standalone app, choose Audio/MIDI Options… from the three-line menu, then pick the Output Format. You'll need an audio interface with enough outputs. With height speakers, the Height slider beside the panner sets how high each sound sits.
Not in the usual way. A reverb processes whatever plays through it, but Polecat Blur doesn't add a tail to a track as it plays. It records a sound first, then plays it back when you play a note or press Play. What it gives you instead is a blurred, diffused texture made from that recording, with four delays that can feed each other. Use it to build an atmosphere alongside your reverb, not in place of it.
Yes, as a sound to capture rather than an effect on the vocal. Route the vocal track into Polecat Blur's input (some DAWs call it a sidechain input) and record it into a channel. Or bounce the vocal to a WAV file and load it with Load / Import. Polecat Blur turns that phrase into a texture you play from the keyboard. It won't play the vocal line back word for word, and it doesn't follow the vocal in time with your song.
Polecat Blur never sends anything to the subwoofer (LFE) channel, the .1 in 5.1 or 7.1.4, in any surround layout. That is deliberate: in most mixes the LFE channel is fed from elsewhere, so Polecat Blur leaves it free for something else in your mix.
If your speakers or monitor controller use bass management, the low end of the other speakers can still reach the subwoofer.
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