Central Processing Unit releases spectral FX plugin · News ⟋ RACPU Blur was built on academic computer music tools using algorithms from the Composers Desktop Project.
Sheffield electro and IDM label Central Processing Unit has released its first plugin. CPU Blur is a real-time spectral effects processor with a two-control interface, built for mangling beats and smearing audio.
The plugin is built around algorithms from the Composers Desktop Project (CDP), an international cooperative network based in the UK that’s been developing music software tools since the ’80s.
CPU founder Chris Smith told Resident Advisor: “I was an original CDP user in the late ’90s and the blur and trace effects were unlike anything else available at the time. Artists like Aphex Twin were getting extraordinary results with them, but the workflow was genuinely laborious—you had to generate offline analysis files before you could even begin processing. It kept the effects out of reach for most people. Bringing blur and trace into real-time felt like unfinished business. Having them available as an insert in your DAW—instant, tweakable, no analysis—step changes what they can actually be used for.”
CPU Blur offers just two processing knobs. The first (Blur) works by time-averaging spectral frames, dissolving transients and smearing audio into slow-moving clouds of sound. The second (Trace) strips out frequencies below a set threshold, leaving only the most prominent spectral components—or what CPU describes as “ghostly residue.”
CPU Blur is available in VST3 and AU formats for macOS, VST3 for Windows, and VST3 and LV2 for Linux, and costs £7.
Watch a demo.