Temper Phase Distortion VST/AU Plugin Is Now Freeware ($10 Value)

Creative Intent has re-released the Temper phase distortion VST/VST3/AU plugin for PC and Mac as a completely free download for anyone interested.

Temper was originally priced at $10 when it was first released back in 2017. The developer decided to re-release it as a free download and make the source code freely available as well. The plugin was developed using JUCE and Faust. The user interface is based on C++/JUCE code, whereas the core DSP algorithm is written in Faust. If you’re into DSP programming, you can now check out the code as Creative Intent made Temper open-source.

For non-programmers out there, I’m sure you’ll be far more interested in learning about Temper’s functionality and sonic capabilities than its ones and zeroes. At its core, Temper is a distortion effect, but it is much unlike any distortion VST plugin I’ve previously tested. The twist is that it’s based on a phase distortion algorithm which gives it a unique character and a rather unusual behavior when compared to more traditional “clipping distortion” effects.

The three main controls are the Drive, Curve, and Saturation knobs. I was surprised to see that the Drive knob goes from -10 to 10 (since Drive usually goes from zero to a certain value), but this only makes sense because that’s how phase distortion works. With the Drive knob set to zero, there’s no distortion, whereas positive and negative values will deliver different distortion flavors depending on the Saturation and Curve values. What’s particularly interesting is that the distortion, even at it’s most aggressive setting, never sounds ear-piercing and annoying. It has this peculiar digital warmth and an almost sample rate reduction-like flavor to it which I really liked.

Other features include a resonant low-pass filter on the input and a real-time spectrum display. The spectrum analyzer shows the dry and wet signal simultaneously, in two different colors, which is quite helpful for visualizing Temper’s impact on the processed audio signal.

Anyway, that’s the best way I could describe it with words. To get a better idea of how Temper sounds, you can download it for free from the product page linked below. I’m hoping to upload a short video demo tomorrow, so check back later or subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay updated.

Temper is available for free download via Creative Intent (22.4 MB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/VST3/AU plugin formats for Windows & macOS).