What version 2 adds.

Everything that made Nebula Tide worth opening is untouched: real recordings in all twelve keys, never pitch-shifted, looping without a seam. What is new is depth, ownership and reach.

Shimmer · the hero

In the path, not beside it.

Most shimmer plugins put the effect alongside the sound, so the pad and the shimmer arrive as two separate things sitting next to each other. Nebula Tide puts it in the path. The pad goes in, the shimmer comes out, and what you hear is one sound that grows rather than two sounds stacked.

One control does the work. At the bottom of its travel it is a hint of air. At the top it is a room with no ceiling. Turning it moves five things at once, each on its own curve: how much, how close, how bright, how dense, and how far it regenerates. A full set of controls waits in Settings for anyone who wants them, and nobody has to touch them.

The pitch shifting is splice-aligned rather than fixed-interval — the difference between a shimmer that sounds smooth and one that sounds granular.

The shimmer's own controls in Settings: bloom, tone, size, density and pitch, above the license and sound library sections

Studio

Your recordings, our engine.

Twelve slots, one per key. Drop your own recordings onto the key you recorded them in and the slot fills. Name it, save it, give it a colour, and it appears on the stage beside the presets we made. No folder structure to learn, no manifest to write, no restart. Share a preset with someone else and they import it in one click.

The Studio page: twelve key slots waiting for audio, a preset name, a colour, and the reverb defaults underneath

Timeline

From the instrument to the timeline, in one drag.

Drag from the app onto a DAW track and a MIDI clip lands, already in the right key. The clip carries the pad on one channel and the effects and textures on another, so a single drag reproduces what you were just hearing.

Playable

Three zones on one keyboard.

The keyboard splits into three: effects low down, the twelve keys in the middle, textures at the top. One note plays a sound, the pitch picks the key, and the zones are drawn on screen so you can see where you are. Any knob can be learned to a controller — press learn, move the knob, done.

The stage with the keyboard map open: the FX, KEYS and TEXTURES zones coloured across the range

Choose where the sounds live

The installer shows you the path before it writes anything and lets you change it. Settings has the same control afterwards, so the library can move to another drive without a reinstall.

A protected library

The recordings ship in a single encrypted container and are never written to disk in the clear. Invisible if you bought it. The reason it can stay a product rather than a folder of files.

Two machines, moved by you

One purchase covers the studio machine and the one that travels. Move a seat yourself, from the app or from your account here. No support ticket, no waiting.

An About screen

Version, credits and licences, one click from Settings. Small, and the first thing you want when something needs reporting.

One instrument, more than one machine.

Windows and macOS ship the sound library with the app. The Android build downloads it on first launch, so the file you fetch stays small — same instrument, same presets, same sound.

Windows

Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. Standalone and VST3.

macOS

macOS 11 and later, Apple silicon and Intel.

Android

Android 9 and later. Sign in with the account you bought it with and it is yours — the same licence, no second purchase.

iPhone and iPad

Built, and with Apple. It arrives as an App Store release rather than a download from here, and this page will say so the day it is approved.

And what stays exactly the same.

If you have version 1, none of what you already like about it has moved.

Twelve real key recordings, never pitch-shifted from one another.
Seamless loops that go on as long as you leave them.
The same living interface: tap a planet, pick a key, the room fills.
It still runs offline once it is installed.

Version 1 is not going anywhere. It stays free, it stays downloadable, and it keeps working. See version 1 →

You
choose

Pay what it is worth to you.

Anything from $5 to $100, and $29 is what I would ask if I were asking. Whatever you pay, you get the same thing: one license key covering the studio machine and the one that travels, a seat you can move yourself, and a year of updates. The version you have keeps working after that.

If money is the thing stopping you, pay the five. I would rather it was being played.

Questions, answered.

Does my version 1 licence still work?

Version 1 is free and needs no licence at all, and nothing about it changes. Version 2 is a separate, paid release with its own key — installing it leaves version 1 alone.

Do my presets carry over?

The twelve key recordings are the same library, so everything you know still sounds like itself. The Studio page is new in version 2, so presets you build there are version 2's.

Where do the sounds install?

Wherever you choose. The installer shows the path before it writes anything, and Settings lets you move the library to another drive later without reinstalling.

How many machines?

Two at a time. You can free a slot from inside the app or from My Apps when you change computers.

Do I need the internet?

Only to activate the first time, and for a quiet check now and then. After that it works offline for a month at a stretch.

Is it a plugin?

It runs standalone and as a VST3, so it sits in a session or beside one. The drag handle puts a MIDI clip on your timeline either way.

From people who use it

What players are saying.

Build your own. Take it anywhere.

The pads you know, a shimmer they run through, and twelve slots waiting for your own recordings.

Version 1, free

From $5 · one purchase covers two machines · installs through Amanorsac Hub

The pad rises as it fades.