Piston

Find the space between the hits.

Give a kick room to land, move a bassline around the beat, or turn a sustained sound into a rhythm. Piston puts the envelope in front of you, with a large waveform display and direct controls for depth, curve and timing.

16 envelopes

Move from a gentle lift to deep pumping, sharp cuts, reverse swells and double pulses. Choose a shape and see its gain curve over your audio.

Amount

Set the depth of the movement, from the original signal to the full envelope.

Slope / Shift

Bend the response and place it in time. Each shape remembers its own slope and shift settings.

Stretch

Extend the envelope horizontally by up to 50%. The visible cycle defines what you hear, even when the curve’s peak moves beyond the screen.

Low Only / Listen

Duck the low band while preserving the top. Set the crossover from 20 Hz to 5.12 kHz, then listen to the low band as you tune it.

Output

Set the final level from −24 to +12 dB. Automate controls and save your settings with your DAW project.

Three ways to set it in motion

Sync

Follow your DAW’s tempo and transport. Choose eighth-note, quarter-note, half-note or whole-note cycles, with triplet and dotted options.

MIDI

Retrigger the envelope with MIDI notes for a pattern that follows your arrangement. Each note starts one visible cycle.

Audio

Route your kick or another track to Piston’s external sidechain input. Its transients trigger the envelope, so the movement follows the performance.

In MIDI and Audio modes, the envelope holds its right-edge level until the next trigger. Sidechain and MIDI routing depend on your DAW.

Your curve, in view

Compatibility

Installation & updates