POLAR

Ten materials. Anything between them.

Blend Material A and B continuously: Polar Warm, Cold Clip, Tape, Tube, Transformer, Console, Transistor, Diode, Fold and Rectify. Explore the space between algorithms instead of simply switching them.

HEAT moves multiple parts of the engine from controlled saturation toward destruction. Bass Anchor keeps the foundation grounded, with an adjustable frequency from 60–400 Hz.

Drive exactly the right frequencies

Use single-band processing or split into two or three complementary bands, each with its own Drive, Mix and Material. Solo bands and move crossover points in the display.

Focus Band distorts only your chosen frequency area. Emphasis boosts a range before saturation and applies the inverse curve afterwards: more distortion there without an extra tonal boost.

Sibilance Guard lets S and T sounds bypass the saturation path, keeping bright vocals aggressive without turning consonants into fizz.

Design the harmonics yourself

Add H2–H7 independently with the Harmonic Designer. Bipolar controls reverse harmonic phase at negative values; envelope normalization keeps the balance more consistent as input level changes.

The live Harmonic Fingerprint displays H1–H10 from the actual processing. See how material, drive and input level reshape the spectrum.

Distortion that has memory

Thermal lets sustained energy heat the circuit into a denser, darker, more driven sound with additional even harmonics. It cools in silence; response ranges from 0.5–20 seconds.

Sag compresses loud transients as the virtual supply drops, then recovers. Split Heat sends attack and sustain through different materials — Cold Clip on the hit, Tape on the body, or your own combination.

Let the sound move the distortion

Key Drive uses the sidechain to increase or decrease saturation. Let a kick push bass harder, a vocal open distortion on a synth, or reverse the response to make space.

Two Signal Mod slots use Level, Brightness, Transient, Sidechain or Thermal activity to control 15 destinations with bipolar depth.

The Drive Sequencer offers eight patterns for Drive, Material Morph or both, with 1/4–1/32 timing and triplets. It keeps running when transport stops for auditioning.

POLAR PAD: play the character

Move from cold, clipped and bright to warm, asymmetric saturation on one axis, and from clean to broken on the other.

Use REC MOTION to capture a performance over 1–8 bars. PAD MOTION plays it back in sync with your song.

Shape the stereo. Finish the peaks.

Work in Left / Right or Mid / Side and drive the centre and sides differently. Aurora adds nonlinear movement and texture to the sides while preserving mono compatibility.

A Soft or Hard output Clipper has an adjustable ceiling and first-order antiderivative anti-aliasing (ADAA). Level Match keeps processed and unprocessed comparisons at a more consistent loudness.

Experiment. Keep what works.

Choose 1×, 2×, 4×, 8× or 16× oversampling, plus a separate Render OS setting for offline export. Switching is smoothed, latency is reported to the host, and the dry path stays aligned.

MUTATE creates variations with five lock groups; disabled modules stay off. A/B, favourites and external .polar save/load help you keep the sounds worth returning to.

29 factory sounds cover saturation, colour, dynamics, harmonics and motion. Earlier POLAR sessions retain the original 0.2 parameter IDs and order, with new modules loading neutral.