Staircase

Staircase is a lightweight distortion plugin with integrated filtering and real-time spectrum visualization. It is designed for efficient DSP performance and a clean, responsive UI.

<p align="center"> <img src="https://github.com/brummer10/Staircase/blob/main/Staircase.png?raw=true" /> </p>

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Features

• Distortion with controllable drive and output
• Integrated Lowcut / Highcut filtering
• Real-time FFT spectrum display
• Low CPU usage, optimized for realtime processing
• Clean and minimal UI (libxputty / Cairo)
• Supports the LV2_Inline_Display extension

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Controls

• HP slope – Controls low cut filter slope (6, 12, 24, 36 dB/OCT)
• LowCut – Removes low frequencies before distortion
• Dist Mode – Controls distortion mode (Off, Soft, Crunch, Rock)
• Drive – Controls distortion intensity
• Amount – Output level / wet amount
• LP slope – Controls high cut filter slope (6, 12, 24, 36 dB/OCT)
• HighCut – Smooths high frequencies after distortion
• Enable – Bypass processing

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Technical Notes

• Filters are implemented as cascaded one-pole filters stable under fast parameter modulation
• Spectrum analyzer uses FFT-based magnitude display
• Logarithmic frequency scaling (20 Hz – 20 kHz)
• Designed to avoid denormals and minimize DSP load

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Build

Requirements:

• libcairo2-dev
• libx11-dev
• libfftw3-dev
• liblv2-dev

 git clone https://github.com/brummer10/Staircase.git
 cd Staircase
 git submodule init
 git submodule update
 make
 make install # will install into ~/.lv2 ... AND/OR....
 sudo make install # will install into /usr/lib/lv2

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Status

Work in progress – actively developed and optimized.

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License

BSD-3-Clause

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