THAW v.0.1

Thanks for downloading the Thaw VST plugin. Thaw was created as part of a Masters in Music Technology academic project whose aim was to explore the use of the phase vocoder for the creation and manipulation of static and drone sounds. Thaw can be used for creating a perceptual 'snapshot' of a sound and then creating drones using a number of effects including a low frequency oscillator and a pitch shifter. For anyone interested in the scientific and musical background of this project, as well as an explanation of the inner workings of the software, please read the accompanying thesis. I won't bother including an explanation of how to operate the software as this should be evident after a few minutes tinkering :)

COMPATIBILITY AND INSTALLATION
Thaw is supported by any VST compatible hosts running Windows 2000 or Windows XP. To install Thaw, simply put the thaw.dll file into your VstPlugins folder - by default, this is located at C:\Program files\Steinberg\VstPlugins.

ISSUES AND FUTURE WORK
Thaw is an experimental product and is thus not quite as perfect as it could be. It is unfortunately very CPU-hungry at the moment, users will need a fast PC to get the best of it. Thaw does not have a completed GUI yet so it will be assigned graphical sliders by your host. A custom GUI should be ready soon! A Mac version of the plugin is also in the pipeline.

OPEN SOURCE
It is intended to release the source code for Thaw to the public at some time in the near future, pending the resolution of some licencing issues.

CREDITS
This work was made possible by the research on the phase vocoder carried out by Richard Dobson (www.bath.ac.uk/~masrwd) and the Composers' Desktop Project (http://www.composersdesktop.com/). Visit http://people.bath.ac.uk/masrwd/pvplugs.html for Richard Dobson's VST implementation of the CDP's excellent phase vocoder-based effects.

COPYRIGHT
The Thaw plugin and accompanying thesis are Copyright 2006 by Cormac Daly and the University of Limerick.

DISCLAIMER
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED FOR USE "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE AUTHOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR DATA LOSS, DAMAGES, LOSS OF PROFITS OR ANY OTHER KIND OF LOSS WHILE USING THIS SOFTWARE

CONTACT
Feedback on the Thaw project is most welcome. Please send comments, bug reports or feature requests to thwvst@gmail.com.