USER MANUAL

About Process.audio

Making records used to be about the music. In the recent past, with the advent of the digital workflow, making records has increasingly become an exercise in minutia as well as a plugin arms race, creating a steep learning curve and shifting focus to the tools at the expense of the music. PROCESS.AUDIO was founded by a team of world-class music-making professionals, led by Fab Dupont, to create music-making tools that strike the perfect balance between analog workflow and digital technology only enhancing their owner's process.

About Overlay

Overlay is a creative multi‑effect built around convolution. Rather than treating an impulse response as a static reverb, Overlay turns it into raw material: load up to four independent layers, each with its own impulse, and run every layer through a full effects chain — pre‑delay, drive, EQ, modulation, echo and stereo shaping.

The four layers are blended on an XY pad, so you can morph between completely different textures with a single gesture — or hand that gesture to a modulator and let it move on its own. Almost any control can be modulated by any of the ten modulator slots, making Overlay as much a sound‑design environment as an effect.

Run the installer for your platform and authorize the plugin with your Process.audio account. Overlay installs the formats your host needs into their standard locations.

Plugin formats

• VST3 — Windows and macOS hosts
• Audio Unit (AU) — macOS hosts such as Logic Pro and GarageBand
• AAX — Pro Tools (native)

Channel configuration

Overlay is a stereo effect: up to two input and two output channels, with no MIDI processing. Insert it on any mono‑to‑stereo or stereo channel, bus or send.

First steps

• Insert Overlay on a track and open the editor.
• Browse the presets from the header to hear what the engine can do.
• Click a layer's cartridge to open the browser and load an impulse response.
• Drag on the XY pad to blend the active layers.

The interface is organized into four regions: the header across the top, the main section with the XY pad and output controls, the layer panels that surround it, and the optional modulation panel on the right.

Signal flow

The input first passes through the Gate, then feeds the four layers. Each layer processes audio through the chain below. The layers are blended (manually or via the XY pad), passed through the Duck and the dry/wet mix, and sent to the output.

Global path

Per‑layer chain (×4)

The header holds the controls that affect the whole plugin and your workflow around it.

The output controls set how much processed signal you hear and how it sits against the dry input. The dry/wet balance can be locked so it survives preset changes.

The XY pad is the heart of Overlay. It blends the four layers according to the position of the dot — drag it by hand, automate it from your host, or hand it to an animated shape that moves on its own.

Mix vs. Send mode

XY Pad animation

Instead of moving the dot by hand, Overlay can trace a geometric shape across the pad automatically, turning the blend into a continuously evolving motion.

Shapes include Square, Triangle, Circle, Line, Cross, several Lissajous ratios (1:2, 2:3, 1:3, 3:4, 5:6), Pentagon, Hexagon, Spiral and Star.

Each of the four layers loads an impulse response into its cartridge. The cartridge is both the loader and the layer's identity — selecting it makes that layer active for editing.

Loading your own files

Drag an audio file from your desktop anywhere onto a layer panel to load it as that layer's impulse.

The impulse library

Impulses are organized hierarchically by bank, category and tags, and can be filtered and sorted in the browser. Factory impulses are read‑only; impulses you create or import can be edited and tagged. You can also build new impulses from any audio file.

Every layer carries a full effects chain. The Home tab holds the impulse, pitch and tone essentials; the FX tab holds the EQ, pre‑delay and echo.

Impulse & Waveform

Pre‑Delay

Drive

EQ

Echo

Stereo & Utility

Overlay's dynamics work at two points in the signal path. The Gate acts on the input before the layers, chopping the source so each layer is fed a gated signal. The Duck acts on the blended output after the layers, pulling the level down for side‑chain‑style pumping. Each can be set to a normal or inverted shape, or turned off.

Overlay's modulation system is global and generous: ten modulator slots can be assigned to almost any parameter, and any parameter can be driven by more than one modulator. Each slot can be an LFO, Envelope follower, Random generator or Sequencer.

Assigning modulation

• Open the modulation panel from the header.
• Drag a modulator onto a control, or use the control's modulation overlay, to create an assignment.
• Set the amount (depth) and polarity (one‑sided or bipolar) for each assignment.
• Routing is drawn as cables, so you can always see what is moving what.

LFO

Envelope

Random

Sequencer

Overlay ships with a library of factory presets covering everything from subtle ambience to radical sound design. Use them as finished sounds or as starting points.

• Browse the preset library from the header, and step through presets with the arrows.
• Save your own presets to recall complete states, including all four layers and every modulation routing.
• Lock the dry/wet balance so your blend stays consistent as you audition presets.
• Randomize to generate new variations across all layers.

The settings menu in the header offers additional options and information about your installation, including the toggle for the interactive help panel described throughout this manual.