In the Welcome post, I wrote about running my guitar rig through plugins onstage. I liked what was possible, but I kept running into the same balancing act: CPU headroom, latency, and audio quality. DRIVE·RIZER is my first attempt to see how far I could push that balance.
It's an emulation of a green overdrive circuit that became famous in the 80s. You probably know the one. I wasn't trying to claim that a plugin can be identical to every physical pedal; two examples of the same circuit won't necessarily sound identical to each other. I wanted to make something that you'd hear and immediately recognize as that overdrive, and that I'd be happy to play through in my own live rig.
There are already good plugin versions of this sound. This project began with a different question: what happens if I bring together the DSP approaches available to me and keep working at the implementation until it fits the way I actually play? Agentic AI helped me build and explore it. My job was to set the target, listen, measure, and decide whether each change earned its place.
The most personal change is a switch that moves the circuit's midrange emphasis higher. I play humbucker guitars, and the familiar midrange honk can pile onto the honk they already have. Flip the mid switch from 720 Hz to 1.5 kHz and I can get to a useful sound immediately. It still has the character I expect from the circuit, but the emphasis sits in a place that works better for my guitars. If you play single-coils, try it there too. It may give you a different kind of bite.
I also wanted the plugin to make sense onstage. Oversampling requires filters that aren't part of the original circuit. LIN mode uses a linear-phase FIR filter to avoid reshaping the circuit's phase response, but it adds latency. For LIVE mode, I chose an IIR filter that keeps latency lower and shaped it so most of its phase shift falls above the frequencies that matter to this circuit. Both modes involve a tradeoff. I wanted the choice to depend on whether I'm playing live or working in a session.
DRIVE·RIZER is available now as a Windows VST3 for $15. One license covers five machine activations. You can try the free demo, fully functional; it briefly switches to a level-matched bypass every 60 seconds. There's a 14-day, no-questions-asked refund period if you buy it and it isn't for you. Get DRIVE·RIZER here.
This is the first Mendy Audio Labs release. It's also the first answer to the question that started the lab. I'm curious what happens when other players put it in their rigs.