Developer Kaizen DSP has released Choroboros, a free multi-engine chorus plugin for macOS and Windows. The plugin is currently in open beta, and the beta period runs until May 1st, 2026.
I asked the developer what happens after the beta closes, and the answer is good news. The answer is that beta versions will never expire.
Basically, anyone who downloads the plugin during the beta period gets to keep it for free, forever. The open-source GitHub repository will also remain public.
After May 1st, development splits. The open-source beta version remains as is, while new engines, optimizations, and features will be included in a paid v1.0 commercial release.
With that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at the plugin.
Choroboros has five distinct engines, each with Normal and HQ modes, giving you ten algorithms in total.
- The Green engine uses Lagrange interpolation for a classic musical chorus sound.
- Blue uses Thiran allpass interpolation for clean, transparent modulation, the kind you’d reach for on vocals or acoustic sources where you want width without coloration.
- Red emulates bucket-brigade and tape circuits for warmth and saturation.
- Purple ventures into experimental territory with phase warping and 2D orbital modulation.
- Black is a lightweight linear and ensemble mode for transparent widening with low CPU overhead.
All five engines share a streamlined six-knob layout (Rate, Depth, Offset, Width, Colour, and Mix), though the exact DSP behavior of each knob changes depending on the active engine.
Each engine remembers its own settings when you switch between them, so you can compare without losing your tweaks.
Right-clicking the Rate knob gives you tempo-synced subdivisions (straight, triplet, dotted), and you can double-click any value label to type in exact numbers.
That’s all pretty cool, but my favorite features are the built-in Dev Panel. It exposes live DSP telemetry, signal flow, frequency analysis, tape saturation transfer curves, and spectrum analyzers with HP/LP overlays.
This stuff is normally seen in a developer’s debug environment, but here it’s available to anyone who wants to understand what’s actually happening to their signal.
The developer also shared some exclusive details about where Choroboros is heading.
The commercial v1.0 will introduce a no-code chorus engine builder. The idea is that users will be able to design their own chorus engine visually, choose from available DSP components, customize the interface (knobs, sliders, backgrounds), and export the result as a .chor file.
Those files can be shared with other users and loaded directly into their copy of the plugin.
That’s pretty wild. If it works as described, every user becomes a potential engine designer, and we’ll be able to share custom chorus configurations the way we usually share presets.
Choroboros runs on macOS (VST3, AU, Standalone, with AAX coming soon) and Windows (VST3, Standalone, x64 and x86). You’ll need to fill out a sign-up form to receive the download link.
Download: Choroboros by Kaizen DSP (FREE)
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Last Updated on March 11, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
