Unusable Engineering has released Binaural Modulator, a free spatial modulation effect for macOS and Windows.
Binaural Modulator is basically an auto-pan plugin on steroids. The thing that makes it pretty cool is that it is built around a small room model, with a fixed listening point in the middle and one or two moving sound-source nodes orbiting around it.
That whole setup gives it a more physical control model than a standard left-right panner. You move the source around the room, and the plugin translates that movement into stereo position, delay, Doppler pitch movement, and some psychoacoustic filtering.
It’s really fun for sound design experiments.
Depending on how you set it up, Binaural Modulator can work as a straightforward auto-pan, a tremolo, a rough rotating-speaker effect, or even a simple chorus. The developer says some of the framework was reused from their Geometry Delay plugin, but here the focus is on stereo movement instead of echoes.
There are three operating modes: Mono, Stereo, and M/S. Mono mode sums the input and plays it through one moving node, while Stereo mode uses linked left and right source nodes. M/S mode treats the two sources as Mid and Side, which can lead to stranger image movement.
The linked stereo nodes can follow each other, mirror across different axes, or move with offsets, so you can keep things subtle or go very weird very quickly. There is also an orbital modulator with tempo sync, plus controls for width, Doppler amount, and psychoacoustic filtering.
One really nice thing you can do is pull the mix back, lower the width, increase Doppler, and orbit the nodes close to the listener for a simple chorus-like effect. You can also run two instances on separate sends, with EQ before each one, for a pseudo-Leslie setup with different low and high movement.
The interface feels a bit rough around the edges to me, with knobs scattered across the window. It is not my favorite visual style, and it takes a minute to figure out where everything is and what each control does.
Once you understand the layout, though, Binaural Modulator is a solid effect.
To get it for free, add Binaural Modulator to your shopping cart on the Unusable Engineering website and complete the free checkout process.
Binaural Modulator is available for macOS 10.15 or higher in AU and VST3 formats, and for Windows 10/11 in VST3 format.
Download: Unusable Engineering Binaural Modulator (FREE)
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Last Updated on June 28, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
