Eugene Yakshin of Hvoya Audio has released Gneiss, a free morphing multistage filter effect plugin for macOS and Windows.
As I mentioned before, I am taking a look at some of my favorite KVR Developer Challenge entries this year, and Gneiss is another one I really liked. It is free to download as part of KVR Developer Challenge 2026.
Gneiss is a filter, but not the boring kind we’ve all seen a gazillion times. It uses two resonant pre-filters feeding a Moog-style transistor ladder, then adds drive, damping, morphing, and a chaos engine that can push the whole thing into totally unstable, and thus fun, territory.
It can behave like a clean musical filter with a nice ladder core when used gently. But when you push the resonance, break, or drive harder, it turns into a playable feedback system.
That is where it becomes crazy good for sound design. Gneiss is made for drums, deep bass, textural noise, pads, and high-end analog-style sizzle, but the input signal matters a lot. Transient-heavy loops can push the filter through different states per bar, and that’s what I enjoy experimenting with in creative filter effects.
The morph pad is the main draw here when it comes to workflow. Instead of sweeping one knob at a time through a non-linear patch, you can place whole-patch snapshots on an XY field and glide between them. The XY control is MIDI-mappable, so it can be played live or automated from your DAW.
Gneiss also includes a Break engine with wavefolding, bitcrushing, clicks, and other nonlinear flavors folded into the ladder. The Damping section helps control how much ringing, self-oscillation, and chaos survives, which should be useful when working with drums or busy rhythmic material.
The two pre-filters are resonant state-variable filters with stereo detune, while the main filter is a ZDF transistor ladder. Filter cutoffs can also be played by MIDI notes, with per-stage channel selectors, glide, and note-relative shifts, which opens up some nice tuned-resonator tricks.
Other features include coherent patch randomization and mutation, MIDI learn with absolute and modulation modes, up to 8x oversampling, lots of presets, and a custom UI builder for arranging your own control layout.
Gneiss is available for Windows 10 and newer, and macOS 10.13 and newer. It comes in VST3, AU, and CLAP plugin formats.
Download: Hvoya Audio Gneiss (FREE)
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Last Updated on July 26, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
