Raèld Sculpt is a multiband compressor made to be silky: up to six bands that hold a sound's balance steady, bring loud moments down and lift quiet detail, without the pumping, the wandering tone and the phase smear that multiband processing is known for. Its bands move together: each one's slow movement is shared with its neighbours, so the tone stays where it is, while a quick hit stays the band's own.
It listens first. Sculpt learns where each band usually sits in your song, and every threshold is set relative to that, so its presets and its two big controls, SILK and SCULPT, do the same thing at any level. In NATURAL phase there's no latency, and when nothing is acting the output is the input, bit for bit.
Installing
- Close your DAW.
- Unzip
Raeld-Sculpt-2.0.0-Windows.zipfrom the download page or your purchase email, runRaeld-Sculpt-2.0.0-Setup.exeand follow the steps. The plugin goes intoC:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, where every DAW looks, and a standalone app is installed too. If Raèld Sculpt 1.0 is installed, 2.0 replaces it. - Open your DAW and rescan plugins. DAW plugin lists show it without the accent, as "Raeld Sculpt", so type "raeld" in the plugin browser.
Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and any VST3 host, for example Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper or Bitwig, or the standalone app. Sample rates 44.1 to 192 kHz. Mono, mono-to-stereo and stereo tracks (on a mono-to-stereo track the mono source feeds both sides), with an optional sidechain input.
If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" when you run the installer, click More info → Run anyway. Why this appears.
Activating your license
- Open the plugin. The activation screen appears; if it doesn't, click LICENCE at the right of the toolbar.
- Paste your key and click ACTIVATE. This can be the Raèld Sculpt key from your purchase email or your All Access key. You need an internet connection for this step.
- That's it: Raèld Sculpt is unlocked on this computer. A 1.0 key works for 2.0.
| Your key | What it unlocks | Checks |
|---|---|---|
| Raèld Sculpt bought to own | Raèld Sculpt, forever. | About once a week when online; works offline for 30 days at a time. |
| Raèld All Access subscription | Every Raèld plugin, current and future, for as long as you subscribe. | About once a day when online; works offline for 7 days at a time. Stops working within about a week after a subscription ends. |
Each key covers 3 computers. To move to a new computer, open the license screen on the old one and click DEACTIVATE THIS PC first.
Without a key the plugin runs as a demo: the sound drops out briefly every 45 seconds. Everything else works, so you can try every feature.
Quick start
- Insert Sculpt and play your song. For the first few seconds it listens, to learn where each band usually sits (the chart says so). After that it works.
- Choose a preset close to your job from the toolbar's menu (Smooth Mix Bus, Vocal Silk, Tame Harsh Highs...), or stay on Init.
- Turn SCULPT for how much it reshapes: lower to just ride the peaks, higher to hold every band firmly around its usual level. Turn SILK for how smoothly it moves.
- Click a band on the chart to open its card under the chart. Drag its node up or down for its threshold. Pick its CHARACTER: SILK, SMOOTH or ANALOG.
- Press COMPARE to hear your untouched sound at the same loudness, and DELTA to hear only what Sculpt takes out.
The chart is never covered: the band's card has its own lane under it, and MORE opens in the lower part of the unit. You always see what each knob is doing to the sound.
How it works
The Silk Engine
Each band's gain moves in two parts. A fast part answers the music's moments, and a slow body follows what lasts. How much each part does depends on how peaky the sound is, so a short hit lets go quickly (93 ms to come 63 % of the way back) and a long passage slowly (399 ms), with nothing to set. As the gain comes back it slows down, so it lands softly. The slow part of every band is shared with its neighbours (the link), so the tone doesn't wander; a hit stays the band's own, so a kick doesn't duck the low mids. SILK sets all of this at once.
Home
A band's home is its usual level in your song. Sculpt learns it from the first sound it hears (it starts working after half a second and has it after about six), and keeps it with your session. THRESHOLD 0 means "at home". Press LEARN to learn it again from a different part of the song.
Phase
- NATURAL (the default): no latency. Nothing is in the signal path until a band acts, so at rest it is bit for bit the input; while it works, the delay moves only as far as neighbouring bands differ (0.18 ms on music).
- MINIMUM: a classic crossover with no latency. A fixed phase turn is always there, and it never moves.
- LINEAR: no phase shift at all, with 48 ms of latency (2304 samples at 48 kHz). Only what Sculpt changes goes through its filters, so at rest it is the input bit for bit, delayed. It can ring very slightly just before a sharp hit.
The unit
Sculpt is built as a piece of studio hardware: a brushed titanium faceplate with a satin champagne control plate, the chart and the meters behind glass, illuminated keys. It opens small, at 717 × 448, which SIZE calls 100 %; choose 85 to 300 % there, or drag the corner (it keeps its shape). The size you choose in your DAW is remembered for new windows.
- The toolbar above the unit: presets, SAVE, UNDO / REDO, A / B / COPY, LEARN, COMPARE, DELTA, MONO, the latency, SIZE and LICENCE.
- The chart across the top, with the meters beside it: IN and OUT for both sides as LEDs, the most each has reached, and the short-term loudness out (LUFS).
- The lane under the chart: the selected band's card, which slides under its band, and HISTORY beside it, each band's gain over the last ten seconds.
- The control plate at the foot: SILK and SCULPT, DEPTH, SPEED, MIX and OUTPUT; PHASE and SLOPE; HISTORY, AUTO-GAIN and BYPASS.
Handling
- Drag a knob up or down; hold Shift for fine control; the mouse wheel and the arrow keys work too. Double-click resets it. A readout shows the value while you turn it or hover, then fades.
- The knobs follow automation. Every control has a tooltip.
- Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo and redo; a whole drag is one step.
The chart
The spectrum going in (the faint line) and coming out (the filled line), each band's level as a bar with its threshold as a line across, and at the top each band's gain as it moves. The numbered nodes are the bands.
- Click a band to select it: its card opens under the chart.
- Drag a node across to move the band, up or down for its threshold.
- Drag a line between two bands to move that crossover.
- Mouse wheel over a band: its RANGE; with Shift, its RATIO.
- Double-click an empty place to add a band there (up to six); double-click a node to remove it.
- Hover to see the frequency and its note name.
A band and its CHARACTER
CHARACTER
Each band compresses in its own way. Choose with the three keys down the card's left side:
| Key | How the band compresses |
|---|---|
| SILK | The Silk Engine: smooth, gentle movement that follows the music. SILK on the control plate says how smooth. |
| SMOOTH | The steadiest: slow and even, like a gentle level control. It doesn't chase quick hits, and after a loud moment it comes back slowly. For glue. |
| ANALOG | Firmer and quicker: it moves the most, so you hear it work, holds the peaks of held sounds down more, comes back sooner, and warms the band a little, only while it's compressing. |
Bands can differ: ANALOG on the lows for grip, SMOOTH on the mids, SILK on the top, for example. All three take about the same amount; the difference is in how they move. A change of CHARACTER glides, so it never clicks.
The card
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| THRESHOLD | Where the band starts to work, relative to its home: −36 to +36 dB (0 by default). Or drag its node up and down. |
| RATIO | How hard it works over the threshold, 1:1 to 20:1, as it says at SCULPT 50 %; SCULPT scales it. |
| RANGE | The most it ever takes down, 0 to 24 dB, as it says at SCULPT 50 %. |
| ATTACK | How fast it reacts, 0.1 to 200 ms. Each band starts at its own natural time (slower in the lows). |
| RELEASE | How fast it lets go, 5 ms to 2 s. With ADAPTIVE on (the default) the release also follows the music. |
| MAKEUP | A fixed gain on the band, ±18 dB. |
| SOLO / OFF / DELTA | Hear this band alone; switch it off (its sound passes); hear only what it changes. |
| COPY / REMOVE | Copy this band's settings onto another band; remove it (the band above takes its range). |
| MORE | Everything else (see MORE). |
The whole sound
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| SILK | How it moves, 0 to 100 % (70 by default): the link between bands, the two-stage release, the soft landing, how much of a hit is taken, the attack, the detector, the smoothing and the knee, all at once. No EQ and no distortion: SILK adds no harmonics (0.000002 %). |
| SCULPT | How far it reshapes, 0 to 100 % (50): at 0 each band only rides its own peaks; at 100 each is held firmly around its home, down when loud and gently up when quiet. |
| DEPTH | Scales every gain, 0 to 150 %. |
| SPEED | Scales every time, ×0.25 to ×4. |
| MIX | The processed sound against the input. It's blended into the gains, so it never combs, in any phase mode. |
| OUTPUT | The level out, ±24 dB. |
| PHASE | NATURAL, MINIMUM or LINEAR (see How it works). |
| SLOPE | How sharply one band gives way to the next: GENTLE, NORMAL or STEEP. |
| HISTORY | Shows each band's gain over the last ten seconds, beside the card. |
| AUTO-GAIN | Keeps the output at the input's loudness (K-weighted, over about 3 s). |
| BYPASS | Crossfades to the untouched input, in time with the processed sound. |
MORE
MORE on the band's card opens everything else, in the lower part of the unit; the chart and the meters stay in view. Press MORE again to close it.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| KNEE | How gently the band eases in, 0 to 24 dB. |
| BAND MIX | This band against its untouched sound. |
| UP THRESH / UP RATIO / UP RANGE | Upward compression: under UP THRESH (relative to home) the band is lifted, by UP RATIO, at most UP RANGE. Below 36 dB under home the lift fades away, so a noise floor isn't raised. |
| EXP THRESH / EXP RATIO / EXP RANGE | Expansion: under EXP THRESH the band is pushed further down. 1:1 is off. |
| LINK | How much this band moves with its neighbours. 0 keeps it free, as for a de-esser. |
| ST LINK | 0: each side on its own. 100 %: both take the deeper side's gain. |
| ADAPTIVE | The two-stage release that follows the music. Off: RELEASE as set. |
| M/S, BOTH, L / MID, R / SIDE | The band's two sides are mid and side (M/S on) or left and right; it works on both, or only one. |
| SIDECHAIN | The band listens to the sidechain input instead of its own sound. Route a track to Sculpt's sidechain in your DAW. |
| KEY FILTER, KEY LOW, KEY HIGH | The band listens to KEY LOW to KEY HIGH instead of its own range. |
| INPUT | The level in, ±24 dB. |
| LOOKAHEAD | 0 to 20 ms: the audio waits, the detector doesn't, so fronts are caught. It adds that much latency. |
| WARMTH | Very subtle harmonics, off by default; band-limited, so nothing folds back. |
| RESONANCE | Narrow, moving cuts on sharp peaks, no latency, off by default. |
| SET X-OVERS | Moves the crossovers to what LEARN heard: each band gets an equal share of the loudness. |
| RESET METERS | The most each meter has reached, and the loudness, start again. |
The toolbar
- Presets: < and > step through them; the name opens the menu, with your own; SAVE stores the current settings.
- UNDO / REDO; A and B hold two settings to compare, COPY puts the current one in the other. Both are saved with your session.
- LEARN: press it, play the loudest, busiest part, press it again.
- COMPARE: the untouched input at the output's loudness, so you judge the change and not the level. DELTA: only what's being taken out. MONO: folds the output to mono.
COMPARE, DELTA, SOLO, BYPASS and MONO are never saved in presets, and undo doesn't switch them.
Presets
| Preset | What it does |
|---|---|
| Init | Six bands, SILK 70, SCULPT in the middle: gentle control around where each band usually sits. |
| Silk Master | A finished master, barely touched: four bands moving almost as one, the tone held still. |
| Smooth Mix Bus | Loud moments held, not pushed, and the balance stays put. |
| Vocal Silk | A voice evened out phrase to phrase, its edge (3 to 7 kHz) a little more held than the rest. |
| Tame Harsh Highs | Only 2 to 11 kHz is touched, and only when it flares; the air stays. |
| Tighten Low End | Sub, bass and low mids held to a steady weight; everything over 500 Hz left alone. |
| Drum Bus Control | Slower attacks so hits keep their front; the kick and body in ANALOG. |
| Bass Weight | Every note the same weight: quiet ones lifted, loud ones held. |
| Warm Sheen | WARMTH's soft harmonics, with the quiet detail over 9 kHz lifted. |
| Gentle Glue | Three wide bands in SMOOTH at low ratios, moving together. |
| Analog Bus | Four bands in ANALOG: firmer and quicker, each warming a little while it works. |
| Modern Pop Master | Firmer and denser, with 5 ms of look-ahead to catch the fronts. |
| Trap Vocal Polish | A close, even, forward vocal: esses held on their own, air lifted, sharp rings smoothed. |
| Transparent Control | SILK at full: only the peaks are ridden, slowly and together. |
Because every threshold is relative to the song, a preset does the same thing at any level (within 0.06 dB at 12 dB down).
Names in your DAW
A few labels on the unit are worded differently from the parameter names your DAW lists for automation:
| On the unit | In your DAW |
|---|---|
| A band's CHARACTER, OFF, BAND MIX | Band n Character, Band n Bypass, Band n Mix |
| M/S, BOTH / L / MID / R / SIDE, ST LINK | Band n Stereo, Band n Works On, Band n Stereo Link |
| SIDECHAIN | Band n Key |
| The lines between bands, the number of bands | Crossover 1 to 5, Bands |
What we measured
On synthetic test material at 48 kHz, unless said. Nothing from another company has been measured.
| Test | Result |
|---|---|
| Nothing acting, NATURAL | the input bit for bit, every slope, every sample rate |
| Every band the same gain | exactly that gain (error −157 dBFS in NATURAL and LINEAR; within 0.01 dB in MINIMUM) |
| Latency | NATURAL and MINIMUM 0 (plus LOOKAHEAD); LINEAR 2304 samples (48 ms); reported to your DAW and checked against the actual delay at every rate and buffer size |
| The release follows the music | 63 % back in 93 ms after a 20 ms hit, 399 ms after 5 s, at the default |
| Neighbouring bands | 0.82 dB apart on a mix at 3 dB of reduction (1.90 in Sculpt 1.0) |
| The tone held | long-term tone within 1.78 dB on the mix (4.86 in 1.0) |
| Distortion | SILK: 0.000002 % THD; ANALOG: 0.37 % on a 200 Hz tone with about 6 dB taken, none when not compressing |
| The characters, through the plugin | how much the gain moves (dB per 10 ms) on a mix, SILK / SMOOTH / ANALOG: 0.146 / 0.109 / 0.224; the same loudness within 0.31 LU |
| Presets at any level | the same within 0.06 dB at 12 dB down |
| CPU, six bands, stereo, one core | NATURAL and MINIMUM about 1.9 %, LINEAR about 2.9 % |
Where it is weaker: in LINEAR a sharp hit can show a faint pre-ring in the last millisecond before it (NATURAL and MINIMUM have none). The tone is held far better than 1.0 but not perfectly still. On your own material, use COMPARE, DELTA and your ears.
From version 1.0
Raèld Sculpt 2.0 replaces 1.0: same plugin, same licence. The engine is new (1.0 was a set of dynamic EQ bands; 2.0 is a true multiband compressor), so a 1.0 session opens close to before, not identical:
- 1.0's regions become bands in order; the sound between them becomes bands that are switched off. Each 1.0 threshold becomes that band's home, so the band works from the same level as before.
- SILK 0, no link and no lift, so it behaves as plainly as 1.0 did; NATURAL phase.
- 1.0 user presets are rewritten once for 2.0 (the originals kept beside them, as .raeldpreset.v1). They have nowhere to keep a home, so their thresholds start at home.
Troubleshooting
The plugin doesn't show up
Rescan plugins in your DAW. Check that C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Raeld Sculpt.vst3 exists. Raèld Sculpt is 64-bit VST3 only.
Nothing happens for the first moment
That's on purpose: Sculpt listens first, to learn where each band usually sits in your song. It starts working after half a second and has it after about six. The home is saved with your session, so it doesn't listen again when you reopen it. Press LEARN to teach it again from another part of the song.
It works too hard in the chorus
If the song starts quietly, the home was learned from the quiet part. Play the loudest, busiest part and press LEARN twice (once to start, once to stop).
The track is late, or out of time with the others
LINEAR adds 48 ms of latency and LOOKAHEAD up to 20 ms, which your DAW makes up for when its plugin delay compensation is on. For tracking, use NATURAL with LOOKAHEAD off: no latency at all.
A band's SIDECHAIN does nothing
Route a track to Sculpt's sidechain input in your DAW, then switch SIDECHAIN on for that band in MORE.
"Couldn't reach the license server"
Check your internet connection and any firewall that might block your DAW. Activation needs to reach api.lemonsqueezy.com.
"This license key has reached the activation limit"
Deactivate an old computer from inside the plugin, or contact support and we'll reset it.
Uninstalling
Settings → Apps → Raèld Sculpt → Uninstall. Deactivate your license first if you're retiring the computer.
Support
See the support page for common questions, or email info@raeldaudio.com with your order number.
Raèld Sculpt is an original design and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any other manufacturer.