Manual

Adrift

Il pedale del mare

A warm shoegaze wall for guitar, voice, anything. Two knobs. Wade in, and let it take you.

Adrift — a warm faded sea dissolving into grain. — Adrift. The photograph develops as you play.

Installing

macOS. Run the installer. It puts the plugin where your DAW expects it:

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/Adrift.vst3
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/Adrift.component
/Applications/Adrift.app (standalone)

Windows. Run Adrift-1.0.0-Windows.exe. It installs the VST3 and the standalone app. If you would rather not run an installer, the Adrift-Windows-portable.zip download holds the same files to drop in by hand.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Adrift.vst3
Adrift (standalone) in your Start menu

Quit your DAW before installing. A plugin that is currently loaded cannot be replaced, and this is the single most common reason an update appears not to have worked.

On macOS, everything is signed and notarized, so it will not warn you or refuse to open. On Windows, the installer is not yet code-signed, so the first time you run it SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC" — click More info → Run anyway. It is a one-time step. On Linux, there is no installer: unpack the .tar.gz and copy the .vst3 into ~/.vst3 (the Standalone runs from wherever you drop it). If your DAW does not see the plugin either way, make it rescan its plugin folders.

Activating

The first time you open Adrift, it asks for your license. Paste the license from your email into the box and hit unlock. That is the last time you will think about it.

It never touches the internet. No activation server, no account, no dongle.
It works on every computer you own. Paste the same license into each.
Lost it? Search your email for "Siesta". It does not expire and it does not get used up.

The two knobs

HeatTakes it from dry and present to warm and remembered. This is the warmth, the saturation, the sun on the water. Most of the character lives here.

MeltLets the whole thing come apart at the edges until it is more reverb than signal. The wall. Turn it up and the horizon goes under.

FreezeHolds a moment forever. Catch a chord, freeze it, and play over the top of the drone it leaves behind.

PresetsThe whole point. Pick a feeling and start playing — you are not meant to build a sound from nothing here.

The developing photo

The photograph in the window is not decoration. It develops as you turn the knobs — grain rising, contrast softening, the horizon dissolving. What you are watching is what you are hearing. Heat warms the image; Melt blurs and grains it, the same way it does the sound.

Where to put it

On guitar

The obvious home. Roll HEAT up for the warm bed, MELT up until single notes bloom into a wall. This is the shoegaze sound.

On vocals

Use it on a send, keep MELT high and the mix low, and the voice floats inside its own weather.

On a whole mix

A touch of HEAT glues and warms. MELT past halfway will dissolve the mix, which is sometimes exactly what you want.

Formats and requirements

FormatsVST3, AU, and Standalone (AU is macOS only)

macOS10.13 and up. Universal binary. Signed and notarized.

Windows10 and 11, 64-bit. Installer or portable zip.

Linuxx86_64. VST3 + Standalone, in a tar.gz. Unpack the VST3 into ~/.vst3.

LicenseOffline. Every machine you own. Free updates forever.

Updates

Come back to the same download link and run the new installer. It replaces the old file, and your license, presets and sessions are untouched. You do not re-paste anything.

We do not rename, reorder, or remove parameters. A session you saved will open sounding exactly the way you left it.

Anything you make with it is yours

Records, film scores, ads, games, sample packs, sync. No royalties, no credit required, no separate license for commercial work.

Stuck

Email [email protected]. There is one person reading it and he reads all of it.

Siesta Audio · Adrift · v1.0 siestaaudio.com