Reverie Pro Mode: Your First Custom DSP Chain

Reverie's Dreamscape mode gives you finished presets in seconds. Pro Chain Builder gives you everything else: full control over every stage of the processing pipeline. This tutorial walks through building a custom chain from scratch, saving it, and iterating on it.

01Step 1: Pick a source audio

Start with a source that has recognizable character – a piano chord, a vocal phrase, a synth pad of 10–30 seconds. Avoid busy drum-heavy material for your first chain; ambient tools love harmonic sources.

02Step 2: Add a Source module

Every chain must start with a Source-tier module. You have two choices: Dreamtime (our extended Paulstretch, for classic smeared stretch) or Spectral Freeze (for sustained frozen texture). For this tutorial, use Dreamtime. Set the stretch factor to 20× and the window size to 0.5 seconds.

03Step 3: Add spectral shaping

After Dreamtime, add a Lowpass filter with cutoff around 4 kHz. This tames the high-frequency smear that Dreamtime produces. Add Spectral Blur (amount 0.3–0.5) if you want a softer, more diffuse texture, useful for meditation or sleep audio.

04Step 4: Add harmonic layers

Insert Chord Layer with a chord voicing that matches your source. Try "Fifth" or "Sus2" for a neutral, wide sound. Then add Formant with vowel "A" at 30% intensity for subtle vocal coloration without making it sound cartoonish.

05Step 5: Add spatial effects

Now the reverb stage. Shimmer Reverb with decay 7 seconds, shimmer amount 0.3, and wet level 0.5. Then Stereo Width at 1.6× with subtle movement at 0.05 Hz. The result: a wide, evolving halo around your core texture.

06Step 6: Master bus

End the chain with a Compressor (ratio 2:1, threshold -12 dB, soft knee) and Normalize to -3 dBFS. This keeps dynamic range tight while leaving headroom for downstream playback or mastering.

07Step 7: Generate and iterate

Set duration to 5 minutes, hit Generate. Listen. If the low end is muddy, reduce Dreamtime window size. If the shimmer is too loud, cut Shimmer wet to 0.3. If the bed feels static, add a Temporal Evolution module with a 30-second filter period: it gradually shifts filter and modulation parameters over time, so the texture keeps evolving instead of sitting still.

08Step 8: Save as custom preset

Happy with the result? Save as custom preset. Give it a name and an icon. It now lives alongside the factory presets and can be applied to any future source.