Independent audio-tools studio · Switzerland

Instruments for
the modular world.

SHLabs builds instruments at the intersection of musical use, real computation and unusual control surfaces — modules for VCV Rack 2 and a growing line of VST3 / AU plugins and standalone apps.

Explore products The studio

The rack

Open modules for VCV Rack 2 — sequencers, generative sources, stochastic processes and effects. Community-first, cross-platform, some free.

The studio

A family of VST3 / AU plugins and standalone apps — synths, effects, mastering tools, MIDI brains and visuals. One design language, built to be played.


Catalog

Products

Two branches, one studio. Jump to a category, or browse the full catalog below.

VCV Rack 2 · ModulesmacOS · Windows · Linux
Stochast5 plugins · 28 modules

Statistics & emergence as patchable CV

Real statistical, social and stochastic processes turned into control voltage — sampling distributions, the bootstrap, agent-based cascades, epidemics, reaction–diffusion. Quirky generative material with correct math underneath.

Download · manual · 28-module reference →
Mashina8 modules · free

Soviet machines meet the West Coast

Eight sound-design modules with a deliberate Eastern-bloc analog character, shaped by the West Coast tradition of complex oscillators and function generators: drum voices, oscillators, a master clock, a plate reverb and generative sequencers.

Udar · Klubok · Bochka · Takt · Otzvuk · Strela · Volna · Podton →
Lucida2 modules · free

Generative systems, made visible

Emergent systems you watch evolve on screen and patch as CV. Colony is a cellular-automaton grid; Turing is a probabilistic shift-register sequencer with a built-in quantizer.

Colony · Turing →
Rikoshet4 modules · free

Rhythmic delay & gate effects

Four tempo-synced effects: a rhythmic amplitude gate, a stereo ping-pong delay, a multi-tap pattern delay and a crossfader. Lock them to your clock for movement in time and across the stereo field.

Gate · PingPong · MultiTap · Blend →
Atmos4 modules · free

Tone, space and time

A transistor-ladder filter (Helix), a stereo color repeater (Halo), a character delay with reverb (Skywave) and an eight-stage step sequencer (Metro185).

Helix · Halo · Metro185 · Skywave →
Also free · Direct downloadmacOS (Apple Silicon)
Fission1 module · free

A nuclear-reactor voice

Ride the control rods across criticality: subcritical it decays to a pluck, critical it self-oscillates into a singing drone, supercritical it screams toward meltdown. A physically-real point-kinetics core drives a tuned feedback voice, held safe by a containment vessel. Geiger events, flux and criticality are patchable as CV.

macOS (Apple Silicon). Windows, Linux & Intel builds coming via the VCV Library.

Phosphor for VCV Rack3 modules · free

An LZX-style video chain

Three visual modules that pass a lo-fi RGB frame left-to-right over an expander bus. Beam generates a clockable raster, Chroma rotates hue and posterizes mid-chain, and Cathode grades and displays the frame while turning luma and motion back into CV.

macOS (Apple Silicon). Windows, Linux & Intel builds coming via the VCV Library.

VST3 · AU · Standalone · PluginsmacOS & Windows
What ties them together

Nothing gets lost

Generative modules are seedable and every plugin recalls its full state — stumble onto a sound you love and dial it back any time. Save it, share it, and it plays the same on every machine.

Built to be played

Whether it's a panel in the rack or a plugin window in your DAW, the interface is a control surface, not decoration — drag-to-assign modulation, MIDI-learn, sensible defaults and no telemetry.

Real under the hood

The processes are the real thing — analog-modelled circuits, feedback, sampling, stochastic motion — but every tool is voiced as an instrument first: expressive, surprising, and made to be listened to.