KERN Audio Adds Opt-In Live Mode to Smooth, Warm and Push (Plus Wide and Check Fixes)

KERN Audio has released a free update that adds an opt-in Live Mode to three of its spectral plugins and ships maintenance fixes to two others. The update is available now, with builds on Lemon Squeezy and deployed to kernaudio.io.

Live Mode is a low-latency option for Smooth (v1.4.0), Warm (v1.

5.0) and Push (v1.1.

0). It drops the processing latency on those plugins from around 93 ms in the default high-quality path to around 12 ms when enabled, at 44.1 kHz.

Live Mode runs a 1024-point FFT at 50% overlap with a sqrt-Hann window. It is toggled on for tracking and monitoring, and off for mixing when the full-resolution path is preferred. Right-clicking the spectrum display selects the analysis view: Live analysis, which matches what the engine processes, or HQ analysis, which shows a full-resolution visualization alongside the Live audio path.

What each plugin does: Smooth is a dynamic resonance suppressor working across 40 psychoacoustic ERB bands, with mid/side routing. Warm is a per-band harmonic saturator using Chebyshev waveshaping with antiderivative antialiasing (ADAA), so it needs no oversampling. Its ODD BOOST toggle applies a spectral tilt rather than a binary cut: it attenuates even harmonics to around 15 percent and boosts odd harmonics by around 50 percent.

Push offers three compression characters: SETTLE (slow, glue, SSL G-bus feel), TIGHT (fast, grip, 1176 feel) and DRIFT (slow asymmetric, breath, LA-2A opto feel). It works as spectral dynamics across 40 ERB bands and is positioned as the step before your compressor, a complement rather than a replacement. The same update brings Wide to v1.

3.4 and Check to v1.2.

4: Wide is a psychoacoustic stereo expander that preserves mono compatibility, and it does not include Live Mode because its allpass pipeline already runs at roughly 2 to 5 ms. Check, the free spectral mono-compatibility analyzer, stays at zero latency since it is analysis-only, so it does not need Live Mode either. Check v1.

2.4 adds an issue log, opened by right-clicking the display and choosing "show issue log," which timestamps every flagged mono problem and merges similar issues with a count. Live Mode and both fix updates are free for existing owners.

Pricing and Details Each paid plugin (Smooth, Warm, Wide, Push) is $29. The bundle of all four is $69. Check is free.

A fully functional demo is available with no time limit and no email required; it inserts a brief audio fade roughly every 45 seconds. All plugins ship as macOS Universal Binary and Windows, in VST3, AU and Standalone formats. There is no native AAX, though the plugins work in Pro Tools through the DDMF MetaPlugin bridge.

There is no iLok and no subscription. Licensing is a one-time online activation, after which the plugins run permanently offline, with a lifetime license. CPU stays under 3% on macOS at 44.

1 kHz, single instance.