DECADE Manual

1 · What DECADE is

DECADE is a drum effect that answers one question: what would this kit have sounded like in 1958? 1979? 2024? You put your drums through it, pick a year on a map, and the whole rack — EQ, saturation, filtering, compression, transient shaping, room, and the playback format people heard it on — moves to that year at once. Slide across the map and the sound morphs continuously between decades.

Under the map is a real, six-module rack you can open, reorder and override by hand. DECADE sets every knob for you; you take over any of them whenever you want. A Throw pad adds a performance delay you play live, and 120 presets — 100 across the decades and 20 in the Experimental folder — give you places to start.

DECADE runs as an AU, VST3 or AAX plugin in your DAW, as a standalone app, and in the browser inside The Vault, where members can use it on any loop in the library. It's the same instrument everywhere — this guide covers all three, and says so wherever they differ.

2 · Requirements

3 · Installation

These links always give you the newest release — they're safe to bookmark:

Mac

1. Open Decade.pkg and follow the installer. It installs the AU, VST3, AAX and standalone versions; you can deselect any of them on the Installation Type step. The installer is signed and notarized, so macOS won't warn about it.
2. Restart your DAW and rescan plugins if it doesn't pick DECADE up on its own. In Logic, DECADE appears under Audio Units → Yurt Rock → DECADE.
3. Prefer a disk image? Decade.dmg holds the same installer.

Windows

1. Run Decade-Setup.exe. VST3 installs to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, AAX to the Avid plug-ins folder, and the standalone app to Program Files.
2. If Microsoft's WebView2 runtime is missing, the installer fetches it — DECADE's interface needs it.
3. Rescan in your DAW.

Where the files go

4 · Activation & demo mode

Click Demo mode in the header to open the licence panel. Two ways in:

• Sign in with your Vault account. A membership includes DECADE — it activates the moment you sign in. Sign-in opens in your normal browser and hands the plugin back its licence.
• Paste your serial from your purchase email. DECADE serials start with DCDE-.

Activation needs the internet once. After that DECADE runs offline forever — no dongle, no iLok, nothing to check in with. One licence covers three machines; you can free one up yourself any time from Your Plug-Ins in your Vault account.

Demo mode

Without a licence DECADE runs fully — every decade, every preset, every control, on your own drums, with no clock running — with two exceptions: the output fades to silence for about a second every 45 seconds, and presets don't save. A Demo mode chip in the header lights up in time with the fade, so you always know that's what you're hearing and not a fault.

Vault members never see demo mode. Everyone else can buy DECADE outright for $49.

5 · The map

The map is the instrument. Left to right is the year, 1950 to now, in eight decade bands with their own colour. Bottom to top is the room, from tight and dry at the bottom to huge at the top.

• Drag the puck anywhere. The sound follows continuously — there are no steps between decades, the rack interpolates.
• Click a dot to land on a preset. Hover one to see its name.
• Arrow keys nudge: ← → for the year, ↑ ↓ for the room. Home and End jump to 1950 and now.
• The description under the year rewrites itself as you move — it describes what the rack is actually doing at that spot.

6 · The sound card

The left card is what you're hearing right now: the year, its console, and the handful of controls that always matter.

7 · The era card & formats

The right card shows the format the listener would have heard the drums through — the last stage before the output, because it models what happened after the record was finished:

The format follows the decade on its own. Click the format object (or press L) to lock it — keep cassette while you slide the year into the 60s, say. A Locked chip appears; click it or press L again to hand it back to the map. Four macros — Amount, Age, Bandwidth, Instability — are shared by every format so the map can morph between them.

8 · The Throw

A delay you play by hand, under the era card. Hold the pad to throw the drums into it and let go to hear the repeats tail out. Left to right is the delay time, synced to the loop's tempo in seven divisions (1/16 · 1/8T · 1/8 · 1/8D · 1/4 · 1/4D · 1/2); bottom to top is feedback.

• Latch keeps the throw open without holding the pad.
• Tone darkens or brightens the repeats; Level sets how loud they come back.
• The delay's character follows the decade: tape echo in the 50s and 60s, bucket-brigade in the 70s and 80s, a digital rack in the 90s and 2000s, granular now. Click the mode name to pin one; it cycles through the four and back to following the map.
• A user preset saved while the Throw is latched keeps it as part of the patch. Loading any preset that doesn't hold the Throw releases it and silences the repeats.

9 · The signal path

The strip across the middle is the rack: six modules, each with one macro knob, in the order the audio passes through them.

• The map sets every knob. Turn one to take it over — a dot appears next to it, and the map stops moving that parameter until you double-click to hand it back.
• Drag a module by its grip to reorder the chain. Order is part of the sound: compressing into the gate, or filtering after the room, are different effects. Reset order returns to the default.
• The power glyph bypasses a module. Input and Output are fixed at the ends; the format is always last.
• Presets that pin an order slide the modules into place when loaded; presets that don't leave your chain alone.

10 · The detail panel

Click any module to open its full controls in the panel below. Most panels also show a live picture of what that module is doing:

Follow the year in the panel's corner hands every parameter in that module back to the map at once. For the whole output at once, open Analysis from the ⋯ menu.

11 · Presets

Click the preset name in the header (or press P) for the list: eight decade folders, the Experimental folder, and your own. The ‹ › arrows (and [ ]) step through them in the order the list shows.

• Every factory preset is a point on the map — you'll see them as dots — plus whatever it changes by hand. Moving the puck after loading one keeps its overrides.
• Save (⌘S opens the list with the name field ready) stores your current sound, including chain order, format lock and a latched Throw, in the User folder. User presets can show on the map as well (⋯ menu).
• The Experimental folder is twenty deliberately odd racks — a trap kit cut to a 78, a hall compressed backwards, a phone speaker in a stadium, distortion before the EQ — one for every decade, each built on its own chain order.

12 · A/B, Compare & the dice

• A / B in the header holds two complete settings. A flips between them.
• Compare flips between A and B automatically, every bar, while the loop plays — so you can listen with your hands off.
• Bypass (B) in the header passes the dry drums straight through, latency-matched, without touching a setting — the honest way to hear what DECADE is doing. Each module has its own power glyph too (§9).
• The dice (R) rolls somewhere new on the map with a random set of overrides. ⌘Z takes you back if it wasn't the one.

13 · Audition loops

DECADE carries its own loops, in the plugin as well as in The Vault, so you can hear the rack with nothing playing. The play button in the header starts one (Space); the dropdown beside it picks it. Every launch opens on one of ten starter loops with a random decade preset, so you never start on a blank page.

• Starter loops — ten from the Vault catalog, listed with the player and the tempo.
• Get more in The Vault opens the catalog, in the plugin as well as in the browser: pack covers, then that pack's loops, or search across both. Members audition the whole library through DECADE.
• In the browser, whatever is loaded in the bottom player shows up in the menu too.
• Open a file… uses a loop of your own — or drop an audio file straight onto DECADE.

The waveform under the map shows dry against wet. In your DAW, playing the track feeds the same picture and the same meters, so the analysis is about your drums, not the demo loop.

The ⋯ menu holds three skins — Midnight (the default blue-black), Ember (warm charcoal and amber) and Slate (a lighter cool grey for bright rooms); the era colours are the same in all three — and a window size: Fit follows the space it's given, S / M / L pin it. In your DAW the plugin window resizes from its corner.

Tempo, in the header, is the play-at tempo. The loop's own tempo is the default and plays untouched; type another (or use ½× / 2×) and the loop is time-stretched with Signalsmith — the same algorithm the plugins use natively — so it holds together without the warble of cheaper stretching. × returns to the loop's own tempo. The Throw's divisions follow the play-at tempo. In your DAW, DECADE syncs to the host tempo automatically and the control reads SYNC.

Export, at the end of the audition strip in The Vault, renders the loop through DECADE exactly as it's set — preset, chain order, format, a latched Throw — to a 24-bit WAV with a two-second tail for the room, or drags it straight into your DAW. It's for Vault members and DECADE owners; everything else is open to everyone. In the plugin there's no export button, because bouncing the track is the export.

14 · In your DAW

Put DECADE on a drum track, a drum bus, a single snare or the whole mix. Everything in this guide works the same there; this is what the plugin adds.

Tempo and transport

DECADE follows the host tempo on its own — the header reads SYNC and the host's bpm, and the Throw's divisions lock to it. Nothing to set.

Automation

Sixteen controls are host parameters, so you can automate them or map a controller with your DAW's own MIDI learn: Year and Room (the map), Mix, Authenticity, Format amount, one macro per module (Tone, Grit, Filter, Squash, Hit, Room), the format amount (listed as Vinyl), and the Throw's time, feedback, hold, tone and level. Throw Hold is the one to put on a controller button or an automation lane — it throws while it's up, exactly like holding the pad. Move a knob in DECADE and the host parameter follows; automate it in the host and the interface follows. Automating Year is the point — a chorus that arrives in 1972 and a verse that sits in 1994 is one automation lane.

Bypass and latency

DECADE reports 6 ms of latency (the format stage) and your DAW compensates for it. The host's own bypass is wired to DECADE's: bypassing from the host passes the latency-matched dry signal, so nothing shifts in time and nothing in your patch changes.

Sessions

The sound saves with your DAW project and comes back with it: where you are on the map, every parameter you took over by hand, the chain order, the format and its lock, and a latched Throw. Your user presets, skin and window size belong to DECADE on that machine, so they follow you into every session and every DAW.

The window

The plugin window resizes from its corner, and the interface scales to fit whatever size you leave it at.

Standalone

DECADE also installs as an app you can run without a DAW — the same plugin, using your audio interface, which is the quickest way to play with loops on their own. Pick your input and output in its settings.

15 · MIDI learn

Right-click any of these for a MIDI menu: Mix, Authenticity, Vinyl, the map (Year and Room), each module knob, the Throw pad (time, feedback and hold) and its Tone and Level. Press Learn, move a knob or hit a pad on your controller, and they're tied. × clears it; the ⋯ menu clears everything.

• Continuous controls take a CC. The Throw hold takes a note or a CC button — press to throw, release to tail out.
• Program change steps the preset list: PC 0 is the first 1950s preset.
• Mappings are remembered per browser, and MIDI learn is a browser feature. In the plugin, sixteen of these controls are host parameters instead (§14), so map and automate them with your DAW's own MIDI learn.

16 · Keyboard shortcuts

On Windows, read ⌘ as Ctrl.

17 · Troubleshooting

The sound drops out for a second every so often.

That's demo mode — the Demo mode chip in the header lights as it happens. Activate with your licence or Vault account (§4).

A knob won't follow the map any more.

You've taken it over — there's a dot beside it. Double-click the knob to hand it back, or use Follow the year in the detail panel for the whole module.

I hear a delay I didn't add.

The Throw is latched — the Latch button is lit — or the preset holds it. Click Latch, or load any preset without a throw.

The format doesn't change when I move the year.

It's locked (the Locked chip). Click it or press L.

MIDI learn says this browser has no Web MIDI.

Safari doesn't support it. Open The Vault in Chrome, Edge or Opera to map a controller.

My DAW doesn't see the plugin.

Rescan plugins (Logic: Plug-in Manager · Ableton: Preferences → Plug-Ins → Rescan · Pro Tools relaunch). On Windows, make sure the VST3 folder you installed to is the one your DAW scans (§3).

The plugin window is blank or white on Windows.

DECADE's interface runs on Microsoft's WebView2 runtime. The installer adds it, but if the window stays empty, install it from Microsoft's Edge WebView2 page and reopen the plugin.

DECADE says it can't reach the internet when I activate.

Activation is the one moment it needs a connection. If your studio machine is offline, activate once on a connected network — after that DECADE never checks in again.

I'm out of activations.

A licence covers three machines. Open Your Plug-Ins in your Vault account and release the one you're not using; it's instant and you can do it yourself.

The drums sound out of time with the rest of the session.

They shouldn't — DECADE reports its 6 ms to the host and your DAW compensates. If your DAW has delay compensation switched off, that's the cause; switch it back on.

18 · Specifications

19 · Support

Stuck on something this page doesn't cover? Reply to your purchase email, or reach us through yurtrock.com — a human reads everything.

Downloads and licences live in Your Plug-Ins. The newest installer is always at Decade.pkg (Mac) and Decade-Setup.exe (Windows).