WORM GEAR
SPEED REDUCER
Auto-Tune tunes a voice. Melodyne edits one. Worm Gear lets you build the throat it came out of — and shows you the measurements.
The instrument
Every finish is the same instrument — the skin changes the light, never the measurements. These are captures of the running plugin, not renders.
PITCH TRACK. The gear is the control surface — the rosette is the real hypotrochoid the 3.5:1 reduction draws, and the ratio beside it is the one actually running.
Acquire
Perpetual licence. No subscription, and none is planned. Every tier is the same instrument — all eight skins, all twenty-two voices, all three formats.
- VST3, CLAP and full standalone
- Throat chamber in millimetres, measured formants in hertz
- Ten historical temperaments, alternate EDOs, Scala import
- Operator's Manual and Technical Manual
- Everything in Sonnet
- Free point updates across v1
- Priority support
- Everything in Opus
- Multi-seat / studio use
- Direct line to the developer
Perpetual licence, one payment, no subscription. Payments are processed by Stripe; your download and licence details are sent to the email address you give at checkout. Applicable tax is shown before you confirm.
How it compares
Every competitor claim below was checked against that vendor's own current documentation — Antares' Auto-Tune Pro 11 User Guide and Celemony's edition breakdown. No retailer, review or aggregator was used as evidence.
| Worm Gear | Auto-Tune Pro 11 | Melodyne 5 essential | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price* | $149 / $199 / $299 | $450 | $99 |
| Subscription required | No | No | No |
| Runs without a DAW | Yes — full standalone | No | Yes |
| Throat modelled as a length | Yes | Yes — "Throat Length" | No |
| That length in millimetres | Yes — 175 mm nominal | No — unscaled knob | No |
| Live F1/F2/F3 in hertz | Yes | No | No |
| Measured vs quarter-wave prediction | Yes | No | No |
| Historical temperaments | Yes — ten | No | No |
| EDOs other than 12 | 19, 31, 5, Bohlen-Pierce | No | No |
| Per-note microtuning, ±cents | Yes, all twelve | No — detune is global | No |
| Scala (.scl) import | Yes | No | No |
| Tape-style varispeed | Yes, 0.5×–2× | No | No |
| Break pitch off tempo, live | Yes — MAGIC GEAR | Offline only | Offline |
| Render to disk from the plugin | 44.1/48/96k · 16/24/32f | No | No |
| CLAP | Yes | No | No |
| AU / AAX / ARA2 / macOS | Not yet | Yes | Yes |
| Per-note graphical pitch editing | No | Yes | Yes |
* As of August 2026. Competitor pricing is theirs to change and is not warranted here; each figure is that vendor's own list price on the date of verification. Compared against Auto-Tune Pro 11 and Melodyne 5 essential, verified 13 August 2026.
What it does not do
- No AU, no AAX, no ARA2, no macOS build. Windows only, today.
- Microphone capture is not wired — import is the input path in v1.
- No per-note graphical pitch editing. If you need to nudge the third syllable of bar 14, that is Melodyne's job and it is good at it.
- Aliasing on extreme up-shifts. Known, understood, and scheduled with research budget rather than patched.
Both manuals ship with it
Two documents, because they are two jobs. One covers operating the instrument. The other covers how it is built.
Operator's Manual ↓
What every control does, what every readout means, and four chapters on the things nothing else does. Zero dead cross-references. Read it before you buy — most of the argument for this instrument is in there.
Technical Manual
Architecture, signal chain, constants and design rationale. Every value taken from source, not from prose. Included with every tier, delivered with your download.