Application footprint & native synthesis

A small application.

The measured macOS build of Head Chef is about 97 MB installed, including its bundled frameworks. The compressed download is about 40 MB. Because all 27 Mini Bar instruments, Voltage Drums, Voltage Synths, Voltage Spaces, Chicken Strip and Char Press are synthesized and physically modeled in real time rather than streamed from multi-gigabyte sample packs, every instrument and effect ships inside that 97 MB footprint with no external sample pack required.

Application	Version measured	Application contents
Head Chef	0.1.0	97 MB
Three widely used desktop music applications	Current releases	1.26 GB to 2.89 GB

Application file sizes measured on the same Mac on 7 November 2026. Figures include bundled frameworks and exclude external sound libraries; compressed download size is a separate measurement. This comparison measures application storage only.

Bus summing & phase alignment

896-bit superaccumulator summing and delay compensation

A custom 896-bit superaccumulator retains each channel’s finite input contribution exactly and rounds once at the mix-node output. Given the same input samples and processing state, channel order and work partition do not change the summed samples.

Playback and Render Mix use the same mix engine. Instruments, channel processors and external plug-ins retain their own precision and state; external plug-ins may also behave differently in realtime and offline modes. Device output conversion and export formats have their own boundaries.

Chicken Strip adds 76 samples, approximately 1.58 ms at 48 kHz, per strip stage. Neutral channels retain that delay for alignment. Plug-in delay compensation aligns playback paths; buffers and other processors also contribute to total latency. The current recording path has no software input monitoring.

Head Chef Audio Engine dialog showing 512 samples buffer, 48.0 kHz clock lock and round-trip latency — Audio Engine · Output and Recording Device · Buffer Size · 48.0 kHz Clock Locked

Media import & master export

WAV, RF64, AIFF, FLAC, M4A & CAF export, TPDF dither and loudness metering

Converted media import reads WAV, BWF, RF64, AIFF/AIFC, FLAC, MP3, M4A/AAC and CAF audio files plus Format 0, Format 1 and Format 2 Standard MIDI Files (.mid, .midi, .smf) with split-mono .L/.R stereo pairing and 64-bit Kaiser-windowed sinc sample-rate conversion when source files differ from the project clock.

Background Render Mix writes a stereo master file in 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit integer PCM WAV with deterministic TPDF (triangular probability density function) or noise-shaped dither, un-dithered 32-bit IEEE float WAV, broadcast BWF (RF64), AIFF, 16-bit/24-bit FLAC, M4A/AAC and CAF, or exports a Standard MIDI File (.mid). Given the same rendered samples and export settings, dither is identical across repeated renders and work partitions.

Each completed render reports integrated loudness in LUFS, loudness range (LRA), sample peak and a labelled 4x true-peak estimate in dBTP.

Head Chef Render Mix dialog showing Stereo WAV, 32-bit float sample format, project sample rate and Tail seconds — Render Mix · Stereo WAV · Sample Format · TPDF Dither · Reverb Tail

Separate worker processes

Crash-isolated CLAP, VST3 & ARA 2 plug-in hosting

External CLAP and VST3 insert effects plus compatible VST3 ARA 2 clip editors run in separate worker processes outside the main audio engine.

If a third-party plug-in hangs or crashes, Head Chef mutes that slot so playback, Undo history and your session stay intact.

Direct studio signal path

Why built-in instruments and effects run natively

Head Chef’s built-in Mini Bar, Voltage Drums, Voltage Synths, Voltage Spaces, Chicken Strip and Char Press processors run directly inside the audio engine with zero plug-in wrapper overhead.

Built-in tracks share one unified Undo/Redo history, console-wide parameter smoothing and single-file session recall.

Device timing

CoreAudio transport and sample-accurate MIDI

Hardware buffer & latency readouts

On macOS, the Audio Engine view reports device sample rate, hardware buffer size (32 through 2048 samples) and input/output latency in samples and milliseconds.

Sample-accurate MIDI and clip gain

MIDI events reach instruments at their sample offsets. Clip-gain curves are evaluated per sample before channel processing.

Clock-rate readouts

The Audio Engine view compares session and device sample rates and reports clock drift in parts per million.

Audio engine