Low CPU usage?
...y..ye...yes, totally, low cpu usage!
Well, if you do not use phaser and formant, it actually is pretty light on it, but if you use it all and hold all 16 voices it can get a little hungry, hehe.
OH, yeah, I need a bit more labels or at least mouse-over messages.
Most Mysterious DialsOscillator sections:
The two little dials above the oscillator 2 are a phase offset for it and randomizer for that offset.
In the middle strip where noise and saturation are, there are also two dials for various modulation methods (FM/PM = frequency modulation/phase modulation and AM/RM = amplitude modulation/ring modulation).
Filter section:
The little unlabeled dial in the filter set controls filter type from Lowpass over pure resonance to Highpass.
Phaser section:
The little filter dials have one type dial that switches between Bandpass, Notch, Lowpass and Highpass, but is all very experimental. As is the little toggle that activates keytracking. All these are just experimental right now.
LFO section:
the bottom two unlabeled dials are randomizations for speed and for amplitude of the lfo.
The rest should explain itself quite well, I think?!
Nice snare! Scream I don't quite get, but MOODY is a Brilliant patch!
And, yes, this is my first VST, but to brag even more, the whole GUI is my custom coding, too, though I used the vstgui 4.0 sdk, I had to invent all gadgets. Most relevant there is my curve envelope gui, which was pretty challenging to me, having to figure out not only the gui aspects, but most of all the vst sdk data management and communications. That was quite...ahm...maddening!
...there's very little help out there and you really have to pull info from countless sources, interpreting their content- more or less- trial'n'error your way to the finish line, haha.
The formant code is mostly from musicdsp.org, while oscillator 2 is inspired by a developer on KVR (but no longer what it was) and oscillator 1 is a wicked construction inspired only in fragments by various codes on musicdsp.org. The phaser is my own recursive design, though also inspired by a musicdsp allpass filter phaser. The main filter is completely of my own design and most likely ridiculously inferior to standard filters, but it tunes perfectly and is superfast. The filter in the phaser section is inspired by moog filter. All the rest is again of my own design, including the polyphony implementation, all the LFO, the delay and so on...
Considering that this is my first go at it, many things are still a bit of stumbling about and really beg to get a whole lot better.
I also still have to add a mono mode with all the bells and whistles of perfect blending. Ironically I've already had that, because I started out mono, but my polyphony solution replaced what I had and I have to find an elegant alternative to work with it again. Same goes for max voice replacement, which is right now crude and will click. However, my mono implementation was and will be again really, really awesome! I've never had that much fun playing mono. I can't wait to have it back again!
So, yeah, you can make some of the most unique sounds ever with Cirque and the power of nuances is tough to rival, I think. Except for maybe granular synthesis you can satisfy virtually all kinds of synthesis and more.
I really hate TODO lists, hehe, but for Cirque it goes:
- Mono mode
- Polyphony control (mono - max voices)
- Natural blending for note replacement
- Midi Controller implementation
- Reverb
- post saturation
- Envelope modulation
- More optimizations all around
Once this is done, it will be a big milestone for me, for sure!
Thu May 05, 2016 9:12 pm 
After little playing I can say I really love your plugin! So versatile and with soo many knobs and functionality behind! I don´t need additional effect processor, many useful functions (phaser, delay, formant!..) are implemented inside! And as bonus - low cpu usage! GREAT! 
Cirque.zip
...pity.