diff --git a/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/denormals.rs b/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/denormals.rs
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..744995e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/denormals.rs
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+//! Flush-to-zero (FTZ) setup for the real-time audio thread.
+//!
+//! Denormal (subnormal) floating-point arithmetic is catastrophically slow — up to
+//! ~10–100× on some CPUs, and especially bad on ARM (Raspberry Pi). As signals decay
+//! toward silence, the IR convolver and filter tails can drive intermediate values into
+//! the denormal range, causing erratic CPU spikes that don't track IR length. Enabling
+//! the CPU's flush-to-zero flag makes denormal results flush to zero, keeping cost
+//! consistent.
+//!
+//! The VST3/CLAP plugin already gets this from nih-plug's process wrapper; the standalone
+//! JACK process thread must set it itself. The flag is per-thread, so this is called from
+//! inside the JACK process callback.
+//!
+//! The implementation mirrors nih-plug's `ScopedFtz` — Rust 1.75 deprecated the
+//! `_mm_setcsr` intrinsics, so this uses inline assembly: MXCSR bit 15 on x86 SSE, FPCR
+//! bit 24 on AArch64. On other targets it is a no-op.
+
+/// Enable flush-to-zero for denormals on the current thread. Idempotent and cheap (a
+/// register read plus a conditional write), so it is safe to call every process callback.
+#[inline]
+pub fn enable_flush_to_zero() {
+    #[cfg(target_feature = "sse")]
+    {
+        // MXCSR bit 15 = Flush-To-Zero.
+        const SSE_FTZ_BIT: u32 = 1 << 15;
+        let mut mxcsr: u32 = 0;
+        // SAFETY: stmxcsr/ldmxcsr only read/write the current thread's MXCSR register.
+        unsafe {
+            std::arch::asm!("stmxcsr [{}]", in(reg) std::ptr::addr_of_mut!(mxcsr));
+            if mxcsr & SSE_FTZ_BIT == 0 {
+                let updated = mxcsr | SSE_FTZ_BIT;
+                std::arch::asm!("ldmxcsr [{}]", in(reg) std::ptr::addr_of!(updated));
+            }
+        }
+    }
+
+    #[cfg(target_arch = "aarch64")]
+    {
+        // FPCR bit 24 = Flush-to-zero mode.
+        const AARCH64_FTZ_BIT: u64 = 1 << 24;
+        let mut fpcr: u64;
+        // SAFETY: FPCR is EL0-accessible; this reads then conditionally sets the FZ bit.
+        unsafe {
+            std::arch::asm!("mrs {}, fpcr", out(reg) fpcr);
+            if fpcr & AARCH64_FTZ_BIT == 0 {
+                std::arch::asm!("msr fpcr, {}", in(reg) fpcr | AARCH64_FTZ_BIT);
+            }
+        }
+    }
+}
diff --git a/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/jack.rs b/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/jack.rs
index d84aff4..4ccb2bc 100644
--- a/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/jack.rs
+++ b/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/jack.rs
@@ -64,6 +64,11 @@ impl ProcessHandler {
 
 impl jack::ProcessHandler for ProcessHandler {
     fn process(&mut self, _client: &jack::Client, ps: &jack::ProcessScope) -> jack::Control {
+        // Denormals are extremely slow (esp. on ARM/Pi) and the IR convolver + filter
+        // tails can produce them as signals decay. The plugin gets FTZ from nih-plug;
+        // the standalone must set it on its own RT thread. Idempotent and cheap.
+        crate::audio::denormals::enable_flush_to_zero();
+
         let input = self.ports.get_input(ps);
 
         if let Err(e) = self.audio_engine.process(input, self.buffer.as_mut_slice()) {
diff --git a/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/mod.rs b/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/mod.rs
index a16c62f..e2f9889 100644
--- a/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/mod.rs
+++ b/rustortion-standalone/src/audio/mod.rs
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+pub mod denormals;
 pub mod jack;
 pub mod manager;
 pub mod ports;