Anybody know of any filter’s with decent envelope followers and a nice warm sound? Basically I want to bounce my synths to audio but still be able to get a plucky sound similar to what I would get from the synth but saving cpu by not running the synthesizer itself. I’m not clued up on 3rd party filters at all. Thanks in advance
Hey Martin, my favourite is this one
[url]http://www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-q.php[/url]
though I haven’t tried any others outside of the Ableton built in one.
I’m a big fan of FabFilter’s plugs and have a bunch of them.
The warmth is usually a sign that there is some degree of distortion going on. As such you can easily use Abletons EQ8 with a Saturator before it to add that warmth, maybe overdrive instead (but that’d be more radical with its effect).
The advantage filters inside synths have is that they usually follow the note and as such the filter moves as the note moves. To get what I mean by that you can play a note on something like the 5th octave and use a low pass filter on the synth and outside the synth. Set the Filter a bit low in the synth and you can still clearly hear the high note playing cause the cutoff moves according to the note your playing. Switch off the filter and use an EQ or an external filter and you will notice it does not move with the note and as such high notes loose there strength due to a stagnant filter.
You can midi learn external filters, I think, havent gotten a hang of that myself though.
Pro-Q is an AMAZING filter BUT its not warm, its very clean in fact.
Warmth is a result of distortion. fXpansion released a DCAM filter called Etch, tried it out as a demo and it does sound pretty damn warm to me (MASSIVE CPU EATER THOUGH!).
Just saying again, Pro-Q… AMAZING. Even if your not looking for a cleaner filter its worth checking out.
Thanks for the quick replies lads, yeah I’ve got Pro Q and it is a really nice EQ but what I was after was a filter with an envelope follower that someone would recommend. Basically, if you imagine for example sylenth, you can route one of the envelopes to the filter cutoff, bring the cutoff down and add decay to the envelope for a nice plucky sound straight out of the synth, but what I’m after is something which can do this to audio. Like if played a part with the filter on the synth fully open and bounced it to audio, I could then add this filter to the audio and use it to do what I could have done with the synth but saving a lot of cpu. Whereas an EQ just removes frequencies in a stagnant manner. Basically I’m looking for just the filter from sylenth with an envelope follower in a plug in but I’m not sure if that exists. Something like UAD’s Moog filter but without having to buy the DSP accelerator card and then forking out £130 on top.
Really nice tune by the way John, what synth and processing did you use for that deep pluck sound?! Sounds awesome.
As the previous poster mentioned, FXpansion Etch is very nice. It has several different ways to modulate the input signal, including an envelope follower.
Sugarbytes Wow is a similar product in many ways, and in my experience a lot less demanding on cpu.
Fabfilter Saturn also looks very promising, but I haven’t tried it.
Nice one, i’ll give them a try mate
I will just say this.
My favorite filter. It has a lot of awesome features
The FXpansion Etch
[url]FXpansion - Home
Try the demo:D
[quote]Martin Waite (16/08/2012)[hr]Really nice tune by the way John, what synth and processing did you use for that deep pluck sound?! Sounds awesome.[/quote]
Was that a question for me Martin? Well, if so then the really deep boom, boom pluck at the start of the Geiger track is an instance of Massive (slightly compressed with two instances of Fabfilter Pro-Q - one for EQ and and one as a simple filter). The OSCs are two Pulse-Saws and one Square-Saw.
Yeah I think I’m gonna give Etch a try, there doesn’t seem to be a demo though, bit odd. Yeah Geiger John, thats an awesome sounding pluck. I never think to use massive for the simple sounds like that, always just try and make it sound as nasty as I possibly can. Thanks for the recommendations again lads it’s much appreciated 
You guys are going to bring up fabfilter and recommend an EQ (pro-q), and possibly a saturator (saturn), but not, you know, their feature-rich filter plug-in?
http://www.fabfilter.com/products/volcano.php