FilterscapeVA filter too aggressive?

[kuniklo]

I've recently been trying to use FilterscapeVA more since I really like the interface and the filter and it suits the stuff I've been doing, but something about the sound has been bugging me. It just seems a little muffled or dull compared to some of the other instruments I have.

On a hunch today I disabled the filter and suddenly the top end opened up and I could hear just how nice and bright the oscillators are. The problem seems to be that the filter attenuates the high-end significantly even with the cutoff wide open if it's not disabled. Is there any way to recalibrate the peak cutoff value or otherwise work around this?

( Please don't let this distract you from Z2. It can wait until after that, just wondering. )

[haydxn]

i can get some monstrously shrill sounds out of filterscapeVA! i'm not sure what the problem is, there are a number of different filters built in, why not try one of the others?

[kodama]

24db vs 12db???

[kuniklo]

Try just taking the default patch and toggling the filter on and off. Hear the difference? This is with the 12db filter. It's even more pronounced at 24 or 36. The LP Filter II seems to do the same thing.

I can compensate sort-of by boosting the high-shelf eq, but it's not quite the same.

[Urs]

Hiya,

see, it's close to impossible to create a digital lowpass filter that truely opens beyond 12 kHz. Even heavy oversampling is problematic.

A nice trick is adding a little resonance, which makes the roll off steeper and thus moves its starting point up a bit. (Try 35.00 for the 12dB)

The fact that you can hear a difference at all in this plugin is of course owed to the bandwidth of the oscillators. You wouldn't notice if I had constrained the oscillators by stealing some energy in the highest octave (or if the filter couldn't be turned off ).

Dunno if/what others do to compensate, maybe they add sorta Loudness EQ to the end of the signal chain. But that's something I'd rather leave up to the musician.

Cheers,

Urs

[kuniklo]

I'm trying to get a really sharp lead sound without resonance, so turning the resonance up in this particular case won't help. It seems like I can brighten the sound up as much as I need with the eq, so I'm set.

I wonder if other plugs *do* provide some kind of internal compensation for this since I don't generally need to boost them to get that brighter high end?

[waveform100]

Thank you Urs for that honest information. I think you made the best choice. I know that a perfect digital filter will eat up the CPU. From a musical point of view the last view Hz are not really important. This is way better than cheating and then have to deal with other artefacts.

Congrats for a wonderful Plug-in!

Olivier

[Urs]

Thanks

Well, I should have a look anyway. If I remember correctly, I had no on/off switch when designing the filter. And it has some weird strategies to minimize aliasing by the distortion. Perhaps I can add *another octave* in the next update, we'll see...

Cheers,

Urs

[waveform100]

Oh, well, that would be perfect. I will check with the next update

[bluey s]

Another octave would be useful I think. I mean even more useful than the existing filter which I love

[pummel]

I'm trying to get a really sharp lead sound without resonance

Then why use the low pass filter at all ? What am I missing ?

[kuniklo]

I'm trying to get a really sharp lead sound without resonance

Then why use the low pass filter at all ? What am I missing ?

I doing that typical lead sound where you snap the filter fast from wide open to zero to get some extra bite.

[pummel]

Ahh, OK. That makes sense.