KVR Audio

fliffo · Post by **fliffo** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:05 am

I've been using it for a life, but now I'm curious to know if in this cathegory there are valid competitors.
So basically I'm looking for a good sounding env-follower filter (HP-BP-LP-Notch), with an envelope intensity control and maybe the option "invert envelope"(which northpole hasn't)(distortion/shaper and delay as in northpole are just extras).

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:21 am

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fliffo · Post by **fliffo** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 1:25 pm

this is a good advice, thanks!

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 1:45 pm

In terms of freeware, two other options to look at would be Phasic's PHEnvFilterVST and Admiral Quality's Naive filter.

http://www.phasic.co.uk/Software.html
http://www.admiralquality.com/products/NaiveLPF/

lucasherrero · Post by **lucasherrero** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:00 pm

I think North Pole is a great sounding filter, more than these ones.

fliffo · Post by **fliffo** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:01 pm

no doubt northpole sounds good...just wanna make a comparison myself

dusted william · Post by **dusted william** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:10 pm

I just got QuadFrohmage and the env-follower on it are the best I've heard. That's why I got it.

dw

sascha · Post by **sascha** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:16 pm

fliffo wrote:no doubt northpole sounds good...just wanna make a comparison myself

That sounds like 'hey, I've got a girl that I really love, but I'd like to know if there are other adorable girls around'...

snooky · Post by **snooky** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:27 pm

sascha wrote:
fliffo wrote:no doubt northpole sounds good...just wanna make a comparison myself
That sounds like 'hey, I've got a girl that I really love, but I'd like to know if there are other adorable girls around'...

doesn't all men think like that?

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:50 pm

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jackson · Post by **jackson** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:00 pm

I've never heard a filter as filthy as northpole, distortion on others or even plugin combo's can't match it's gorgeous, dirty, disgusting sound. I wish they'd update it.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:37 pm

lucasherrero wrote:I think North Pole is a great sounding filter, more than these ones.

Personally, I've never understood the concept of one sound being better than another. How does one quantify the betterness of a sound exactly?

In the case of filters, aside from sound, each filter has different options, so that you can get different sounds from each not immediately possible with the other. The envelope followers respond fairly differently, the filter topologies are different so that frequency response and resonance settings can be made to sound different.

For example:

Here's a clip of a 2-bar drumloop run through Naive LPF . The sound I get here is impossible to get with Northpole, since Naive LPF has much faster envelope response, and much deeper envelope depth.

But, here's the same two-bar drum loop run through both Naive LPF and Northpole to show the differences in sound between the two:

The two filters have been setup the same: -24db cutoff slope, resonance volume matched using a spectrograph (Northpole resonance set to 100%, Naive resonance well below that), cutoff around 500Hz (hard to say exactly, since param feedback was unhelpful, but I lined them up using a spectrograph), env follower set to 0 depth, distortion/saturation set to zero. I had to set the input on Naive to -50% to roughly match the output volume of Northpole.

Northpole
Naive LPF

You'll hear right away that they sound different, even though their settings have been matched.

There's a clipping sound in the Northpole clip. Northpole has a waveshaper on its output, crushing peaks even when distortion is set to zero. I don't know why, maybe it was an easy way to limit the peaks without making a proper limiter. However, there are times that crunch can by a desirable sound, and Northpole is a quick way to get at it. In terms of engineering though, Naive LPF trounces all over Northpole, since it is more versatile by leaps and bounds. One could filthy it up afterwards, but it is nigh impossible to clean up Northpole.

But, I had a tough time getting Naive LPF as filthy as Northpole. Here's Naive LPF with GClip following it (GClip set to the same peak clip as Northpole, roughly-5.8dB, with a +6dB gain boost). GClip wasn't a dirty enough clipper. Doesn't give that really messy 1998 kind of sound. I had to up its gain boost to get harsher clipping from it, but the boost accentuates the bass more than Northpole.

I'm sure if I went looking for a clipper from 1998, I'd be able to crapify it just right. Northpole, to its credit, is just the right shortcut for that kind of crapifying.

jackson · Post by **jackson** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:45 pm

It's always been my go-to tool for crapification.

I just wish I could automate it! Automated crap. Oh yeah.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:48 pm

Well, it's tough to argue with reliable crapification, really.

I was able to automate it in Audiomulch, only problem is that the parameter names are all mixed up (cutoff named Rez, Resonance named Env Follower, etc).

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:26 pm

stay tuned for VariVerb and am|phibia

Hmmm...Sascha...are these coming under Samplitude or as DigitalFishphones new toys? (And it's good to see you around these parts by the way

).

As for the filters....there was a demo for a filter from Basement Arts that I always thought was pretty nifty - had a good env follower and bitcrusher effect. Nothing amazing in terms of the filtering, but certainly alot more flexible IMO (but then I was never that impressed by Northpole...) I don't know if it's still available - it never quite made me want to buy the real thing, but the demo is well worth a check (and used to be useable apart from saving patches etc).

There were a few Synthedit jobbies floating around - maybe worth a search for - again, nothing amazing, but some had most of the features you specify.

TBH, I've never really heard any free filter plugins that ever made me go "wow". The only ones I'd consider are commercial ones - although I often use both included Cubase filters - Tonic is great because of the overdrive it uses to dirty things up (and it's quite a light warm-sounding overdrive, not a nasty harsh digital-sounding distortion) and has an env follower and LFO. Also the Step filter one has quite alot of character when used partly as BPF (not really very good at pure LPF or HPF). But it's not really free...you have to buy Cubase first...which actually makes it very expensive, I suppose

That freebie OhmForce comb filter given away with Computer Music is good if you don't overdo the resonance (if you do, everything tends to sound exactly the same

) - but the added value is that it's midi playable

a good substitute for prosoniq northpole filter