Toneboosters Dual VCF

[bungle]

One of the best plugins you can get for £19, if you already have the drop at five times the price, I suspect you should probably stick to that and get your moneys worth.

[pickapiperbrad]

I think I'll have to give this one a try and report back!

[BerryLaCroix]

Not sure what the point was to have the LFO go into audiorate when the filter clearly cannot handle being updated at that rate at all.i like Jeroens stuff,but i have to say,these filters seem a bit phoned in.there's nothing special about them other than some really nasty sounding waveshapers before and after the filter inputs.the way it clamps resonance is no different to sticking an asymmetric waveshaper on the filter output.i'll stick with TheDrop

Might be worth trying the update. The LFO goes up to hundreds of Hz now and the dev told me that the filters are updated at extremely high rates. Also they now have non-linear filters and a post non-linearity, and comparing it against the Drop I could make them sound pretty much identical even for high drive levels. Awesome update for sure!

[TIMT]

Is that the 1.5 update?i thought that was the latest one.i am talking about the update that allowed the LFO to go into the upper regions of audiorate.i don't know what he did to make to try get them to accommodate those speeds,but it sounds like it is struggling and eventually just ignores the rate after a certain point.


I think he meant with the non-linearity that he changed the transfer curves or something on the shapers.there's no saturation going on "in"the filter when you drive resonance like what you get in TheDrop,Filtershaper,TAL Mod,to name a few.to explain it,as you drive the filter with cranked resonance,the resonance becomes more embedded in the input sound BUT the sound itself is not distorted/clipped,just the filter is.this doesn't happen on any of the models i went through on Dual VCF.the sound just gets more and more clipped which tends to annihilate the sound and often you don't want that.maybe he'll improve on it some more but these aren't VCF models as far as i can tell.they are biquads with waveshapers in the signal path and there's nothing wrong with that.tonnes of plugin filters are like that,but i wouldn't call them models of VCF's though(even if that is what they claim to be)also all the filters sound pretty much identical.there's nothing non-linear going on within the different filter stages,just scaling of the resonance(which is usually handled by input gain in a VCF)the slope and some versions with dual resonant peaks

[mabian]

I've just now discovered Cableguys FIltershape Core 2 and FIltershape 3... they seem to have zero delay feedback filters as well...

The Shaperbox offer is really tempting to be honest.

Anyone has these filter plugins and can compare to The Drop or DualVCF?

Thanks,
Mario

[TIMT]

I've just now discovered Cableguys FIltershape Core 2 and FIltershape 3... they seem to have zero delay feedback filters as well...

The Shaperbox offer is really tempting to be honest.

Anyone has these filter plugins and can compare to The Drop or DualVCF?

Thanks,
Mario

Filtershaper is nice definitely and yes they seem to be ZDF.a company i discovered recently who does ZDF filters but doesn't advertise it is AudioThing.The Orb and Phase Motion sound great and the latter one has saturation in the loop so you can clamp down on the resonant peaks in the shifting notches and they handle audiorate modulation with ease.Filtershaper also has a ZDF phaser filter in that as well

[mabian]

Yes, and ShaperBox now includes CrushShaper that can move distortion and bit crushing over time (synced or envelope driven).
So intriguing.
Filtershaper 3 also seems killer sounding.

Sorry to derail the thread but now I really feel I'm getting the idea of what a modern filter plugin should feature and how should/could it sound.
Even though some CableGuys plugins are a bit dated they are still totally modern imho (no, I'm not affiliated in any way with them, until yesterday evening I had the mouse pointer hovering the "buy" button on DualVCF...)

- Mario

[BerryLaCroix]

I think he meant with the non-linearity that he changed the transfer curves or something on the shapers.there's no saturation going on "in"the filter when you drive resonance

[double post]

[BerryLaCroix]

Is that the 1.5 update?i thought that was the latest one.i am talking about the update that allowed the LFO to go into the upper regions of audiorate.i don't know what he did to make to try get them to accommodate those speeds,but it sounds like it is struggling and eventually just ignores the rate after a certain point.

I asked the dev about this. He confirmed what I'm hearing. There most certainly is "in" filter non-linearities with v1.5 (this wasn't the case with older versions). It has a separate control for those (as opposed to the non-linearities at the output of the filter, which are still there!).

I did side-by-side comparisons of DualVCF vs several other acclaimed filter plugins and the effect of the "in" filter nonlinearities, and their interaction with the resonance is very, very similar in fact (at least to my ears).

The dev also comfirmed that the LFO rate internally is now exceptionally high so that the filters should not have any issues keeping up.

[gentleclockdivider]

TIMT is correct , the filter behave weird and laggy once the lfo goes above 200 hz , there is some kind of smoothing going .
The same thing happens when using a high speed lfo in zebra when lag is on for the lfo ( which luckily can be turned off)
In the drop a high speed lfo will introduce sidebands to the filter because of the modulation , in VCF this is more or less absent , because of the lag
If you look at a spectrum analyzer you will actually see the modulation amount being reduced when lfo speed increases
If you don't hear it , good for you and give me thumbs down
I asked the developer for confirmation

[mabian]

Following...

[gentleclockdivider]

And this is the reply from jeroen about the modulation amount behaving quircky at high rates



quote


You can read it all on the facebookpage

I rest my case

[TIMT]

Hmm that just sounds like he's compensating for filter design or something.it doesn't sound like it is only less modulation depth,there is a quite clear lag in the modulation rate.i'm taking his "easily"keeps up at 200hz with a grain of salt

Do the same thing with TheDrop and it doesn't sound like the sidebands lag when you decrease modulation depth of the LFO to the filter.i'll stop chiming in as i chose not to buy this anyways.found it kind of disappointing compared to some of the other Toneboosters things i own.i personally think he is out of his element when it comes to VCF's

[gentleclockdivider]

Exactly , to me it sounds like this is a safety meassure because the filters are no up to the task
Plain and simple
Incoming fanboy criticism 3..2..1..

[jens]

No fanboyism here, as I think we need this kind of thorough examination to sort of separate the wheat from the chaff - nonetheless I want to add that this may be a matter of CPU consumption too. I think in regards to this both companies purposely have quite a different approach so they may not be the ideal candidates for direct comparison.