Airwindows ZLowpass: Mac/Windows/Linux AU/VST

[jinxtigr]

TL;DW: ZLowpass is a lowpass made to sound and act like the Emu e6400 Ultra lowpass.

ZLowpass.zip(621k)

Onward! Today we have ZLowpass. I think this one might be the closest to the hardware yet! It works like my previous Z series filters, except it's the lowpass this time.

You might notice my video looks a bit different: that's because my Blackmagic ATEM Mini finally and permanently blew up. I'm pretty sure I know why: there were times I ran it for long periods, I've often run many inputs into it or had it working hard doing things like chromakeying/lumakeying stuff at higher resolution and downscaling the result to HD, or running my laptop's HDMI feed into it and having it upscale THAT to the higher native resolution, overlay the main camera and then downscale again to HD. On top of that, I've had it sitting on top of my Lavry DAC, and we've had some heat waves this summer.

So, it melted. For a while it just had its input to the computer die (I found a Razer capture card to be more reliable) and then in some livestreams it's been flaking out, and tonight it blew up for good and couldn't even run a single camera. Anyone out there, be careful with these things. They're just $300 or so, but you cannot push them too hard in warm conditions or they will melt. Or maybe the fan blew up. I know I can't return it under warranty because, being me, I took it apart to see if I could make the cooling work better. Too little too late. Be warned and don't run these little buggers hard, or do lots of up and downscaling, while sitting them on a warm thing. No more ATEM Mini.

Until I get another, that is, and this time will NOT touch a thing about it, will fill in any warranty card it has, and will probably get a little laptop cooler pad or something. Whatever it takes, because my setup ended up pretty sweet if it wasn't for the thing melting under the strain. (Replacement of the ATEM will NOT be out of what I'm saving up for getting a bigger and more classic sampler. Never fear, that journey will progress unhindered.)

Anyway, here's ZLowpass

download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.

[glokraw]

The video looks great. Thanks for a new filter!

[glokraw]

With the input roughly between 2.0 and 4.0, and the others centered, it's a really nice distortion unit. I've been using it on guitar, and synths like UGO's String Theory and M-Theory, where there are arp presets and capabilities on synth string presets that keep the sound moving as you alter the playing. So the distortion heard is quite dynamic. Same with filter-sweep synth presets.

versatile-distortion.png

[glokraw]

This is a synth filtersweep sound, just short of breaking up,
nice and beefy

filtersweep-zplaned.mp3.zip

[bungle]

Lot of zipper noise/ pops clicks when modulating poles here, is that expected ?
It is intensified if you modulate frequency at the same time too.

Super easy to hear, just pop OTT after it in the chain (Yes i know you hate OTT, but in this instance it brings the issues right to the foreground haha)

Note this is 48k, laptop running on WASAPI with built in Realtek, maybe its designed for 96 only?

[bungle]

Unlisted video, ignore the modulation itself, its just to show the issue, not to show off the sound design lol

[jinxtigr]

Lot of zipper noise/ pops clicks when modulating poles here, is that expected ?
It is intensified if you modulate frequency at the same time too.

Super easy to hear, just pop OTT after it in the chain (Yes i know you hate OTT, but in this instance it brings the issues right to the foreground haha)

Note this is 48k, laptop running on WASAPI with built in Realtek, maybe its designed for 96 only?

You can't modulate poles AT ALL on a real one. The fact that you have it on a silder is sort of bonus: there might be situations where automating that would work, but it's definitely among the weirder controls. I suspect modulating from 0 to 0.5 (dry to one pole) wouldn't give more zipper noise than the fundamental update frequency of the DAW's buffer.

I could always not let you have any control over that part, but nah

Also, if it's really going insane going from 0.5 to 1, that only goes to show that it's not your usual filter. It's just more poles on a lowpass, so it's only 'supposed' to be getting steeper. Anything else… is the gnarliness of the internal filter clipping making subsequent filter stages really get messy, relative to what you started with. So in a sense, the nastier this problem is, the more it's showing you how colorful adding more poles to the filters can become. If it was vanilla, it wouldn't be that different.

Not much consolation, but hey… I would not choose to dial back what's happening. I was trying to get the high Poles settings to be weirder without it flipping out too bad. I'm sorry if this interferes with the ability to smoothly modulate: a lot of the testing I'd been doing, was all about distorting the input to insane degrees, which kind of mask that.

[bungle]

No worries

[bungle]

OK, done more testing, there is zipper noise when you automate the frequency control, that isn't expected is it ?

In fact all the Z filters have zipper noise in the frequency automation, no idea if that is expected behaviour ?
Maybe they just don't work in Maschine ?

[jinxtigr]

Might not be the best choice for you are you distorting things insanely? does your style of automation put extra pressure on how the plugin behaves? What buffer sizes do you need to use?

Biquads flip out a lot when you try to manipulate them on the fly, so the traditional methods of resisting zipper noise aren't always compatible. I do wonder if it's Maschine, or simply what you need to get out of the filter and the kinds of sounds you're using. It's very possible it simply doesn't suit your style and the Z filters aren't a good match for you and your music

[bungle]

Hahaha ok, well I have been using EMU samplers for 20 plus years making Jungle and DnB, but maybe so

I think just not automating these filters is the way forward, they have zipper noise even on silence if you boost it to hear it, I can do a video if you like.

[bungle]

That is bandpass, but they all have the same zipper noise when automating frequency in Maschine.

[jinxtigr]

I'm not sure how you made that happen but it was cool sounding

[bungle]

Well yeah, its very easy to use the zipper noise itself and push that forward more and more and move in to Spore style glitch basses, but it is near impossible to get simple driven frequency automation for movement without getting the zipper noises.

It must be Maschine, because not one of these plugins will do a simple frequency sweep without terrible zipper noise.

Oh well, maybe one day.

EDIT*
Just tried Reaper, exactly the same, not sure how nobody is hearing this besides me, very very strange.

[gaggle of hermits]

i've just tried. i'm not getting zipper noise in ableton even with the input cranked. it's distorting as i'd expect but nothing i'd associate with zipper noise. it's even pretty well behaved modulating the poles.