Fabfilter Twin 3 --Released Feb. 7th

[Lbdunequest]

I just wanted to say how awesome sound quality is of this synth and how low cpu it is compared to its sound.

[christian f.]

I really wanted to like it, but I don't think it has anything special to offer on the synthesis side and I also think it's pretty mediocre sonically. Even as a "simple hands on" synth it's very underwhelming.
I expected more from Fabfilter to be honest.

[Biome_Digital]

Can anyone confirm this? - The envelope (new envelope generator, not AMP env.) does not RETRIGGER filter modulation.

How to try: Set synth to MONO. Add a NEW envelope and assign to filter cutoff. Hold a key and play other keys while always holding the first key down.

The filter modulation shows the envelope opening on each key press, but the SOUND does not!

You can try the same thing with an LFO acting as an envelope and it DOES retrigger the filter. So is this a bug? Or a setting I have missed?

[PieBerger]

I really wanted to like it, but I don't think it has anything special to offer on the synthesis side and I also think it's pretty mediocre sonically. Even as a "simple hands on" synth it's very underwhelming.
I expected more from Fabfilter to be honest.

Maybe it's just me and maybe I'm being a little harsh, but I think they are resting on their laurels a bit and relying too much on the strength of the brand, rather than pushing forward like they were 10 years ago. In 2023, there are lots of developers bring out new plugins or updating existing ones with quality DSP, nice UIs with drag & drop modulation, plenty of modulation capabilities and so on, but also offering increased functionality or new/novel features on top of all of this. They aren't the only game in town now and I think they need to do more to really wow the saturated market, especially for the prices they are charging.

I have all of their plugins and they are great; this isn't meant to be a trash post, in case anyone is thinking to jump down my throat, just an observation from a generally satisfied, long time customer

[Biome_Digital]

Thank you... (you sound excited which is always good )..

I know we worked very hard on getting the envelopes to behave in a normal way (which they did not in twin 2!). Now retriggering and playing on it is tight, just as it should be. It just feels way better to play.

Can you look at my last comment above about retriggering? Maybe you know a setting I have missed?

[christian f.]

I really wanted to like it, but I don't think it has anything special to offer on the synthesis side and I also think it's pretty mediocre sonically. Even as a "simple hands on" synth it's very underwhelming.
I expected more from Fabfilter to be honest.

Maybe it's just me and maybe I'm being a little harsh, but I think they are resting on their laurels a bit and relying too much on the strength of the brand, rather than pushing forward like they were 10 years ago. In 2023, there are lots of developers bring out new plugins or updating existing ones with quality DSP, nice UIs with drag & drop modulation, plenty of modulation capabilities and so on, but also offering increased functionality or new/novel features on top of all of this. They aren't the only game in town now and I think they need to do more to really wow the saturated market, especially for the prices they are charging.

I have all of their plugins and they are great; this isn't meant to be a trash post, in case anyone is thinking to jump down my throat, just an observation from a generally satisfied, long time customer

Totally agree with you !

[whassup]

Just demoed it and quickly compared it to what I have.
Pros: Good sound. Didn't find a preset that sounds poor or reveals a weakness of the synth.
Cons: It doesn't sound better than what I have or significantly different to what I have so that I want THIS special character. Slightly different but doesn't give me goose bumps. Quickly checked against Rapid and Synthmaster and they made me grin again and quickly. They give me good vibes and make me go YEAH!
CPU usage of Twin3 is way higher than Rapid and Synthmaster. Talking about a magnitude of 1-10. One preset was at 3,5% CPU with a monophonic line while the lowest was at 0.7 CPU. The other two mentioned synths max out at 1.1% and often go as low as 0.3%.
The GUI: Sorry, but no. Too much information, everything blinks and moves and I didn't find a quick way to turn all that eye candy off. The waveforms always move, that blurry whatever in the middle and that spectrum thingy which I am almost sure that it can be turned off, which I know from Q3 that I own and love. Not cool. All those little symbols that I have to translate into "ah, the tuning fork, it is talking about pitch!" is not to my taste.
Few presets!?! Why? Version 3 and only this much factory presets? Well...
10 years earlier and I guess I would have been impressed by this one. But now it is a good synth besides many others. It does not make me wanna buy another one that I COULD use too...
Not a synth for me right now.

[j wazza]

I'd say it sounds very clean for a synth but also very flat and digital. Clean, flat and digital are the main words I would use to describe the sound of fabfilter products in general, including their 'analog' plugins.

for eq this is a good thing, pro q is my best eq, but for everything else there are far better options imo. saturn and pro-r also have this flat sound to them which means I always keep some dry sound to try and keep some depth in the sound, and usually end up turning them off

[Aloysius]

Like some people, I've been trying to enjoy this expensive ''upgrade''. At the end of the day I have more use for FabFilter ONE than Twin 3. I keep thinking this is a soulless, thin, buzzy, hollow, digital sounding synth thing with high-quality FX that are trying their best to polish the underlying turd.

There. I said it. That's exactly how feel about it. I can't see this getting any use here except maybe as a cheaper way to upgrade to Twin 4 in ten years time. Some of those drum presets sound ok though, so never say never I guess.

Anyway ... entirely my own fault for blindly trusting in a brand name.

[gentleclockdivider]

Like some people, I've been trying to enjoy this expensive ''upgrade''. At the end of the day I have more use for FabFilter ONE than Twin 3. I keep thinking this is a soulless, thin, buzzy, hollow, digital sounding synth thing with high-quality FX that are trying their best to polish the underlying turd.

There. I said it. That's exactly how feel about it. I can't see this getting any use here except maybe as a cheaper way to upgrade to Twin 4 in ten years time. Some of those drum presets sound ok though, so never say never I guess.

Anyway ... entirely my own fault for blindly trusting in a brand name.

I have the exact same feeling .
THe wow effect I first got when the first fabfilter one -then twin was released never re-occured .
Good old days .
They are too bussy making eye candy gui and who needs separate osciloscope views for each osc and some fake aurora lightning show ?

[teilo]

The resizing is just stupid. It only resizes the whitespace and the graphs. The font and knobs stay the same!

UI Size and UI Scale are two separate parameters. It's right there in the size menu.

[F.X.Randomiz]

This is how I wish it was working:

[...]

When you have less filters than oscillators, the oscillator without a filter should bypass the filtering completely.

I have no idea why the logic isn't like this.

[...]

I guess one reason would be backwards compatibility:
In Twin2 the 3rd Osc was going into both filters in Per Osc mode. Even the GUI represents that routing. And one reason for that once again might be that in Twin1 the "3rd Osc" was just the noise generator, which as a matter course was going into the filters.

Apart from that I think it's a good decision, since you have more flexibility and can still send the 3rd Osc to a bypassed 3rd Filter if so desired.
And gladly with that routing logic you can port your Twin2 presets to Twin3 without too much of a hassle.

[Branis]

Can anyone confirm this? - The envelope (new envelope generator, not AMP env.) does not RETRIGGER filter modulation.

How to try: Set synth to MONO. Add a NEW envelope and assign to filter cutoff. Hold a key and play other keys while always holding the first key down.

The filter modulation shows the envelope opening on each key press, but the SOUND does not!

You can try the same thing with an LFO acting as an envelope and it DOES retrigger the filter. So is this a bug? Or a setting I have missed?

Set the polyphony to Poly and 1 voice to retrigger the envelope, but keep the synth monophonic

[vitocorleone123]

I don’t have anything else that sounds or works like it (I don’t like so many of the other synths mentions here - I’ve tried or had a lot of them). I think Twin3 has a unique character. No, it’s not revolutionary, but few synths are anymore, let alone synths I want to use.

I like it a lot and will probably buy it. I like the UI. I don’t think their plugins are soulless - people who do should probably move on to something they like.

It’s not an instant but for everyone kind of synth. But I’ve been looking for another modern synth to go with Hive2 and this might be the one for me (I’ve tried so many others). I have plenty of vintage-y software synths as well as 3 hardware synths (Digitone, OB-6, SE-02).

[Biome_Digital]

Of course it's all subjective, but this synth CAN sound huge! I also think the filters sound very nice with plenty of character.