Korneff Audio SITRAL Klangfilter W295

[bmanic]

Oh dear, I already succumbed to GAS. This thing is just stupidly good. Even though it's very early 2026 I'm tempted to say that this is the mojo plugin of the year. The amount of subtle tone awesomeness this thing makes available is just ridiculous.. and it's a fine simplistic EQ to boot.

https://korneffaudio.com/product/sitral ... lter-w295/

I'm absolutely in no way affiliated with Korneff. I'm just a very impressed customer, spilling the beans on this secret weapon.

Normal Price: 130$
Introductory price/sale: 65$

A few issues with it though.

- It can absolutely eat any CPU for breakfast. Set it to the highest possible oversampling + best quality transformer + buffer emulation and it kills absolutely any CPU with a single instance. However, even at the non-HQ setting it sounds absolutely amazing. In fact, I sometimes preferred it with the HQ button turned off. At it's lowest settings it's still rather chunky, eating about 7% of a single Mac M1 core. Compared to a similar Pro-Q4 instance with 2 filters + 3 bands using 0.2% and Arturia SITRAL w295 emulation eating about 0.8%. This is a heavy CPU munching plugin, there is no way around that fact.

.. but the sound is stupidly good. Like good.. and you have ridiculous amounts of control over every aspect of that mojo.


- Input / Output gain is neither linked nor does it have enough range available on the output. This thing really has a huge sweetspot and can sound amazing with very low level signals going into it. So it's sometimes necessary to use external tools for pre/post gain if you want to explore subtlety. It can easily be driven into complete oblivion too, as is customary with Korneff plugins.

Anyhow, this plugin was an almost instant purchase after using the Demo version for a few hours. That hasn't happened to me for quite some time. Posting this so that I don't feel so alone in my GAS misery.

EDIT: Looks like Korneff is also slowly starting to release Linux installers! This seems to be their first Linux plugin. Now that's worth celebrating!

[zvenx]

I assume you much prefer it to the soundtoys one? (Just roughly guessing they are modeling either the same eq or a family member of this eq).

rsp

[woodsdenis]

Arturia and Soundtoys do versions of this eq. I like the Arturia one but this tops it. Really excellent work Dan.

[midi sentinel]

EDIT: Looks like Korneff is also slowly starting to release Linux installers! This seems to be their first Linux plugin. Now that's worth celebrating!

I think this is their 2nd Linux plugin. First one was Chocolate Milk, I purchased it just to support them because they started releasing Linux things. I might get this one too, even though I absolutely do not need it Crap.

[MattLeschuck]

I agree. I haven't bought any plugins in a long time, but this one is special. I have both Soundtoys and Arturia's Sitral, but this has a lot more color and vibe to play with. The transformer section sounds great.

[TMaudio]

New plugins are mostly hype these days. Yea it sounds good. But take any of the existing sitral emu's, oversample them, and there you go. Sound as good, some better or nearly indistinguishable.

[pekbro]

Hmm, I’m not overly liking it, so far anyway. Especially compared to the sonic world version. Which is unfortunate, since this is nearly $40 less.

[heyheycnv]

Do I need another eq..... nope....BUT...

This one has three different component eq models which all sound fantastic. Push that high end cause it's gonna not harsh out. Plus an amp/drive section, great filters, variable or step controls, under the hood settings, built in manual and handy tooltips.

I dont have the Soundtoys or Arturia versions so it's looking like I should jump into the fire with this one instead.

[pekbro]

Heh, I bought this despite initial hesitation, as it's definitely pretty cool

[bmanic]

I'm telling you all now, this thing is DEEP.. like almost Cytomic level deep. We're only missing the ability to tweak individual components. What we have are macro level control of very deep systems. Just listen to how incredibly interactive it is to level, frequency and phase changes. Simply drive some levels or another EQ before it into the plugin. It's very rare, in my experience, to find this sort of interaction outside of the analogue domain. Similar deep interaction to incoming audio (level, frequency and phase) I've experienced is Cytomic's The Scream, a few deep AI captures of some analogue boxes and a select few other component modeled things (some of the DMG Trackcomp models).

This is one of those weird plugins where even small tweaks to various mojo parameters barely moves the graphs in Plugin Doctor, yet there are profound and easy to hear differences in audio. It's not just about harmonics and plastering on some rudimentary saturation models on top or within the plugin. The whole thing is completely interactive. Transient response changes, slew rate changes, things go either "tight" or very "sloppy". You can sort of figure this out by sending various impulses + static noise patterns into the system.. or pinging it with short sweeps with a DC offset impulse train in tandem to see how things are moving around.

.. but most notably, it is EASY to hear the changes. You change the voltage, you get an immediate difference in output. You tweak the incoming gain just a little bit and your whole EQ sounds almost the same, yet different. Hard to explain or put words on it.

You can use it very effectively as a peak/level plateau where you get much louder, less peaky output while retaining the overall feel and sound of the incoming audio. This is how I'm usually pushing audio in the analogue domain and very few plugins capture that system. It is thus very unfortunate that it costs so many CPU cycles to do this. I do hope that in the future we get systems that can perform this well at a much lower CPU cost.

Maybe we get lucky and Andrew from Cytomic takes a curious look at this thing and can tell us more accurate speculative details about it's inner workings. Right now, this is one of those "voodoo magic" plugins to me. It's gloriously interactive, deep and right up my alley when it comes to learning to use it. So far my favorite model is the one with the tilt EQ band. It's surprisingly flexible and easy to get signals in the ballpark, combined with the multiplier and the filters. Speaking of the filters, I do wish they had more slopes available. These are way too steep for my liking.

EDIT: Also forgot to say that I think it's internally calibrated to be a little bit too hot signal wise. For subtle changes to mojo and more range for the various 'drive' controls, it seems to live most happily in the -18 to -24dBFS area, peak wise. RMS levels even lower. Once you have your signals going into it at these levels, you get to truly experiment with the other controls in a much more controlled manner.

[Dan Korneff]

Wow! Thanks so much for the kind words. I spent a lot of time working on this project and I'm glad that you guys can hear it.
This plugin is unapologetically CPU heavy. Almost every stage is interacting in ways that don’t scale cheaply. But the result justifies the CPU pain in my opinion.

New plugins are mostly hype these days. Yea it sounds good. But take any of the existing sitral emu's, oversample them, and there you go. Sound as good, some better or nearly indistinguishable.

There’s definitely a lot of hype out there. This one isn’t trying to be a cheap clone though. My goal was to get this as close to circuit simulation as possible. Best thing I can say is just grab the demo and spend a few minutes with it.

[VitaminD]

- It can absolutely eat any CPU for breakfast.

So, what you're saying is, Dan has moved on from Sandwiches to Breakfast? He's already delivered on the Choccy Milk!

[pekbro]

I’d like to see some bmanic presets for this actually.

[zerocrossing]

I imagine it sounds fantastic. I’ve got Echoleffe and it’s amazing.

[vitocorleone123]

I imagine it sounds fantastic. I’ve got Echoleffe and it’s amazing.

I don’t use any analog style EQs. To date, I’ve eventually deleted them all from my computer. That said, I’ve installed the demo of this to check out this weekend (given I have 3/4 of the Korneff plugins already, it’s clear I enjoy the sound in general). Not sure if I’ll want to buy it given my preferences on EQs, but it seems worth a try.