Cytomic "The Drop" Resonant Filter

[VariKusBrainZ]

Cool

Any chance of a Low Pass Gate mode please ?

I know there are work arounds but theyre not quite the same

[spunkmuffin]

Andy I just saw your corner bass traps. That is a damn neat and clever and cheap solution. Those clothes storage boxes from Ikea I've seen them. Brilliant!

I have been thinking about soundproofing and doing a bit of research but did not like the idea of using fibreglass in panels. Don't want to breath that stuff in and I think they lace them with some chemical sometimes. I have seen those cotton/wool blankets used for upholstery so know where to get them. That is a way better solution.

I am going to steal your idea. Hope you dont mind Thanks!

[andy-cytomic]

Cool

Any chance of a Low Pass Gate mode please ?

I know there are work arounds but theyre not quite the same

I don't know what you mean. Is it just modulating the cutoff frequency with an envelope? In that case are you asking for a new envelope mode that opens fully once an absolute threshold is reached? This would be easy enough to add as a new mode to the envelopes, you could then map this to amplitude or filter cutoff as you choose.

[andy-cytomic]

Andy I just saw you're corner bass traps. That is a damn neat and clever and cheap solution. Those clothes storage boxes from Ikea I've seen them. Brilliant!

I have been thinking about soundproofing and doing a bit of research but did not like the idea of using fibreglass in panels. Don't want to breath that stuff in and I think they lace them with some chemical sometimes. I have seen those cotton/wool blankets used for upholstery so know where to get them. That is a way better solution.

I am going to steal your idea. Hope you dont mind Thanks!

Please do, that's why I posted the photos! I also use those "Molger" vertical storage units as speaker stands as well since then I get shelving under them as well, and I like having solid wood in the studio. For the bass traps I had to do some woodwork to chop one of the shelving units in half to use as the top section on another to make them taller, and then doweled them in place.

The blankets do a great job of absorbing the sound, any poly / cotton / wool recycled blankets will do as they are all really dense. I saw a video of someone making panels out of a bunch of second hand towels all stapled together, but that was a bit fiddly for me.

You need a lot of material to really absorb bass frequencies, in many situations you will be better off breaking up the room resonances with hard reflectors as well to make the room as asymmetric as possible. It is quite an expensive and involved process to sort out the acoustics, but I only need to record tutorial videos in my home studio so I mainly needed the top end to be more under control. The work I've done as definitely done that so I'm all good to record

[contrast]

I don't know what you mean. Is it just modulating the cutoff frequency with an envelope? In that case are you asking for a new envelope mode that opens fully once an absolute threshold is reached? This would be easy enough to add as a new mode to the envelopes, you could then map this to amplitude or filter cutoff as you choose.

I think he is referring to the modular concept of a lowpass and a VCA with the cutoff and amplitude linked (in the original design you could choose filter/vca/both, these days there are many variations).

But the (IMO) more important part is that they all run the cutoff/amplitude control signal through a vactrol to slew the response in a non-linear way, which is probably what he is getting at with the workarounds aren't the same bit.

(I offer no opinion on whether I'd like to see such a feature in this plugin or not, as I don't currently use it, but hopefully will be able to pick it up sometime soon here!).

[andy-cytomic]

Cool

Any chance of a Low Pass Gate mode please ?

I know there are work arounds but theyre not quite the same

Can you please describe in more detail what functionality you are after?

[etherdesign]

http://pittsburghmodular.com/lpg/

I think that explains it pretty well.. but maybe he can explain exactly what he wants from the plugin..

[VariKusBrainZ]

Cool

Any chance of a Low Pass Gate mode please ?

I know there are work arounds but theyre not quite the same

Can you please describe in more detail what functionality you are after?

I think the biggest feature that makes it different is that you have your audio source and a trigger source to fire the Vactrols (kind of an opto VCA) which control cutoff and amplitude

I've taken the liberty of stealing a description from Pittsburgh Modular, some of it refers directly to their implementation.

http://pittsburghmodular.com/lpg/

I guess it's most widely known for creating the Bucla bongo sound

HISTORY AND THEORY BEHIND THE LOPASS GATE

The lopass gate module is unique in the way that it simulates the characteristics of natural instruments. When used in lopass gate mode, louder sounds contain more harmonic content and quieter sounds contain less harmonic content. This is not the case when using a standard VCA such as the Pittsburgh Modular Dual VCA module. A standard VCA simply changes the loudness of the sound without changing the harmonic content. There is no reason that synthesizers need to simulate how acoustic instruments function but because of how it affects the harmonic content of sound, a lowpass gate sounds more organic or natural compared to a standard filter/vca chain.

The circuitry behind the lopass gate has evolved over the years to include resonance and more complex modulation options but the ability to switch between voltage controlled amplifier, low pass filter, and a third mode which uses both the VCA and filter together remains at the core of the modules functionality. A lot of the characteristics associated with the lopass gate circuit come from the use of vactrols. A vactrol is an optoelectronic device consisting of an LED and light detector enclosed in a light tight package. The elements of the vactrol are optically coupled and electrically isolated from each other. When the LED within the vactrol turns on, the light detector reacts very quickly creating a very sharp attack, however, when the LED turns off, the light detector within the vactrol does not react as quickly and closes more slowly. That slow decay or ringing is the quality most associated with the lopass gate. Therefore, using a very short trigger to ping the vactrol will not result in a very short sound, instead the result is an organic percussive sound with an natural sounding decay.

The lopass gate uses a Sallen-Key filter. The Sallen-Key filter is a 2 pole 12db filter with a very buttery, natural sound. In addition to the lopass gate, the Sallen-Key filter was used as the core of Korg's classic MS-10 and MS-20 filters. Although the Korg filters are remembered for their biting growl, that has more to do with the resonance then with the filter itself.

http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Lowpass_gate

A lowpass gate is essentially a low pass VCF configured to behave like a VCA. The lowpass gate accepts an audio input and a control signal, in the manner of a VCA. When there is no control signal present, the filter's cutoff frequency is in the subsonic range, well below the audio frequencies; therefore, no audio passes the filter. Applying a control voltage causes the cutoff frequency to rise significantly, into the upper end of the audio range, so that most of the audio at the input now passes. If the output of an envelope generator is presented to the control input, the lowpass gate will shape the note envelope as a VCA would, but with some characteristic differences.

The concept of the lowpass gate originated with the Buchla 200 series modular synthesizer series, which offered a lowpass gate as a module in the series. The Buchla design used a vactrol to process the control voltage input; the vactrol had certain non-linearities which made the lowpass gate a good module for imitating some tuned percussion sounds. By feeding in short bursts of noise, or just impulse spikes, the lowpass gate could be made to produce sounds that resembled hand drums, congas, steel drums, or marimba. The original Buchla module is highly sought after and has inspired a number of imitators over the years.

[Jax Pok]

Nice studio good photography too. Do you still use a Babyface Andy?

[Aloysius]

Only when he gets upset.

[dayjob]

a low pass gate in software is a weird thing since it requires voltage to 'ping' it in a modular system... otherwise using LFO or Envelope is just like a VCA more or less but with a slippery musical appeal to it. vactrols are the reason for this. vactrols in oscillators and filters have a different character. the buchla 259 and the complex oscillators it's inspired in eurorack ake good use of vactrols to attain that sound.

in a low pass gate it's some different all together though.

for current versions of low pass gates check out the makenoise optomix and MMG, the sputnik quad VCF/VCA and malekko/richter borg though this is a different things as well.. it can ring out like a low pass gate.

i don't know how this would be achieved in software without modeling voltage striking it. which i guess would work with midi input only on something like The Drop. otherwise you'd just be pinging the low pass gate with an short envelope or LFO or some other way of getting that behavior.

madrona labs aalto is another place to look for this in software but again is not really the same thing.

[andy-cytomic]

Nice studio good photography too. Do you still use a Babyface Andy?

Thanks! I've got an RME Fireface UCX, what you saw before is the volume remote for it, which they then went on to use as the basic shape for the babyface. For scientific measurement I use a PicoScope 4226, which is a 12-bit digital oscilloscope that can measure at 50 MHz, so I can see the exact shape of transients in audio circuits, that "jump" of a square or sawtooth wave becomes a slow ramp up at that speed.

[andy-cytomic]

Cool

Any chance of a Low Pass Gate mode please ?

I know there are work arounds but theyre not quite the same

Can you please describe in more detail what functionality you are after?

I think the biggest feature that makes it different is that you have your audio source and a trigger source to fire the Vactrols (kind of an opto VCA) which control cutoff and amplitude

I've taken the liberty of stealing a description from Pittsburgh Modular, some of it refers directly to their implementation.

http://pittsburghmodular.com/lpg/

Ok, this is pretty much what I expected. The LPG has an MS-20 Sallen Key type self oscillating VCF (non-vactrol), fed into a vactrol controlled Amplifier stage, and they are optionally taking the control voltage from the vactrol of the amplifier to also modulate the filter cutoff. So for that unit they open up the filter and make the signal louder based off the same vactrol smoothed control signal. I'm not going to model a vactrol, since that is beyond the scope of The Drop and would make an entire product in it's own right, but I can add a gate mode to the envelope follower with adjustable sensitivity. You can then map this control signal to both filter cutoff and amplitude to create a low pass gate.

[HcDoom]

I am still having high hopes for distortion (various types/modules ranging from low to destructive) after filter for those lovely screeching sounds. I believe only Andy can code it properly without those nasty aliasing problems from which almost all software distortion plugins suffer...

[andy-cytomic]

A quick update on the upcoming release. I've got both Mac and Win builds working smoothly, and I'm currently working on VST3 support and getting AAX builds up and running again. On the R&D side I really want to add the new WSP filter in this build so I've decided to ditch the FSU knob for now (and the SCR filter), and concentrate on something else which may be more useful anyway: a resonance boost button! Currently I limit the upper resonance gain to 125%, which is done to prevent aliasing when not oversampling and to make the filters behave "nicely" for regular use, but there are many people that want to do crazy self oscillating "cricket chirp" or super distorted resonant sweeps, so I'm working on a mode where you can get up to 200% resonance gain instead. The MS1/MS2/PRD/SMP/SHR/JPR filters love this kind of resonance, basically all the filters that aren't SVF based, but hopefully some small modifications to those will be all that is needed to get sound great sounds out of those too.

I would like some feedback on how to present this new "resonance boost" feature. I was thinking of adding a "boost" button next to the "safe" button above the resonance knobs. The "safe" button will take priority, so if you have boost and safe both on, you get safe, but it you just press the boost button then the resonance from 100%-125% changes to be from 100%-200% instead. This will mean existing projects will still load just fine and people can't accidentally engage the boost when they actually want safe resonance. I did contemplate changing the safe button to a mode button with three states: normal, safe, boost, but I thought this may be dangerous if you accidentally switch to boost mode with the resonance at full when performing if you are just trying to toggle between normal and safe modes. What do you guys think?