But it should be made clear that Volcano is probably more capable than most filter plug-ins available.

So, we’ll be looking at some of those applications in this article.Īlthough I’ll be using Fab Filter’s Volcano effect, many of the sound manipulation possibilities that I’ll be demonstrating will be transferable to other brands of filters, either directly by using multiple instances of the filter plug-in and sends. But circumstances prompted me to investigate further and I was pleasantly surprised that filter plug-ins could do far more than just impose a trance-gate quality to the sound, which was my original suspicion. With a filter plug-in inserted in the signal path after a synth, there’s only global processing.Ĭertainly, my attitude was dismissive until recently. In modern synths, filters are polyphonic, with each note getting a dedicated filter process with per-note modulation (envelopes, LFOs, etc.). If the heart of a subtractive synth is the oscillator, the filter is the soul. Do you think plug-in filters are good for adding trance-gate pulsation and little else? Check this article out to learn just how much more can be done with these versatile devices.Įlectronic musicians who cut their teeth on subtractive synthesis may be forgiven for dismissing filter plug-ins as effects of little value.

Fabfilter volcano sweep