Vital's Filter Types Explained | Sound Design Tutorial
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- čas přidán 24. 07. 2024
- Vital is an amazing free synthesizer with an assortment of filter options. But what are they, and how are they different? In this video, I'll explain the different filter types, show you how they sound, and show where they're different.
We'll go through the basic types - Analog, Dirty, Ladder, Digital, and Diode and briefly explain the history of the Ladder and Diode filters. We'll look at the Formant filters; we'll dive into the Comb filters and see a few ways to use them; and we'll check out the Phaser filters. I'll also briefly show you how to set up a custom filter using the new Spectral Filter option.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:25 Standard Filters
1:55 Choosing a Filter
2:10 Ladder Filters
2:43 Comparing the Filters
5:27 Diode Filters
6:48 Formant Filters
8:15 Comb Filters
9:55 Comb Filters and Physical Modeling
10:15 Self-Oscillation
11:22 More Comb Filters
12:02 Phaser Filters
13:20 Custom Filters
Images from US Patent 3,475,623 (Moog Transistor Ladder Filter), Wikimedia (CC0 license), and Pixabay (free Pixabay license). Links to Pixabay images below.
Moog Modular Synthesizer - 2:29
pixabay.com/photos/moog-synth...
Electrical Circuit Schematics (modified) - 5:46
cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/04...
Monochord Canon Musical Instrument - 9:55
pixabay.com/photos/monochord-...
Antiquities Black Classical Concert Piano - 9:59
pixabay.com/photos/antiquitie...
Spanish Guitar - 10:04
pixabay.com/photos/guitar-mus... - Hudba
Here's what I've noticed:
Analog has subtle, smooth saturation, and tends to smooth off the high frequencies. The feedback doesn't grow in volume, so it's good for natural sustain.
Dirty has more distortion, but it notably adds both even and odd harmonics.
The ladder filter tends to hold onto the resonant peak for a little while, kind of like a small delay. For this reason, it's good for warm-sounding synth parts
Diode definitely sounds different than ladder, I just don't exactly know how to describe it. I just pick which one I prefer. The biggest upside is that the "low cut" filter is useful to cut out subsonic rubbish.
The Digital Filter's resonance feels very "grabby" and hits the distortion pretty hard, picking out individual harmonics. Its distortion tends to have that "squelchy" quality we associate with acid synths. The name "Digital" makes me think there's some sort of digital-style clipping, but I could be wrong.
Excellent observations! They sound spot on to me. Thanks for sharing with us!
I think you're right about the digital clipping on the digital filter. One of these days I want to dig into the code and see for myself how they do it. There's an open-source fork called Vitalium where you can look at the code and see how it's done. I haven't had a chance to look into that yet.
The Diode filter is particularly interesting to me due to its circuitry - there's a lot of "side effects" due to its odd design, which makes some interesting sounds.
Vital has some good filters. I'll be digging into Surge XT's filters soon. There's some good stuff in there too.
downloading these to study them later. i worked through a couple of your videos and learned a lot! great quality, thank you :)
Glad they were helpful!
Very informative video! Your production value is excellent too, very well put together
It's a ton of work to put together these videos so I don't get to post as frequently as I would like, but I think it's worth the extra time to try to improve the video presentation and quality and make it more accessible to people (for different screens, add better subtitles for better understanding and better auto-translations, and so on). Glad you found it useful!
So helpful ! Thanx !
Glad it was helpful!
vital source code is open,if you can read juce code,you might find out filter's making(vital/src/synthesis/filters)
That's very true! I haven't had a chance to dig into Vital's source code yet (I have a little into surge xt), but that's a great way to learn about it if you know a bit of DSP. Fortunately JUCE isn't hard to understand, the DSP is the real work. I've considered doing this, but just haven't had the time yet. It would be fun to know.
PAC man!!! Great vid.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.