Buy FilterOrgan

Price: $39 Follow BltWorks for sales
No registration needed
By purchasing one copy of FilterOrgan you are licensed to

- use it on all of your computers
- use all plugin formats on all supported operating systems
- all future updates

This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY,
except if you are not satisfied we'll send your money back.

Download

A preview version of a new exciting feature is included:
customizable ⚡OVERTONES⚡ with separately automatable parameters!
I'm about to add some extra controls to support various use cases, but I'm curious to know what else could be useful for you, so any feedback is highly appreciated 😊.

After the payment you can download FilterOrgan (yes, it's up to you to pay before the download).

	Mac VST3	v1.2 BETA
	Mac AU	v1.2 BETA
	Win VST3	v1.2 BETA
	Linux VST2	v1.0

How to install

Just unzip the downloaded file into your plugin folder.
If you are not sure where it is, here are the default plugin folders:

Win VST3: c:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\
Mac VST3: ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/
Mac AU: ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/
Linux VST: ~/.vst

On Mac, certain apps look for your plugins in
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/... instead of
~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/...

How to use

In Renoise

Select or create a track which produces the output you want to process with FilterOrgan
Find FilterOrgan in the effect list under VST3/BltWorks (or AU/BltWorks) and add it to this track
Turn on some static notes above FilterOrgan's keyboard:

Start playing your song
Adjust DRY level, FILTER DRIVE and Q
Now you can "play on filters" using FilterOrgan's keyboard

To control FilterOrgan with your MIDI keyboard or record a MIDI track which controls FilterOrgan:

Add a new instrument
Go to the Plugin tab and open the instrument plugin list
Find the "VST3 FX alias" (or "AU FX alias") node at the top of the list and open it
Select FilterOrgan to make this instrument control FilterOrgan
Create a new track and record/playback some notes with this instrument

In Logic Pro X

Select or create a track which produces the output you want to process with FilterOrgan
Create a new Software Instrument track and add FilterOrgan to it as an "AU MIDI-controlled Effect"
Open FilterOrgan GUI, and at the top right corner select your Audio track from the "Side Chain" list
Turn on some static notes above FilterOrgan's keyboard:

Select your Software Instrument track
Start playing your song
Adjust DRY level, FILTER DRIVE and Q
Now you can "play on filters" using your MIDI keyboard or FilterOrgan's keyboard
Record/playback MIDI notes to FilterOrgan's Software Instrument track.

In Ableton Live

Select or create a track which produces the output you want to process with FilterOrgan
Add FilterOrgan to this track
Turn on some static notes above FilterOrgan's keyboard:

Start playing your song
Adjust DRY level, FILTER DRIVE and Q
Now you can "play on filters" using FilterOrgan's keyboard

To control FilterOrgan with your MIDI keyboard or record a MIDI track which controls FilterOrgan:

Create a new MIDI track, and setup it as follows:
In the Monitor section, select "In"
In the MIDI To section, in the fist combobox select your audio track
In the MIDI To section, in the second combobox select FilterOrgan
Record MIDI notes to the new MIDI track

In Cubase

Select or create a track which produces the output you want to process with FilterOrgan
Add FilterOrgan to this track as an insert FX
Create a new MIDI track
Assign the output of the new MIDI track to FilterOrgan's track
Turn on some static notes above FilterOrgan's keyboard:

Start playing your song
Adjust DRY level, FILTER DRIVE and Q
Select the MIDI track
Now you can "play on filters" using your MIDI keyboard or FilterOrgan's keyboard
Record/playback MIDI notes to the new MIDI track.

In REAPER

Create a new track and add FilterOrgan to it as a VST3 (or AU) effect
Select or create another track which produces the output you want to process with FilterOrgan
Send the output of this track to FilterOrgan's track
Turn on some static notes above FilterOrgan's keyboard:

Start playing your song
Adjust DRY level, FILTER DRIVE and Q
Now you can "play on filters" using your MIDI keyboard or FilterOrgan's keyboard
Record/playback MIDI notes to FilterOrgan's track.

In Studio One

Select or create a track which produces the output you want to process with FilterOrgan
Add FilterOrgan to this track as an insert effect
Create a new Instrument Track
Set the "Instrument Output" of this new instrument track to FilterOrgan
Turn on some static notes above FilterOrgan's keyboard:

Start playing your song
Adjust DRY level, FILTER DRIVE and Q
Now you can "play on filters" using your MIDI keyboard or FilterOrgan's keyboard
Record/playback MIDI notes to the instrument track.

In Bitwig Studio

Add a new instrument track
Add FilterOrgan to this new track
Select or create another track which produces the output you want to process with FilterOrgan
Send the output of this track to the instrument track with FilterOrgan
Turn on some static notes above FilterOrgan's keyboard:

Start playing your song
Adjust DRY level, FILTER DRIVE and Q
Now you can "play on filters" using your MIDI keyboard or FilterOrgan's keyboard
Record/playback MIDI notes to the instrument track.

Feel free to experiment with the parameters!

Parameters

FILTER SETTINGS:

Dry: amount of dry signal to add to the main output
Wet: level of the filters' output. If you set a value less than zero, the filter switches to "cut mode" and the filters' output will be substracted from the dry signal instead of added to it.

-1.000: maximum cut

0.000: no wet output

+1.000: maximum boost
Filter Drive: the filters' output will be multiplied by its value. Disabled in "cut mode".
Q: the bandwidth of the filters

SYNTH SETTINGS:

Transpose: transposes the filters by the given value. Press the little arrows around the button to transpose by 1 or 12 semitones.
Fine tune: see the filter response display's addidtional marker line for the frequency of the note "A3" (440 Hz by default).

Velocity sensitivity:

0%:		all note's velocity will be considered as 100%
10%:		note velocity under 90% will be considered as 90%
90%:		note velocity under 10% will be considered as 10%
100%:		using the full scale of sensitivity

Note attack time (ms): fade in duration of a note (filter output) when you press a key
Note release time (ms): fade out duration of a note (filter output) when you release a key

PER-NOTE COMPRESSOR:

Compressor attack time (ms): how fast the compressor lowers the volume if needed
Compressor release time (ms): how fast the compressor restores the original volume when lowering is not needed anymore
Compressor kneeX/kneeY: position of the envelope knee in the input/output function
Compressor max volume Y: output volume for maximum input volume.
Stereo link:
OFF: the input level will be measured independently for all channels.
ON: the input level will be the average input level of all channels.
Bypass: turns compressor on/off. Be careful when you click it because it may change the volume drastically.
See detailed compressor usage notes in "Tips & tricks".

MASTER:

Test sound volume: just a simple sine wave in case you want to test the center frequency of your filters.
Gain: master gain.

Tips & tricks

The minimum and maximum values of the controls lets you set extreme and even insane values. It can be dangerous (may produce very loud and noisy sound), but according to my experience this is where the interesting parts come in. (See Q, compressor attack/release, compressor knee, filter drive, and master gain range)

You can toggle static notes on/off by clicking on the round black/white buttons above the on-screen keyboard. It is useful if you just need some notes to be played constantly. Their velocity can be adjusted by rolling the mouse wheel over the static note buttons.

Since the volume of a note is totally unpredictable (because it comes from another audio's given frequency band) the per-note compressor is almost as important part of the plugin as the filter. "Per-note" means that all played notes are compressed independently. It is called a "compressor" because its function is to compress the audio but instead of having threshold, rate, and makeup it has a knee which you can move ANYWHERE. So if you need a really agressive compressing to force all the notes to the same volume, you don't need to set an extremely low threshold and an extremely high makeup, just move the knee to the left until the quiet parts became loud enough. "Note attack" and "Note release" (not to mistake them for Compressor attack/release!) are applied AFTER compressing, so the compressor won't ruin your note envelope.

Compressor attack should be used with care. First, to have an attack time, the plugin needs to "look into the future", so you have to add some latency to use it. Compressor attack time is limited to the given latency time. Latency is not really desirabe if you play real time, but it is needed if you want to set the compressor attack time greater than zero.
Calculating the lookahead still needs some optimization, so be prepared that if you turn up the compressor attack time your playback might start to crackle!

Latency changes are applied only after closing and reopening your project in your DAW. In certain DAWs (e.g. Renoise) it's enough just to stop and start playing. You know that the change is applied if the maximum value of the Compressor attack time equals the modified Latency.

When setting a lower Q value, please keep in mind that if you have more notes on, and the notes' frequency bands overlap, their volume is added up. So the lower the Q value, the louder output you get.

If you set the wet parameter less than zero, the filter swithches to "cut mode". In this case you need to add some dry for the plugin to produce any output, because the filtered sound must be substracted from something. In "cut mode" the filters' output is also multiplied by the dry parameter's value to avoid greater values to be substracted than the input value.

In "cut mode", if you have more than one note and the Q is set to a lower value where the notes' bands are overlapping, the filters' summarized output might be greater than the dry signal. In this case, instead of cut, the the played frequencies will be boosted.

In "cut mode" the per-note compressor is disabled because it would modify the shape of the filter result so much that the substraction would result in a strange addition.

If you load a VST instrument to your source track, make sure to enable MIDI input only for one of the tracks (the VST instrument's or FilterOrgan's track) to avoid FilterOrgan to receive duplicated MIDI messages and produce double-volume output.

Future development plans

master limiter
smooth parameter changes
speed optimisation
other filter designs (butterworth, chebyshev, etc., lowpass/highpass)
mutations (additional notes besides the original note with they frequency shifted and/or multiplied by a defined value to get overtones and chords)
velocity controlled Q
improved syth functions (pitch-bend, vibrato, tremolo, portamento, etc.)
meters: main input, compressor input/output of a given note
compressor knee radius

About

FilterOrgan is developed by Blt, a freelance developer and hobby musician from Hungary. He publishes his works under the name BltWorks. In 2017 he established a startup to be able to sell his software officially.

(OK, I'll switch to first-person, I suppose everyone suspects that this is me who is writing it anyway.)

It all started in my childhood when we got a C64 (***Instant love with programming!***). Later, on PC, I started to experiment with music-related ideas, and thanks to the feedback regarding one of my projects I realised that I should switch to a multi-platform development environment. So I started to learn C++ and JUCE, and for practicing I chose one of my earlier projects to rewrite it. It was FilterOrgan.

Business data:
Bálint Magyar, Sole Trader
Tax number: 68654025-1-42
Registration number: 52055207
Registered in Budapest, 2017.12.15.