Filters: A New Dimension
Filters. What can we say about them that hasn’t already been said a thousand times? High-pass, low-pass, notch—we’ve heard it all before. As the bedrock of subtractive synthesis, EQ, and audio processing in general, there’s not much new ground to cover… or is there?
Enter Polyverse Music’s Filterverse: “an endless universe of filtering possibilities”, as anticipated some months ago when it was introduced.
Sounds exciting, but if it’s just another multi-filter, this universe is already full of them. There’s a whole host of filters in various flavors built into your favorite DAW as plugins. Most modern hardware and software synthesizers also provide several options beyond the standard 4-pole LP/HP/BP designs.
Thankfully, we don’t have to do a Dr. Strange and open a portal to another dimension to get a truly unique take on one of the most fundamental building blocks of sound. Filterverse has already done it in this reality.
Calling Filterverse a “multi-filter plugin” is like calling American Psycho just a horror movie…
Enter The Wormhole
Ok, so this article is already full of space metaphors—and with good reason. Polyverse Music sprinkles the concept all over its iconography, product names, and marketing materials like so much comet dust. (Ok, I’ll stop.)
The metaphor is perfect for audio production tools, especially creative ones like Filterverse. What other idea has captivated the imagination of humans since its discovery? Music! Let’s explore…
The Specs
Filters and Effects
It’s built into the name of the product, but filters aren’t the only type of effect you can choose from in Filterverse.
There are several sub-categories of filters, which include:
- Classic filters (clean and saturating varieties)
- Multi-peak filters (Chebyshev and vowel/formant)
- All-pass filters / phasers / flangers
- Comb filters
And non-filter effects like:
- Reverb
- Delays
- Distortion
- Decimation
Tallying it all up, there are 26 distinct effects you can insert into Filterverse’s three FX slots.
Routing Flexibility
This plugin is a multi-filter, and there are three freely configurable slots into which you can put any effect. Load anything from a single utilitarian “Swiss-Army Filter” (a state-variable filter) to up to three comb filters in any of the three slots. Anything goes.
Routing is flexible, with four signal paths available: one serial, one parallel, and two hybrid. You can change the order by simply dragging and dropping a slot where you want it. This might seem like a small detail, but touches like these make the user experience so enjoyable. With Filterverse, I found that if I wanted to do something, I probably could.
Modulation
Any creative product with this many modules and parameters to control must have a rich modulation section. Filterverse meets that obligation and goes above and beyond, offering eight slots that allow you to freely assign a selection of seven types of modulators. That ranks up there with some of the best products I’ve reviewed or used.
Semi-Modular Workflow
Modulation deserves its own section in this review because it’s not just a stand-alone component that interacts solely with the plugin’s parameters. Most controls on every modulation source can be controlled by any other modulator. This creates a semi-modular synth-type workflow that should make any sound designer or experimenter happy.
Starting with the basic utilities, you get an envelope (ADSR, responds to MIDI), envelope follower (used with an audio signal), sequencer (which doubles as a drawable LFO), and random generator. There’s also a “meta” knob that allows you to control up to eight parameters. MIDI turns your external controller data into internal modulation signals, while pitch-detect captures tonal audio to quantize it into control signals. Oh, and there’s an audio oscillator that can modulate other things at audio rate—it’s anything but boring.
Here’s where the fun comes in: every modulation source can be controlled in some way by any other modulation source. Think about the possibilities: use an envelope module to control the speed of a sequencer (LFO) module, which is controlling the cutoff frequency of a ripple filter; or take a slow random generator, patch it to the depth of a sequencer module that’s controlling the pitch of a Vaccumb (comb filter) for periodic yet varying waves of tight flanging.
This is not “just” a multi-filter plugin; it’s a full-on semi-modular synth. You don’t even need to use the filter modules if you don’t want to.
Take a look at this video, where Erez Eisen (Infected Mushroom) guides you through some impressive synthesizer presets:
Before we get too deep into subjects like sound-design, we should talk about the UI and how conducive it is to the creative process.
User Interface: Retro-Futuristic Design
Filterverse looks like a cross between the HUD of a starship from a game like Star Citizen and a Windows Media Player skin from 2003 (and I mean that in the best way possible!). It’s sort of retro-futuristic—rounded in some places but without the cheese of that era.
The control paradigms make sense: bigger rotary knobs for the most important/impactful parameters; sliders for secondary options like “filter type” or “poles.”
More than just big, chunky knobs you want to reach out and tweak, the primary controls contain salient information about the parameter they’re controlling and allow you to make precise adjustments. In the case of the “Bread and Butter” filter’s cutoff knob, there’s the obligatory value in Hz, but there’s a section below where you can offset the value in semitones and cents. Double-click on the Hz display and input a precise value or even a specific note (E5 is shown). Clicking on the numbers on the outside rim allows you to adjust values in octaves. Cool!
This level of detail works in tandem with Filterverse’s aforementioned modulation system, flawlessly. Many modules have quantization built in or can be controlled via MIDI, so you’ll hit that perfect-C, every time.
Polyverse knows that, in this day and age where you can download a plugin to do anything, the interface is usually the difference-maker.
My Favorite Things
Because we don’t have the space to review every single filter and modulator in Filterverse, allow me to talk about a selection of my favorites:
Evil – Probably my favorite filter of the bunch and the most extreme-sounding. Evil is based on a Sallen-Key topology, famously found in synths like the Steiner Parker Synthacon, Korg MS-20, and Arturia’s Minibrute. Known for its aggressive nature even at mild resonance levels, it screams and warbles—and that’s before you drive it hard. If it’s not dirty enough for your taste, you can fully shred your signal with the “Damage” control, which emulates imperfections in the filter circuit. The destruction is beautiful.
Swiss Army Knife (filter) – As its name suggests, it’s a utility filter that you can use anywhere. The SVF topology allows smooth transitions from lowpass to bandpass to highpass, with band-reject and peaking in between. It’s a saturating filter, meaning you can drive it via the input and/or the dedicated “drive” setting.
Vaccumb, Strings, Robo Comb – Filterverse includes three (four, if you count the flanger) comb filters in distinct flavors. Vaccumb is anything but your standard “short-delay” comb filter; it’s several highpassed filters in series, making the effect rather extreme. Strings is a physically-modeled algorithm based on waveguide synthesis. With modulation, you can make this one sing like a violin. Finally, Robo Comb is the most detailed of the bunch, encapsulating 36 (!) comb filters in two layers with 20 different topologies.
Space – Not a filter per se, but a tweakable reverb where cutoff acts like room size and resonance controls decay. A modulatable reverb isn’t unheard of (e.g., Noise Engineering’s Desmodus), but being able to introduce this effect anywhere in the signal chain opens up new realms of sound design.
Decimate – I’m not usually a fan of sample rate reduction (SRR) or bit reduction effects. These sounds were overused during the 2000s “glitch era,” and now “lo-fi” has spread them everywhere. That being said, Filterverse refreshes this effect by adding options I hadn’t considered. SRR involves taking tiny “snapshots” of an audio signal—the fewer you take per second, the more degraded it sounds. With this effect, you can interpolate (smoothly transition) between samples to create phasey, electric sounds and everything in between. Combine this with options for sampling methods, bit reduction (down to 1-bit), and feedback (making it more filter-like), and Decimate… well… decimates all other plugins of this type—except perhaps Chipcrusher by Plogue.
Here’s a chart that describes what’s happening when you push Drive and Damage:
The Microcosm
The developers have thought of everything very carefully when building the plugin’s universe, down to the atom. We’ve already covered the big features and some of the finer details, but there are a few more aspects that set Filterverse apart from similar plugins.
The Boring, But Important Stuff: Gui Scale/knob Type/CPU Performance Settings
If you’re like me, you might need to sit closer to your computer monitor than you used to. The ability to scale the plugin graphics is a huge plus (and you might literally need it to be huge, depending on your eyesight). While a fully vectorized UI that allows infinite resizing would be ideal, this implementation works well enough.
With such high-quality effects, a fairly heavy CPU tax is expected, so having a CPU performance setting is a welcome addition. (I assume this is probably an oversampling setting, but don’t quote me on that.) On my not-quite-current-generation CPU (AMD 5600X), Filterverse—with a full complement of modules and a soft synth in Ableton Live—used about 30% CPU at the Mid setting. The High setting pushed it up to 40-50%, while Low brought it back down to 20-25%. This performance varies depending on which modules you use; Cabinator, the guitar amplifier simulation, appears to be the most power-hungry. That said, I never experienced a single stutter or drop-out during use.
Patch Library and Management
Filterverse comes with an impressive number of presets—around 700—so it isn’t just for sound-design nerds like me. You can find any preset by searching its name or sorting by Author, Date, or Name. The tag system is another great addition: simply choose a tag that matches your mood or project and “heart” your favorites for easy access later. It’s a modern and intuitive approach to preset management.
Download some of the presets that I’ve creating during my time reviewing Filterverse:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s7W6TVLPNTTPGW0q3SqIaKlQR1o42A54/view?usp=drive_link
Sound Demos
The best place to start is near the bottom of Polyverse Music’s product page: https://polyversemusic.com/products/filterverse/
Here are a couple more straightforward examples:
(Filterverse on pads and bass – Swiss Army Knife, Ripples, and Space)
(Filterverse in series, by Infected Mushroom – 2x Filterverse)
(Filterverse “Bass Rez Demo” – Brick Wall, Space, and Robo Comb)
If you’d like to hear some of my more experimental demonstrations, listen to these tracks I made:
[EMBED THESE]
The Final Frontier?
Calling Filterverse a “multi-filter plugin” is like calling American Psycho just a horror movie—I mean, it’s so much more! It really transcends the perception of what a filter plugin can be.
As an artist who focuses on sound-design, the infinite options and little details are what make this piece of software so enticing. I didn’t even get to list all the nice touches, like clipping/soft saturation on the output or Scala tuning support.
The plugin isn’t just for weirdos like me, either. If you’re a producer who relies on quick access to numerous presets, Filterverse has you covered here, too.
So, what’s it missing?
Even as a more advanced user, I couldn’t remember what a certain control did. Many parameters are obvious (cutoff, resonance), but for some of the more esoteric modules, I had to go to the manual. The iconography for other functions (like retrigger and tempo-sync/free) is pretty good, but if I were a novice user, I probably wouldn’t understand them all. Tooltips would help in both of these cases.
The randomize function is becoming ubiquitous in most synths and would definitely feel at home in Filterverse. With FX, full randomization can be problematic, due to feedback, resonance, and other extreme elements, so something like what Korg’s opsix Native has would be ideal.
Finally, and I’m really getting nitpicky, here, I’d love to have a separate, traditional LFO and basic sequencer modulator, added (or have the “SEQ” modulator be separated.) There’s a lot of flexibility in the module, but I found it finicky to dial in settings quickly, at least on the sequencer side of things.
Verdict
At $149, Filterverse is probably in the “not cheap but worth it” category for most artists and producers. I’ll just say that it surprised me—and the fun I had with it was well worth the price.
Check out Filterverse on Plugin Boutique or try out its demo version available on Polyverse Music’s website.
Written by Derek, a.k.a. (d) / glitched
Derek, a.k.a. (d) / glitched is a multi-genre music producer, focusing on experimental electronic music. You can find his sounds at: http://glitched.bandcamp.com
