Review of Antares Filter

Review of the
Antares Filter

by Tweak

The Antares filter is more than just another EQ plugin. It's a powerful tweaking tool that cuts hard and deep into the fabric of your audio. This will make more sense when you understand exactly what the Antares Filter does so I try to explain this in no-nonsense terms, so you can tell if you think you will benefit from it.

Antares AVOX Vocal Toolkit Plug-In Bundle (Macintosh and Windows)

From the company that revolutionized vocal production with Auto-Tune comes AVOX- the Antares Vocal Toolkit. With AVOX, Antares has combined five state-of-the-art vocal processing modules to give you the power you need to create stunning vocal tracks in any musical style as well as design unique vocal effects for audio post-production applications.

Antares Auto-Tune Pitch Software
Auto-Tune corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts, while preserving all of the expressive nuance of the original performance - with audio quality so pristine that the only difference between what goes in and what comes out is the intonation. All with a user-interface that is a model of clarity, speed and ease-of-use.

First off, the Antares Filter is comprised of four stereo multi mode filters. What does multi-mode mean? It means that for each filter you can select different modes and they are

1. LowPass (the traditional synthesizer filter with resonance)
2. Hi Pass (lets the highs through as it cuts away the lows)
3. Bandpass (lets you select a variable bandwidth to pass through)
4. Notch modes with resonance.

As any hard core filter head would want, you can select any of the above modes to be 2, 4, 6 ,or 8 pole (2 pole is gentle and 8 pole is extreme). Ok by now the experienced users are yawning with a big "so what". Here's what. The filters are automatable with a mouse.

See the graphic window showing the filters below. You can grab the selected filter (it's red) at the crosshairs and drag with the mouse. Imagine 4 passes through your soft mixer. Yep, you can have all 4 filters dancing around on the screen and you can listen-as-you-tweak in real time. Of course you can make precise settings with the knobs if you want. Alright, now we are moving. If this were all it could do it would still be worth the price of admission. But yes, there is more.

Perhaps the coolest is the delay functions, which, you bet, can follow MIDI timing clocks to stay in sync with your tempo. This is not just a timing offset of 8th, 16th and 32nd notes--its a full out delay with feedback. It's wild and wicked if you want it to be. Add some LFOs or envelopes to totally sweeten the outcome.

There's also an envelope follower for wah like effects, extensive filter routing schemes, modulation matrix and two rhythm generators. This is for the advanced tweaks out there. Here you can program the plugin to change parameters at different divisions of the beat. If you spend some time here, you'll be rewarded with your own "filter grooves" you can save and apply to other material in the future.

Of course, some of us don't like to tweak, so you get plenty of presets which show off the Filter's capabilities

The main things I like about the Antares Filter is you can dramatically alter the sound of any audio material you have coursing through it. If you are into lo-fi effects, this is a great tool. The sound is kind of analogish, a bit on the coarse side. I guess you could use it to fine tune a song at the mastering stage, but it not easy to control in fine gradations. This is more of an effects filter, capable of deep cuts and swooshes, rhythmic glitching, and lo-fi, notched delays. Kind of reminds me, sonically, of Reaktor's mini-sequencers. But here, the Filter works with whatever audio you have playing, with a much lighter CPU load.

I have used the Antares Filter in both Logic, Peak and Digital performer and it is stable in them all. Note that this is a VST plugin, so if using Logic you will need to have a VST to AU converter intalled. I highly recommend the FXpansion VST to Audio Unit Adapter.

In short, lots of cool stuff here. You can do things with the Antares filter that might take a long stack of plugins to accomplish by other means and the rhythmic stuff is hard to touch.

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Review of the Antares Filter

by Tweak

Review of the
Antares Filter