Polyverse Music Filterverse

There’s creative potential lurking in every filter plug‑in, but in Filterverse the possibilities are almost boundless!

A filter is far from the only element to define a synth’s sound‑design potential, but I’m sure most experienced synthologists will have expressed the ‘nice synth, shame about the filter’ sentiment on occasion! And since filters have creative uses for all sorts of sound sources, it’s just as much of a shame when you discover that the powerful filter inside your favourite synth isn’t available to process your guitar, drum or bass tracks. All of which means there’s a lot to be said for having a good, dedicated filter in your plug‑in effects folder.

As Supermodal (reviewed in SOS May 2023) ably demonstrated, Polyverse already knew a fair bit about designing creative filter plug‑ins, but recently they launched a new multi‑filter plug‑in called Filterverse, which supports all the major plug‑in formats for Windows and macOS.

Three From Many

As shown in the opening screenshot, the Filterverse GUI is divided into four main areas. The strip at the base provides access to the included presets, global Dry/Wet and Main Output controls (these can be locked to ensure that levels don’t jump out of hand when you switch presets), and a simple but effective clipper that can be set to on, off or soft clip.

Filterverse offers a number of different routing options for its three filter slots.

The top strip provides slots for up to three filter choices, and a routing tab offers five different routing schemes for audio to pass through these three slots. For each slot, there’s an impressive choice of 26 filter types, and you’re free to use these in any combination, including multiples of a particular type. I won’t waste column inches discussing all the filter options available here, but this is a good place to note that Polyverse have done an impressive job with their PDF manual for Filterverse. It provides a full reference for each filter type, along with some interesting and educational background (for example, noting that a specific filter topology exists in a well‑known hardware synth).

The filter collection includes a number of classic filter designs, of course, and the majority of these exhibit non‑linear behaviour, saturating when ‘pushed’. Equally, many of them are state‑variable, with controls to blend between states (for example, between low‑pass, band‑pass and high‑pass types), through direct manipulation of the controls, automation, or via built‑in modulation options. These classic filter types are given names such as Swiss Army Knife, Bread & Butter, Evil, or Clear Glass — a useful hint as to their characteristics for those in the know, but if that’s not you don’t worry, as the manual has all the details.

With classic filters, multi‑peak filters and even ‘non‑filter’ filters, there are plenty of tools to get creative with.

There’s a further category of multi‑peak filters capable of more complex processing. Names such as Dueling Bands (two band‑pass filters, polarity inverted), Ripples (multiple narrow filters) and Robo Comb (nested comb filters) suggest what’s on offer, but there are some pretty cool options within this group, including some experimental ones. Particularly interesting to me were Vowel, which models how mouth shape and tongue position influences vowel sounds; and Strings, which uses waveguide modelling to simulate three interacting strings. Both of these did some very interesting things on a variety of sound sources during the review period... although I must confess that I’m not entirely sure I understood how they were doing it!

The final filter group contains the ‘non‑filters’. These essentially transition Filterverse into multi‑effects territory as they include options such as Space (a creative reverb filter), Decimate (providing sample rate and sample & hold options),...