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Input and output level – Soundtoys FilterFreak User Manual

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Analog Flavor

The analog flavor control is used to adjust how the input and output behaves (or

doesn’t behave) when it is overdriven. To access this control, click on the small but-

ton to the left of the Analog switch to see the analog flavor pop-up menu. For best

results, experiment with different sources when tweaking this control:

Clean: Maximum non-distorted range, with fairly hard clipping.

Fat: Smooth low-frequency distortion.

Squash: Similar to above but more compressed.

Dirt: Smooth broadband saturation.

Crunch: Exaggerated high-end clipping.

Shred: Lots of asymmetrical clipping.

Pump: Extreme pumping compression.

Input and Output Level

The Input and Output level controls are used to (you guessed it) boost or attenuate

either the input or output of FilterFreak. The default setting of the controls approxi-

mates “unity gain” (what goes in comes out the same level) and should provide the

best overall “normal” sound quality when set to these levels. The LEDs beneath the

Input and Output knobs provide visual display of the input and output signal levels.

The yellow LED indicates that the signal is 6dB below clipping. The red LED indicates

maximum signal level, and possible clipping which may or may not sound so good

depending on the switch setting and what your ears like to hear.

These controls are particularly useful in the Analog mode, allowing you to control the

amount of saturation and distortion in FilterFreak. You can crank either the Input or

the Output to create distortion and cranking both to extreme levels can really futz

with your sound.

Distortion combined with filtering can be lots of fun. If you saturate the input stage

(by turning up the Input level), the distortion and harmonics added by the saturation

will be filtered by the FilterFreak filter. If you saturate the output stage by turning up

the Output level, the signal will be filtered first and the distortion and harmonics will

be added post filtering. These can sound quite different and there are a lot of varia-

tions available using both input and output saturation at different levels.

It’s important to note that the input and output level

only affects the filtered signal

and leaves the dry signal unchanged. This approach may be slightly different than

that of some other plug-ins and we found this implementation to work best for

FilterFreak.

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