Part 5: Further With Filters

Part 5

Further With Filters

Real synthesizers often chain multiple filters together. Two band-pass filters create vowel-like formants; a high-pass plus a low-pass carves out a frequency band. Push resonance high enough and a filter starts to self-oscillate, ringing like a tuned sine wave at the cutoff frequency, turning the filter itself into an instrument.

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Preset

Combined Response

Magnitude

Phase

Output

Filter A

Filter B

Self-Oscillation

At very high resonance (Q ≈ 30), the filter rings at the cutoff frequency.

Self-oscillating filter output

Self-Osc Filter

Click a key to ping the filter. It rings at the cutoff frequency.