Ableton Device Focus: AUTOFILTER

[Elkie]

As we discussed in another thread, we are going to start up one of these threads a week, each one for a new Ableton device. These threads will remain open ended and can be contributed to for as long as people have interesting stuff to add, and hopefully they will become a useful resource for all the Live users on the forum.

So first, Autofilter. One of the absolute bread and butter devices within Live and probably used by almost every Live user, both DJ and producer.

I'll get the ball rolling with this; quite simple use of the sidechain capability of Autofilter to duck delays behind the main dry part, useful for those more dubby tracks to keep some clarity to your leads: http://www.musictechtutorials.com/ablet ... utofilter/

Thanks to Silkpantsman for the idea for this thread

lets see what you've got!

[dav.id]

nice post dude! never used this technique, it's always nice to learn new things

[Promise One]

nice post dude! never used this technique, it's always nice to learn new things

Agreed! I never noticed you could sidechain with the autofilter. I know what I'm doing when I get in from work. Making a cup of tea. Then opening Ableton

[Assassin]

Though it's not exactly only autofilter that can do this; you can apply it to your hit bus with a lowpass and use the lfo to create tiny amounts of movement. gives the hats more of a roll.

I use this device for pretty much everything, cutting out lows and creating movement to make the track flow.

[staticcast]

Run a bunch of them in parallel with fairly narrow notch filters, assign a different speed LFO to each, and mix with the dry signal. There's your phaser.

Sometimes I also like using it on leads and basses as a HPF, sidechained off the kick, to pull everything out of the way when the kick arrives and slowly bring it back in (use a 300-400 ms release). Works well on tracks where you've got an absolutely massive kick that only hits every 2 bars or so. Like sidechain compression, but preserves the high end.

[jobbanaught]

If you have a track that you like rythmically, but not frequency wise, try putting an autofilter on, set to bandpass, adjust frequency and resonance, and put a 8 bar synced lfo with full amount. This will make the sound sweep through lots of req ranges and give it a whole lot of movement. If it start to phase (e.g. weird stereo effects on mono tracks), adjust th phase to 0. Or leave it, if you like the phasing.

[krispy]

nice post dude! never used this technique, it's always nice to learn new things

Never used AUTOFILTER?!?! Its so important and probably one of the effects I use the most!


EDIT: OH! The technique of posting on the forum like this, MY BAD SORRY

[staticcast]

nice post dude! never used this technique, it's always nice to learn new things

Never used AUTOFILTER?!?! Its so important and probably one of the effects I use the most!

I actually hardly ever use it to be fair, I generally use EQ8 and do the automation myself... it's definitely nice for sidechaining though.

[diagrams]

Autofilter for me sounds like the EQ3 with lfo/envelope/sidechain abilities so i avoid it as much as i can

in the vid he as a disabled compressor after the autofilter set up to Sidechain to the same track - much better for achieving the same result imo

[Kromakey]

I use autofilter for my wobble. Just have to put a utility after it.

[skwiggo]

Always use autofilter for cutting lows/highs on everything, used to use it for LFO wobble bass when I was first pissing about with dubstep too. Couldn't live without it I don't think.

A quick question tho: Could anyone tell me if using EQ8 or Autofilter is better for hipassing/lopassing?

[diagrams]

A quick question tho: Could anyone tell me if using EQ8 or Autofilter is better for hipassing/lopassing?

in what respect?
clearing the low end hum from a hi hat sample? Splitting your bass frequencies?
really depends on the situation and mix
but id go with EQ8 as you'll have the extra bands of parametric control

[jobbanaught]

A quick question tho: Could anyone tell me if using EQ8 or Autofilter is better for hipassing/lopassing?

in what respect?
clearing the low end hum from a hi hat sample? Splitting your bass frequencies?
really depends on the situation and mix
but id go with EQ8 as you'll have the extra bands of parametric control

To my ears EQ8 has 12db slope, whereas Autofilter has 24db slope. With autofilter you can control the resonance, with eq8 you cant. So with the EQ i do minor changes to the freq content, and with the autofilter i make more drastic changes. For hipassing/lopassing, if you want to emphasise the cutoff frequency, use autofilter, if not, stick with eq8. And as always, just a/b and stick with what sounds best

[dav.id]

nice post dude! never used this technique, it's always nice to learn new things

Never used AUTOFILTER?!?! Its so important and probably one of the effects I use the most!


EDIT: OH! The technique of posting on the forum like this, MY BAD SORRY

lol offcourse I use it but not in the way as the first post said

[staticcast]

A quick question tho: Could anyone tell me if using EQ8 or Autofilter is better for hipassing/lopassing?

To my ears EQ8 has 12db slope, whereas Autofilter has 24db slope.

Per pole, yes...

With autofilter you can control the resonance, with eq8 you cant.

Sure you can. "Q".

The nice thing about EQ8 is that if you need a 24dB slope you can just use more than one HPF (or LPF) pole. The other nice thing is that you can do all your HPFing and LPFing in one plugin rather than using multiple instances. One more nice thing is that you can really customise the response of your LPF (or HPF) if you don't mind things sounding a little funny around the cutoff (or you can use it as an effect) - for example, try dragging four LPF poles around roughly the same area (actually it's 8 since each pole is a double, but whatever) - with some practice you can get a VERY steep rolloff around the cutoff, a bit like a Chebyshev:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev_filter

....but let's leave that to the EQ8 device focus.

[skwiggo]

All this stuffs really helpful thanks!

[jobbanaught]

With autofilter you can control the resonance, with eq8 you cant.

Sure you can. "Q".

Hmm, from a sound designers point of view the Q control in eq8 is much much tamer than in autofilter, and does not allow to shape a sound in terms of adding audible resonance at certain frequencies. And imo this is the main difference between filters and eqs in terms of their usage?

[staticcast]

With autofilter you can control the resonance, with eq8 you cant.

Sure you can. "Q".

Hmm, from a sound designers point of view the Q control in eq8 is much much tamer than in autofilter, and does not allow to shape a sound in terms of adding audible resonance at certain frequencies. And imo this is the main difference between filters and eqs in terms of their usage?

"Filter" and "EQ" are just generic terms really; the LPF and HPF of EQ8 are just as much "filters" as those in AutoFilter. You might be right – I mean, it's possible that AutoFilter might be modelling something (Ladder filter/SVF/303/etc), although to my ears it sounds too clean to be any of those.

My suspicion is that it would be possible to use EQ8 to do exactly what Auto Filter does (without LFO/enveloping of course), but I'm not exactly sure how, ie, whether simply having two EQ8 LPFs in the same place with the same resonance would produce the same effect. (One LPF on its own will definitely not sound as extreme as AutoFilter since you're comparing a 12dB with a 24dB filter.)

[jobbanaught]

"Filter" and "EQ" are just generic terms really;

Thats only part of the story, i know technical they are very similar. But in my book those two things serve different purposes: Filters are designed to remove stuff while giving you audible resonance, eqs are designed to do the same but be transparent (or at most give a light shimmer). I mean obviously you could combine two 12db eq poles to have 24db reduction and have something similar to a 1 pole 24db filter with resonance turned down, but whats the whole point? Why not use a filter when necessary (i.e. more slope, wide range controllable resonance), and an eq in all other cases?

[staticcast]

"Filter" and "EQ" are just generic terms really;

Thats only part of the story, i know technical they are very similar. But in my book those two things serve different purposes: Filters are designed to remove stuff while giving you audible resonance, eqs are designed to do the same but be transparent (or at most give a light shimmer). I mean obviously you could combine two 12db eq poles to have 24db reduction and have something similar to a 1 pole 24db filter with resonance turned down, but whats the whole point? Why not use a filter when necessary (i.e. more slope, wide range controllable resonance), and an eq in all other cases?

Not necessarily, you can get filters designed to be as transparent as possible and filter sections on EQs that are designed to sound extreme.

Use whatever you like at the end of the day! I just like the flexibility of EQ8, which can give you all the slope you could ever want, all the resonance you could ever want and all the range you could ever want (except maybe at the low range, where sometimes I wanna go lower than 30Hz on individual poles). I use AutoFilter when I really want enveloping, sidechaining or a stereo LFO.