Air Music has dropped a brand-new effects unit called Multiband Filterbank, designed to deliver the accuracy, feature, and precision of iconic hardware filters with a modern twist for sonic shaping and sculpting.
- Three-band design with adjustable crossover points along with low-pass, band-pass, high-pass, notch, and peak filter modes
- Each mode is equipped with Cutoff, Resonance, and Pre-Drive controls for precise sound shaping
- Advanced modulation via envelope followers that can modulate the cutoff of any other band, offering deep creative control with adjustable Rise, Fall, and Gain parameters
The unit features a main spectrum graphical display with three sections: Low Band, Mid Band, and High Band. The heart of this plugin is the three-band design with adjustable crossover points.
It allows you to zoom in on specific frequency ranges and shape them with various filter types, including low-pass, band-pass, high-pass, notch, and peak filters. Each band comes with Cutoff, Resonance, and Pre-Drive controls for higher precision to craft the tone as you like.
But the highlight of the show and my favorite feature here is the built-in envelope followers cause each band can modulate another band’s Cutoff parameter with a simple drop-down menu. You have the options of Low Follow, Mid Follow, and High Follow.
There, you have the Mod parameter to control the depth of the modulation, while Rise, Fall, and Gain controls help you shape the envelope’s behavior to your desire. This means you get a very high creative potential for putting character and movement into your sound.
I can see this plugin being used to alter musical ideas into unique sounds that can be the basis for building a whole track around it. I would use it for many genres, from Rock and Pop to Electronic, R&B, and 808 Trap style. With the right settings, it can even serve well for isolated soundscapes and laser-focused sound design.
Well, it may not be a revolutionary plugin, but it is a great creative tool to have under your hood for a wide range of applications. It is quite handy for fine-tuning individual tracks or even entire mixes, while it also serves well for creative filtering, such as for creating moving and bumping effects.
With all the flexibility, tonal quality, and wide area of use, Multiband Filterbank offers, I think this can be an essential unit for many workflows.
Windows 10-11: AAX, VST2, VST3
macOS: AU, AAX, VST2, VST3, standalone
MPC: standalone
Shaurya Bhatia is a versatile content writer with a strong focus on music production, composition, and the technical aspects of audio engineering. With a deep understanding of the music industry, Shaurya specializes in creating insightful and engaging content around music production techniques, songwriting, audio engineering, and the intersection of technology and art in music. He loves to create content for musicians, audio engineers and sound designers.