Moog Music brings high quality sound-shaping to Apple devices with the Filtatron – a real-time audio effects app that’s easy to have fun with and comes packed with features. While it’s not a synth, the Filtatron combines filtering and effects to manipulate the sound from the on-board oscillator, sampler, or line/microphone input. The interface has input knobs for each of these sources, allowing the use any combination of the three at once. You can import any song or sound file into the sampler, and record audio of unlimited file size at 16bit, 44.1kHz quality – then transfer your files between the Filtatron and your computer, or with other compatible apps.
The Filtatron is driven by the Moog Ladder Filter, “the same filter that gives Moog instruments their warm, thick character.” In addition to a number of controls for this filter such as resonance, cutoff, and lowpass/highpass, you can modulate it with an LFO featuring five waveforms or an Envelope Follower (the image below shows the main Filtatron controls). You can also add overdrive, feedback, or tape-style delay to your sounds using the Amp and Delay effects modules included in the app, and control them in real time using X/Y pads. The newest version of the app has also added “Pitch Lock” to the oscillator – giving you the ability to play chromatic scales.
But on to the important part – how does it sound? …Really nice, and that’s before you consider the fact that it’s running on an iPhone. Moog has successfully brought their characteristic tone to a product that dramatically widens their audience. Music Radar gives it 4.5/5 Stars with this review:
“Filtatron’s sound quality is superb, and it’s easy to forget that you’re using an iPhone app and not a desktop plug-in (actually, we’d love to see a plug-in version!). The filter can go from a bassy thud to all-out resonant whistle, and the drive/feedback options offer plenty of textural variation and wild behaviour. The oscillators sound warm and ‘analogue’, while the delay is itself a prime source of sonic madness. Just crank up the feedback and start manhandling the delay time – it sounds very smooth and can even churn out pseudo vocoder and old-school timestretching effects.”
The Moog Filtatron is currently available for $4.99 on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices, but it will increase in price to $7.99 with the upcoming release of version 1.2. –Mike Bauer
Link to MusicRadar.com article.
