Capacitor2
TL;DW: Capacitor2 is Capacitor with extra analog modeling and mojo.
Didn’t see this coming!
My researches led me to a webpage by the electronics company Murata, and an observation: for a particular line of capacitors they make, namely high dielectric ceramic caps made of barium titanate, there’s a concern. The capacitance drops sharply if you put the capacitor under voltage pressure. How much? As much as 50% for a little over six volts. It’s pretty linear. Thing is, the signal is ALSO a voltage. What if it tended to modulate the cutoff? As part of analog modeling?
I have plugins, the old Lowpass and Highpass, which frequency-modulate the cutoff based on the input signal. But they did it symmetrically… what about doing it the way the real-world capacitor would do it? What would you get, in the event that other capacitors had some of this behavior? It seemed like you might get a lot of even harmonics, and people tend to like that. Why not give it a try?
And that’s how something interesting got discovered.
Capacitor2 is Capacitor, already a popular plugin, but with this analog modeling built in. There’s a ‘NonLin’ control that lets you crank up the distortedness from very minimal, to quite extreme. It’s sensitive to input level (naturally) so that’s another reason to have it on a control.
And what you get is INTENSE analog coloration, and something unexpected: it emphasizes transients and brings out the articulateness of sounds in a really distinctive way. You may not have heard anything quite like this… or if you’ve been using analog gear, maybe you’re used to hearing it. I really didn’t plan for the result I got: if real-world caps have any of this behavior, it explains a lot. Literally all that’s happening is modulating the cutoff frequency of the rather Airwindows-y Capacitor algorithm. There’s no dynamics processing in there at all, but the result is incredibly dynamic. (you can even use it to boost narrow bandpasses for effect!)
This will be very useful going forward and there’s more work to be done. My work’s supported by Patreon, which means the more work IS likely to be done, the best I can, because Patreon is way steadier and less ‘transient’ than selling stuff retail. Mind you, Capacitor2 is exactly the sort of thing that would give me a really good month of sales, the kind that carries you through a whole season. And that won’t happen, because Capacitor2 is free and open source just like Capacitor was. So use it in good health. And if you want to jump on the Patreon, that’s appreciated too. :)
There are several open source projects underway adapting and porting my plugins: an LV2 project, and Rackwindows which has already brought a few plugins to VCV Rack. I hope they enjoy Capacitor2: I think it would be a hell of a good match for VCV Rack in particular, as it’s kind of like a ‘fixed filter bank’, but would adapt gracefully to CV control of its parameters (they’re all smoothed). Though, maybe for glitchy purposes it’d be good to UNsmooth them and let you run audio into the CVs!
This is, without a doubt, one of your greatest EQ’s, if not one of your greatest plugins, ever. Tip: use a send with SlewOnly and Capacitor2, crank up the Nonlinear and adjust the Lowpass to taste. Boom, beautiful analog-style transients!
Got my $$ worth this month. Nice going, what a great sounding filter!
Smash Hit!
You are a force to be reckoned with! This is so usefull and natural and character rich!
After alot of usage i can say its just irreplacable due to its “nonlinear” behaviour!
Thank you for all the hard work and unique perspective!
Tried a lot but unfortunately Ableton still doesn’t see this plugin (after confirming the access from my settings on my mac) Mac OS catalina
Maybe Catalina as usual issued some problem…
Wow, I’ve been looking for this exact kind of sound out of a plug-in for the past 20 years. Absolutely awesome.
As I said on the Dark page, I put Dark after my IRs of old 80s reverb units. Of course I put Capasitor2 before the IR with a bit of low pass and high pass going on and the Non-Lin cranked halfway or all the way up. This combination makes it sound alot closer to an retro digital reverb unit.
Hey there! I’ve just noticed that there’s some weird ringing at 15k remaining when you close down the lowpass of capacitor2 (this is also present in CStrip2, though not as extreme).
it’s not audible on its own, but can reach levels of up to -40dB when pushing the output gain of CStrip2 or putting a Mackity behind Capacitor2 and cranking the gain on that. At that point it can actually become quite painful to listen to… Any ideas on what might be causing this? It’s there at 44.1k and 96k
re:my above comment:
oops – of course while the spike is there at 96k it’s way beyond 20k. so i guess it’s related to sampling rate after all!
This algorithm uses interleaved processing. It’s why it sounds different from regular filters. So… mind how you use it, and if it’s working then good, but if it’s not working use something else :)