Dome Filter in Bitwig

Tutorial | Nov 25, 2024

In this video, I explore the dome filter in Bitwig Studio 5.3, showcasing its unique capabilities like phase shifts and re-synthesizing signals using phase and magnitude outputs. I demonstrate how to create pitch wobble, frequency shifters, and even attempt some FFT re-synthesis inside the grid, which wasn't previously possible in Bitwig. Overall, I see the dome filter as a fascinating addition for crafting creative sound effects and experimenting with new audio techniques.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

• support me on Patreon
• Pitch Wobble
• Freq Shift
• Dome Widener
• FFT Single Filter

Summary #

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

In this video, I'm excited to explore the new dome filter in Bitwig Studio 5.3, which has been available in beta for a week. This is one of the strangest additions to Bitwig Studio, and many users might not know how to use it. My goal is to demystify the dome filter and demonstrate some previously impossible techniques in Bitwig Studio.

To begin, I have a minimal setup with an audio track that contains a simple audio file I recently created. I include a tool device, which I'll need later, and an EQ analyzer to observe the frequency response of the grid. The EQ analyzer shows a slight dip due to oversampling and anti-aliasing despite having nothing in the grid.

The dome filter consists of four outputs: real, imaginary, magnitude, and phase out. You can adjust the filter quality from rough to excellent in the inspector. The real output introduces phase shifts in the input signal, which become more numerous as the filter quality improves. The imaginary output is always 90 degrees shifted compared to the real output.

The magnitude output pairs well with the phase output, giving the phase response of signals passing through the dome filter. One interesting application is to take the phase output, feed it into a sine function to re-synthesize multiple sine waves, and use the magnitude to control their loudness. This allows for reconstructing audio inputs with a new perspective.

We can manipulate this re-synthesized signal further by phase-shifting it with a modulatable LFO, resulting in pitch wobble or frequency shifting. Other effects can result from adjusting the sine oscillator frequency, oscillator phase modulation, and even using filters on the magnitude to introduce low-pass effects.

Another interesting technique is creating a notch filter by blending unmodified signals with real output, resulting in specific frequency dips. Further manipulation can be achieved by creating a pseudo-frequency shifter using dome filters. By cross-modulating the real and imaginary outputs with a sine oscillator output, I create a custom frequency shifter that's capable of unique transformations.

Later on, I delve into something beyond frequency shifting: FFT-like filtering and re-synthesis using the dome filter. By harmonically modulating sine oscillators with specific pitch or frequencies, I develop a method to extract single frequency bands, simulating FFT analysis and resynthesis. This novel approach offers a glimpse into a more advanced frequency-based sound manipulation in Bitwig Studio.

While these explorations illustrate the dome filter's versatility, I acknowledge that achieving clean FFT resynthesis would require extending this method with many more frequency bins. However, these insights already showcase the dome filter's potential for creative sound design and effects.

Overall, the video demonstrates that the dome filter not only brings new tools into the fold but allows for pushing Bitwig Studio into areas previously unexplored. I encourage viewers to experiment with the dome filter and see what unique sound design concepts they can come up with in Bitwig Studio 5.3.

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] hey folks welcome back to another video and today i want to focus on the dome filter of bitwig studio
[00:00:18] 5.3 which is out since last week at least the first beta version and the dome filter is probably
[00:00:24] the weirdest edition and most people probably don't know what to do with it and i want to show
[00:00:29] you this in this video and maybe this video is in the beginning a bit boring but please stick around
[00:00:35] it gets interesting later on and i show you also some things you couldn't do in bitwig studio before
[00:00:40] so if you like the video please like and subscribe of course and if you don't want to patch all these
[00:00:45] examples up for yourselves you can just download a preset in the description below as always okay
[00:00:51] so let's go here to bitwig studio and this is here my minimal setup to show you all the things
[00:00:58] um we have here an audio track on this audio track there's just a simple audio file something i made
[00:01:05] recently this is how it sounds
[00:01:06] so nothing nothing special but it it's enough to show you actually um what the filter does so then we have
[00:01:21] your tool device i need this later on and we have here an eq analyzer right so we can enable this
[00:01:27] and then we can analyze here the frequency response of the grid so this is the frequency response here of
[00:01:35] the grid with nothing in it you can see there's a slight um dip here at the end it's it's very slight
[00:01:40] so there's some processing happening it's probably because of the over sampling here anti-aliasing and so on
[00:01:47] okay so let's move on to the dome filter here so this is how it looks like
[00:01:51] and the help here show us already a lot of good information so we have four outputs here
[00:02:00] wheeler output imaginary output magnitude and the phase out and we can change the filter quality here in the inspector right from rough to normal to better to excellent
[00:02:11] and um yeah that's pretty much it so all these outputs here are kind of interesting because the real
[00:02:19] output is actually um yeah the input signal but there are some phase shifts in there and we can see this
[00:02:27] by just hooking up here the real output or the input here and the real output you can see in the
[00:02:34] eq curve analyzer here that we have no frequency dip so there's no filtering happening kind of in the
[00:02:41] frequency response but we have here a phase shift right we have a 90 degree um phase shift at this
[00:02:49] position here and um you can change how many phase shifts you have across the frequency spectrum by
[00:02:57] changing here the filter quality from rough to normal you can see we have two shifts here better
[00:03:05] and excellent so the more you change or the higher the filter quality is the more uh phase shifts you get
[00:03:13] across the frequency spectrum here so here we have one uh two three four uh kind of 90 degrees shifts here
[00:03:22] okay um the same with the imaginary output so when we hook up here the imaginary output with the output
[00:03:30] you can see we have the same response but the difference is that this output here is always 90 degrees shifted to
[00:03:40] this output you can see here the small
[00:03:43] shift right so um that's the difference between the real output and the imaginary output that the imaginary output is
[00:03:54] is always uh 90 degrees offset by um compared to this uh real output at least in some um some frequency um
[00:04:05] in some frequencies right so that's the difference then we have here the magnitude output and the magnitude is
[00:04:15] probably better described in combination with the face output because the face output gives you the face response
[00:04:24] response of everything that goes into the dome filter it looks like this here very weird right
[00:04:32] um and this what you can see here is the face response of this test signal of the eq curve analyzer we can also
[00:04:39] uh put in here our audio signal and this looks like this right so what can you do now with these outputs so you can do multiple things so first up you can
[00:04:53] just take this phase output here and feed it into a sine function the sine function takes in a phase input right and it tries to
[00:05:05] re-synthesize or recreate the signal that goes into that via this phase signal into sine waves multiple sine waves
[00:05:17] and yeah this gives you kind of this output here but we also need the amplitude information so sometimes
[00:05:24] signals are louder sometimes our signals are quieter right and we can use then here this magnitude for that
[00:05:32] so all we need to do is to use a multiply which you know you may already know can change the amplitude of
[00:05:41] something go into that and or maybe use this as an input and then this magnitude here for the loudness
[00:05:55] so we can recreate the audio input here just by using the face converting this to a sine function here or to us or to multiple sine waves
[00:06:09] and then using the magnitude to change the loudness of these individual parts so you can recreate or
[00:06:16] re-synthesize the signal already here but these two outputs okay and the interesting part now is
[00:06:24] that we can modify this phase signal here with multiple things so first up we can take um let's go here to phase
[00:06:34] and then use uh west uh shift let's do the shift here right
[00:06:39] we can already modify the pitch of the signal by using maybe an lfo here
[00:06:55] and then um yeah modulators here go to 100 percent here just one make this uh bipolar so we modulate also
[00:07:06] in the other direction and then use your sign let's see how this sounds
[00:07:19] this gives you some kind of pitch wobble because we shift back and forth right and then we re-synthesize
[00:07:35] the signal and you get this kind of nice pitch wobble so you can modify the pitch we can also switch here to
[00:07:42] an let's say saw so it's more like a ramp and with this we get kind of an um pitch shifter
[00:07:59] and if you take something like uh as an oscillator you can get higher or we can also switch this into
[00:08:18] cooler let's just faster let's see how this sounds
[00:08:29] it's probably not a pitch shifter it's more like um it sounds actually like a frequency shifter
[00:08:41] so that's also probably why we have this dome filter because it's some kind of byproduct of
[00:08:47] the frequency shifter some of these internal structures here are needed or the stone filter
[00:08:54] is needed for some of these uh internals here of the frequency shifter so this is the
[00:09:00] simple frequency shifter you can build you can also create some kind of pitch wobble as i showed you
[00:09:06] just with this simple setup by using it the face re-synthesizing this with the sine
[00:09:11] function and then using the magnitude to change the amplitude or the yeah the gain or the yeah the
[00:09:18] amplitude is probably the right word for this okay so that's what you can do here with these two outputs
[00:09:24] you can also change here this for for lag or you can put the filter on it and see what comes out of it
[00:09:30] right let's see how this sounds let's use a low pass filter on that
[00:09:50] well let's use a low pass here on the magnitude
[00:10:04] so some distortion a bit of low pass may be interesting for some um yeah when to recreate
[00:10:14] something like rc20 right you want to make things sound old or maybe tape emulations you can use
[00:10:20] this kind of filter for that if you want to okay so this is uh using here the face
[00:10:27] and the magnitude for recreating the things we can also do something weird um we can say we want to
[00:10:37] use that and we or let's say um let's say here uh with the face shift i showed you earlier you can do a
[00:10:48] face shift right so maybe let's start with this uh we can do here uh multiple face shifts so this means
[00:10:57] when we combine this with the real signal or with the input signal that's let's blend it together here
[00:11:06] let's use the input and then this one we blend it together you get some kind of notch filter
[00:11:11] right we have here some frequency dips right and we can change the strength of this here with
[00:11:18] the blend of course we can also use the imaginary signal here to shift these dips to different position
[00:11:26] and we can also use a blend
[00:11:28] blend between the real imaginary and then go into that we have something like this
[00:11:36] then we can slightly move these dips around just 90 degrees right with this it sounds like this
[00:11:58] so you can create some kind of weird filter if you want to um that's that
[00:12:10] then we can do something weirder we can use um this part here we can also create another bot let's say
[00:12:23] assign oscillator here here and we can read it here a pitch
[00:12:29] this one
[00:12:33] something like this and we can say um
[00:12:39] let's say constant and define your frequency let's say 500 hertz
[00:12:48] um disable this and then we get here a sign oscillator output then we do the same thing
[00:12:54] to the sign oscillator we do to uh the audio input here right and then we use multiply
[00:13:01] or let's say two multiplies and then we multiply here the real signal with the real output of the sign
[00:13:09] and the imaginary the imaginary of the sign so the audio input and the sign and we just cross modulate
[00:13:18] them kind of and then you subtract here the this one from this one and what we get now
[00:13:27] is something weird here you can see it's uh filtering pretty hard but it's not a filter you can
[00:13:34] you can hear this here in a moment so let's use the audio input
[00:13:38] it sounds like frequency shifted right we use here an attenuate
[00:14:01] let's disable this we don't need to analyze this anymore so we can create here our own frequency
[00:14:09] shifter using a sign oscillator and by just cross modulating or audio modulating here um these two
[00:14:17] dome filters we get the frequency shifter and we can change here the frequency shift by say one k
[00:14:26] you can also modulate in the on different direction i think you need to exchange this here for an ad
[00:14:42] and then you can do some weird things of course with the sine wave right you can face modulated here you
[00:14:56] can change the settings of the sine oscillator
[00:14:59] so you can do some weird things you could you can do with other frequency shifters also here the
[00:15:12] frequency shifter um or the native one has also a phase input and with this you kind of
[00:15:22] phase modulate the internal sign oscillator so this works also here with the internal sign oscillator
[00:15:27] you can see this here phase modulation of the shifting oscillator so that's basically this one here um
[00:15:35] attenuate range so you can phase modulate the internal sign oscillator here with this
[00:15:42] frequency shift plus module inside of the grid and by the way i heard that the frequency shifter plus is
[00:15:49] also coming to the chain here it wasn't just it it wasn't ready for the beta one so it's coming probably
[00:15:56] in the next beta releases also to the chain so this is a frequency shifter which is pretty nice but i
[00:16:04] didn't want to stop there right i want to do something more and i figured out a way to actually make something
[00:16:13] make something happen that wasn't uh possible before so instead of um let me see cut this here cut this off
[00:16:23] so uh we still modulate or do the same thing here but then we filter this this whole thing here
[00:16:31] let's say with the cell and key filter which is a pretty clean filter here all the way down to
[00:16:37] 90 hertz 20 hertz we need to go lower actually we need to filter actually at around five or six hertz
[00:16:44] but it's not possible in Bitwig studio also use the q limit here of zero pull this down also filter this
[00:16:52] here okay so then we have here now um these cross modulator the signals and we have cut everything off
[00:16:59] um except the lowest frequencies um and then we take this and also multiply this by itself
[00:17:09] so um right pretty stupid just modulate the signal with itself also here like this and then we add this
[00:17:21] together so we summarize this and we do here just an add pretty simple you can also use a mix or blend or
[00:17:30] whatever you want to use right and then we take the root of this of course we um yeah quadrupled it here
[00:17:39] i don't know how it's called or take it by two or um times two or multiply the signal by itself so we can
[00:17:46] just take here the root of this and with this we kind of get an loudness a magnitude and the magnitude of the
[00:17:56] difference between the input signal and the sine oscillator so this is kind of interesting because
[00:18:02] we can take now uh the sine oscillator output here and change the volume of this sine oscillator so we
[00:18:11] take the sine oscillator right the output of the sine oscillator and we change the volume of the sine oscillator
[00:18:18] with this magnitude we just calculated something like this so now you your question is
[00:18:25] why use the sine oscillator right what what's the what's the reason so what we do here is
[00:18:30] we figure out the magnitude of a single frequency inside of the frequency spectrum and we do this by
[00:18:37] cross modulating here um the audio input with a sine oscillator and then we remove the side bands the
[00:18:46] let's say the the bad outcome or the bad side effect of um the frequency modulation and we
[00:18:55] remove the frequency we remove the side bands and just single out um the difference between
[00:18:59] this signal and the sine oscillator and then we use this as a magnitude or as a gain modulation
[00:19:07] so we change the loudness of the sine oscillator here at this at the specific frequency
[00:19:12] so let's use here a tool um or not the tool device let's use a test tone
[00:19:20] um this one here mix and let's go to one it hurts gain and so on um so let's pull down the mix here you can
[00:19:30] hear the test tone
[00:19:31] right pretty normal we also use an eq plus just just to see what's going on
[00:19:46] right and then we put on here our new fx grid and we'd say we want to only extract frequencies at around
[00:19:53] 500 hertz okay so we want to filter only this out so now we bring in here the test tone you can see
[00:20:00] nothing really happens something happens here but then we change the frequency
[00:20:11] or we need to actually put in here the attenuate so you can see at 500 hertz
[00:20:16] exactly this frequency
[00:20:20] we get here something out and all the other frequencies are muted so what this means is we
[00:20:29] have actually an fft filter here created just with this setup and we filter everything out that's not
[00:20:36] this frequency so we can say we have let's say here um 100 100 hertz and then we pull here this up nothing
[00:20:48] happens then we go here to 100 and we have a signal right so now we can analyze the signal for specific
[00:20:58] frequencies that are very very very narrow exactly just one single sine frequency so this makes this
[00:21:06] actually a single bin frequency um um re-creator or re-synthesizer or whatever so we can take in here
[00:21:17] the audio signal and we filter everything out but only this frequency here comes out well let's say 500 hertz
[00:21:27] 1k okay so now the next question is of course um yeah that's just one single frequency can we actually
[00:21:39] do more right and yes you can do more because we have a bitwig and we just can't duplicate everything
[00:21:45] and extract more frequencies at the same time so uh my idea is instead of using here constant with the
[00:21:52] frequency i mean you can do this but we can also just use let's say notes so let's use here pitch
[00:21:59] right and we can use notes to filter for certain notes inside of the frequency spectrum
[00:22:10] and let's say we use here a voice stacking right we use here stack modulator this one
[00:22:22] and actually so we use your voice stacking we go to 16 voices and then each voice gets a different pitch
[00:22:31] so let's say here uh we go up to um what's 36 or something like this i don't know
[00:22:49] so it's a bit quiet so maybe amp up here the gain we lose a bit of gain here in the process uh let's use
[00:22:56] this and 16 db or maybe 12 db
[00:23:18] all right all right so we start at e1 and then we have here for each stack we have a different pitch
[00:23:25] that we want to analyze we have 16 bins and of course if you want to really do fft re-synthesis you
[00:23:33] need at least 4 000 or something like this 4 000 of these patches we have only 16. so you can go in and
[00:23:41] just duplicate this here i don't know 20 times and on each patch you change the offset frequency which is
[00:23:49] also possible we can do this here for a moment let's go here to 16 and that's that's too narrow maybe for
[00:23:58] one so let's go right so you put this here into an fx grid in the second one here you take a different
[00:24:11] offset um i don't know let's go up here
[00:24:15] um six okay like this one
[00:24:24] right so this fx grid covers here all the first bins and then the second one covers all the bins
[00:24:33] above that and so on you can duplicate this here multiple times and change the offset and so on
[00:24:39] they can slowly try to recreate or to re-synthesize the whole signal by adding these bins but you can
[00:24:52] see it kind of works inside grid it's not very not super clean but it kind of works and it's probably more
[00:25:01] interesting for some creative effects would be nice if you could if you could go lower here with the
[00:25:06] low pass filter actually to make this signal a bit more clean you can also exchange this here for just a
[00:25:14] normal uh low pass ld or maybe here this one but all these low pass the lowest frequency is 20 hertz so it doesn't go lower
[00:25:26] um so that's that you can also just remove this here for a bit
[00:25:34] and um yeah we just have here multiple frequencies now like in the beginning
[00:25:40] and then we can say we want to um
[00:25:45] instead of analyzing we can analyze here this just by a quantizer but with the quantizer
[00:25:56] uh for this sign oscillator here the problem here is that we now analyze for these pitches
[00:26:05] what we want to take actually if you want to make a pitch correction you want to analyze for the initial
[00:26:12] frequencies and then put them on a different place right that's what you want to do
[00:26:17] um so we can create here a second one so this one is only for analyzing and this one is for uh playing
[00:26:27] in a different place or playing the sine partials in a different place but using the magnitudes of the
[00:26:33] original signals and apply them to this sine oscillator i think this should be more like a pitch correction
[00:26:39] here um so let's use your d sharp minor
[00:26:43] it gets more interesting when you pitch this up
[00:26:53] maybe not this interesting
[00:27:01] anyway so yeah the dome filter is actually a nice addition to the grid you can do stuff you
[00:27:14] couldn't do before we can create some frequency shifters also some very weird ones and maybe pitch
[00:27:21] shifting and we can use it for some type of fft re-synthesis stuff and like i said you couldn't do this
[00:27:28] before now it's possible um so a nice addition in bitwig studio 5.3 let me know what you think in the
[00:27:35] comments down below leave a like leave a subscription and see you in the next video bye