Free Plugin Temperance Light but in Bitwig Studio
Tutorial | Oct 03, 2025
Temperance Light is a plugin marketed as a revolutionary musical reverb, but it essentially combines a reverb with a filter, offering a polished look but limited flexibility. In Bitwig Studio, you can easily recreate and expand on its features using onboard devices, allowing for much more customization, like choosing your own reverb, filter types, and even adding delays. By building this effect yourself, you gain deeper creative control and a better understanding of sound design, rather than being restricted to a single, fixed plugin.
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Short Overview #
Today I wanted to talk about the Temperance Light plugin, which is marketed as a new kind of reverb but is essentially just a reverb with an added filter. While the plugin looks nice and sounds good, I found it's easy to recreate its effect inside Bitwig Studio using onboard devices, giving you much more control and flexibility. By building your own version, you can choose your own reverb and filter types, stack notes as you want, and even add delays for more creative possibilities. Using Bitwig’s modular environment not only helps you learn more but also opens up new ideas for your music.
- Overview of the Temperance Light plugin, marketed as a "musical reverb" with a filter component
- Critique of plugins that combine basic effects inside a non-modular box, limiting user control
- Demonstration of how to replicate the Temperance Light effect in Bitwig Studio using onboard and VST effects
- Step-by-step guide to creating a reverb with a post-filter on only the wet signal, offering more flexibility
- Explanation of using Bitwig’s chain device, EQ+, and Filter+ for customizable filtering
- Use of voice stacking and modulation to create multiple filter bands matching musical notes
- Highlighting that Bitwig allows easy reverb and filter swapping, giving more creative options than fixed plugins
- Extension of the concept with delay effects inside Bitwig’s FX Grid for further creative potential
- Encouragement to replicate plugin effects in Bitwig for learning and broader creative possibilities
- Acknowledgement that the original plugin is fine but modular workflows offer more control and inspiration
Introduction to Temperance Light #
Today I want to talk about a plug-in called Temperance Light that I came across on the Bitwig Discord. At first glance, it seemed to me like it was simply a reverb with a filter at the end of the signal chain. Looking more closely, that’s pretty much what it is. There is a lot of marketing around it, describing it as the world’s first musical reverb with a completely new approach, but in practical terms, it’s a reverb followed by a filter with a nice graphical interface and some smooth animations.
What Temperance Light Really Is #
Temperance Light sells itself on fresh ideas and a modern user experience, but ultimately, the core of the plug-in is straightforward. It combines a reverb effect with a filter. This isn’t a criticism, as it still sounds good and offers a usable effect, but fundamentally, it’s not bringing something radically new to basic reverb and filter processing.
Another important point is that Temperance Light is a fixed box , you get a reverb and a filter, and you cannot swap out the components, nor can you rearrange the routing or customize the underlying processing. You are mostly getting a nice interface and animation, not deeper customizability.
Building the Effect Yourself in Bitwig #
Sometimes it is good to peek behind the curtain of these effects and try to replicate them using the built-in devices in Bitwig Studio. This not only gives you more flexibility but helps you understand how these effects work at a deeper level.
Layering Reverb and Filter #
To replicate Temperance Light, I start by creating a chain device in Bitwig Studio.
- I add a reverb plug-in (using Bitwig’s or any VST) and set the mix to 100 percent wet. This is so we can process only the reverb tail with further effects without affecting the dry signal.
- I add an EQ or filter after the reverb within the chain device. This is key because the filter shapes only the reverberated sound, just like in Temperance Light.
With the mix control in the chain, it is easy to balance dry and wet signals. The benefit here is that you can swap different reverb or filter devices as you see fit, which is not possible in Temperance Light.
Note-Based Filtering #
In Temperance Light, you can select musical notes for the filter bank, so I wanted to reproduce this.
- I use a bandpass filter and set the cutoff frequency according to a musical note, like D#3, to filter only the harmonics at that note.
- Bitwig allows me to voice-stack the filter effect, meaning I can have several versions of the bandpass filter in parallel, each tuned to a different note or frequency.
- Using Bitwig’s modulators, I can set each filter voice at octave intervals using semitone steps, which lets me cover a range of musically-related frequencies for richer sound.
Further Customization #
What’s particularly powerful in Bitwig is that I can easily switch filter types or adjust the steepness. For example, I can change from BP2 to BP8 filters and notice the different results immediately, which is not possible in fixed plug-ins like Temperance Light.
If I want even more control, I can convert my filter setup to the FX Grid device in Bitwig, giving me a highly modular environment to experiment with more processing, like adding synchronized delays or further modulation.
Taking It Further: Delay-Based Processing #
To go beyond what Temperance Light offers, I demonstrate adding delays in the FX Grid. I:
- Use a long delay to further expand the reverb tail across time, synchronized to note values.
- Voice-stack the sound not only in pitch but also in timing, so each filter voice is delayed by a different note value for more complex and interesting textures.
- Add layers for dominant notes or other harmonic steps and experiment with additional parameters like feedback and delay timing.
This modular approach opens up creative directions and flexibility a fixed plug-in cannot match.
Why This Matters #
My motivation in showing this process is not to dismiss Temperance Light. It is a fine plug-in that works and sounds nice, but it is limited to predefined settings and structure. Building your own chains like this in Bitwig or similar DAWs is free, educational, and gives you insights into audio processing while sparking new creative ideas.
You can easily go beyond just reverb plus filter , you can change the processes, extend the effect, and customize every part to fit your music. This flexibility is a big reason to try building and experimenting inside a modular environment like Bitwig Studio.
Conclusion #
In summary, Temperance Light is an attractive and easy-to-use plug-in that sounds nice, but its actual processing is not groundbreaking. If you use Bitwig, Ableton Live, FL Studio, Reason, or Cubase, you can create the same effect , and much more , by combining native devices. This gives you more options, teaches you how the effect works, and often leads to discovering new sounds along the way. I encourage you to try replicating commercial plug-ins yourself, not just to save money but to enhance your understanding and creativity in music production.
Let me know what you think, and feel free to check out the plug-in or try building your own version inside your DAW.
Full Video Transcription #
This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by Whisper, 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.
Click to expand Transcription
[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back on this Friday.
[00:00:02] So I want to talk about this plug-in called Temperance Light and I saw someone use this
[00:00:07] on the Bitwig Discord and to me it looked like it's just a reverb with the filter at
[00:00:12] the end.
[00:00:14] And it looks like it's exactly that.
[00:00:16] And here it talks about the world's first musical reverb, you know, all this marketing
[00:00:20] speak, a new era of reverb, Temperance Light represents the next step for reverb technology
[00:00:27] offering a new approach to shape ambience, you know, all that stuff.
[00:00:32] And it's okay.
[00:00:33] It looks nice, nice animations here, nice GUI, but it's actually just the reverb with
[00:00:38] the filter.
[00:00:39] And that's what I talked about in the last video about VST plug-ins.
[00:00:43] It's just a box and in this box you get a predefined reverb and a predefined filter and you can't
[00:00:51] take it apart.
[00:00:52] You can't exchange the reverb, you can't exchange the filter and you just basically download
[00:00:57] nice looking animation or GUI.
[00:01:02] And nothing bad about this.
[00:01:04] I don't want to trash this in any way.
[00:01:07] It looks nice and it probably works really well and it's okay to use it.
[00:01:13] But sometimes it's nice to just take a look behind the curtain and maybe try to replicate
[00:01:20] this to have some more options.
[00:01:23] And I want to say, it sounds nice.
[00:01:26] I listened here to the sound examples, I haven't downloaded this yet, but it sounds nice.
[00:01:33] But I want to show you how to do this in Bitwig with just on-board devices and you probably
[00:01:39] also can do this pretty easily enabled live and through FL Studio and Reason Cubase and
[00:01:45] so on.
[00:01:46] No big deal, probably.
[00:01:48] So we have here some kind of solid and I play this on the piano.
[00:01:54] Sometimes people ask me on YouTube here, "Where do the notes come from?"
[00:01:58] It's my piano, my MIDI keyboard.
[00:02:03] So here I want to use a reverb and I use a VST plugin because I want to show you that
[00:02:09] it's also possible with just VST plugins.
[00:02:13] You don't need to use internal devices of Bitwig Studio.
[00:02:17] Just a very basic reverb and I use the mix knob here on 100% because we want to put the
[00:02:28] filter on the reverb tail and I can't put the filter inside of the VST plugin because
[00:02:37] I want to mix the dry and the wet and I only want to have the filter on the wet signal.
[00:02:42] Also I put this here on 100% so we have only wet coming out of the VST plugin and I use
[00:02:48] a chain device here in Bitwig Studio and put the reverb into the chain device.
[00:02:53] So now we have here again another mix knob and you can now mix between the dry signal
[00:02:59] and the 100% wet signal here and then we can put the filter here on the wet signal.
[00:03:12] And I maybe use an EQ+ to see what's going on in the frequency spectrum here.
[00:03:24] Okay, nice.
[00:03:28] So let's say I want to filter this, maybe I put the EQ all the way up inside of the
[00:03:36] filter.
[00:03:45] So we want to use the filter after the reverb and I put this here on a note and I can type
[00:03:51] in the note directly so I'm playing in the sharp minor.
[00:03:55] So I can use here D#1 for instance which is 77Hz, 77.8Hz and you can see here in the
[00:04:05] plugin itself we have at the bottom here some kind of slider where we can define the range
[00:04:12] of the filter bank more or less.
[00:04:15] So we probably don't want to have here in the low end some kind of filter because that's
[00:04:20] where the bass is and we just play here some kind of lead sound so I probably want to start
[00:04:24] at D#2, 156 which is still very low but okay.
[00:04:31] And you want to use your bandpass filter, you can see this is the frequency here.
[00:04:42] And maybe we want to switch to a different filter.
[00:04:44] Let's use here a cell and key filter, BP2, BP6, BP8 and that's a benefit here in Bitwig,
[00:04:52] we can choose what kind of filter, how steep the filter is, we can't change this in the
[00:04:57] plugin, but here you can.
[00:05:06] Maybe start here at D#3, maybe here.
[00:05:13] And this is just one note which is D#3 but we want to have multiple notes across the
[00:05:19] spectrum right so we can utilize here the voice stacking on this device, on the filter
[00:05:23] plus device and we can use for instance six additional voices and we use a stacking modulator
[00:05:32] here and we switch this to value and we modulate the frequency knob here by exactly 12 semitones
[00:05:41] which means on each voice we increase this by 12 semitones we go up in octave steps.
[00:05:49] So now it sounds like this.
[00:05:57] These are the frequencies here of the filter.
[00:06:03] So with this we already have basically half of the plugin already solved.
[00:06:08] Maybe we can use here a macro at the beginning and call this tempo, is it called tempo?
[00:06:16] Yeah, it's tempo.
[00:06:18] And then we modulate maybe at the mix of the filter and maybe the resonance.
[00:06:23] So we increase the resonance here, let's see how this sounds.
[00:06:35] Cool.
[00:06:39] So this is just one note and in this plugin we have multiple notes, so FGE, C and so on.
[00:06:47] So this is something we want to put then probably into a layer so we can use here control and
[00:06:52] G and say this is our D# note and then we just duplicate this here with control and D and
[00:06:59] this is maybe the dominant so we just A#.
[00:07:04] So here we switch this to A#3 and we have another note and all the modulation should
[00:07:10] be in place.
[00:07:21] Maybe I should use your different instrument.
[00:07:24] Let's use here Piano Tech 8 which sounds much better.
[00:07:53] And now we basically redefined the reverb era of 2025 and I don't know what the marketing
[00:08:03] speak was.
[00:08:05] So yeah, we have two notes and we can replicate this for all the notes you want to use but
[00:08:09] you probably only want to use the root note and the fifth and fourth and so on.
[00:08:15] I don't know if you want to use here the third F# maybe.
[00:08:39] Yeah and with this like I said we have so many more options.
[00:08:44] We can exchange the reverb here for something else for another reverb VST plugin or we do
[00:08:51] something inside of the grid or I don't know just a basic bitwig device and then we have
[00:09:00] here the filter bank which targets exactly the notes we want to use and we have on all
[00:09:06] of these here bandpass filters and we can change how many notes we want to have which
[00:09:11] is the range.
[00:09:14] Basically exactly what the slider does here down here and we can exchange of course the
[00:09:18] filter type so we can use bandpass 4, bandpass 2, bandpass 6, 8 and can change how it sounds
[00:09:25] or how it behaves.
[00:09:27] So many more options.
[00:09:29] We can exchange everything because it's modular.
[00:09:32] Another thing we can do is we can remove here this for a moment and this filter plus
[00:09:38] device here has an option when we right click on it we can say convert this to FX grid.
[00:09:45] So it's basically the same device but now it's in grid in Bitwig Studio.
[00:09:50] We can influence everything that's in here and we don't want to do much in here but what
[00:09:56] we want to do is we want to add a reverb or not a reverb we want to add a delay.
[00:10:01] So let's say a long delay here and this long delay goes to I don't know what's this eight
[00:10:07] notes.
[00:10:08] This is eight notes here, one eight note and you can remember maybe or you will remember
[00:10:13] that we used your voice decking so six voices we can use here also the voice deck modulator
[00:10:19] and can increase here the delay time by exactly one which means we not only go up in frequency
[00:10:27] per octave so also in delay time so it's like one octave up also one sixty note later one
[00:10:38] eight note later so we have delay in there each step gets delayed.
[00:10:43] Let's try this one out.
[00:11:00] So this is just the root notes we do this here also with the dominant A sharp here we
[00:11:07] have the same delay times and that's okay but what we want to do is maybe in front of
[00:11:12] that we use another delay one which is a very basic delay here and mixes all the way up
[00:11:18] filters down here are completely open and we delay maybe everything by two sixty notes
[00:11:25] so it's the same as D sharp but here the same also in A sharp but everything is delayed
[00:11:31] or offset by two semi tones without feedback probably have to change the filter to A sharp
[00:11:49] three right so you can do more things
[00:12:08] and again here maybe another one let's call this I use a F sharp delay this another by
[00:12:17] another two sixty notes and here we go to F sharp four maybe.
[00:12:35] And then we can use what's the slow and wet gain.
[00:12:59] Yeah so with this you have more options you can do or you can go in different directions
[00:13:22] it's just with some ideas and here you are basically limited to having a filter and reverb
[00:13:32] you can't exchange the filters you can't exchange the reverb and you can put delays on it so
[00:13:37] it's it's actually a bit boring if you use Bitwig studio and just this device it's yeah
[00:13:45] you miss out basically you miss out a lot of creative possibilities so I don't want
[00:13:50] to say this plugin is bad or anything like this it's completely fine to use this and
[00:13:55] to download this and have fun with it but you can learn so much more if you just try
[00:13:59] to reimplement this in Bitwig studio and go in different directions here just with a
[00:14:03] few ideas and it doesn't cost you anything you learn something and you get new ideas
[00:14:08] and it sounds great that's all I want to say okay so yeah that's it I think for this video
[00:14:15] let me know what you think and I'll put the link to the plugin in the description below
[00:14:21] if you want to download this and try it out or you can just try it out inside of Bitwig
[00:14:26] studio of course it's fun okay see you next time bye
[00:14:29] [BLANK_AUDIO]