It might be best known for its mixing plugins, but FabFilter also has a decent synth in its portfolio. It goes by the name of Twin and was first introduced way back in 2005, with a second version arriving four years later.
Now, out of the blue, FabFilter Twin 3 has landed with a completely redesigned GUI and workflow, more and better oscillators and filters, a revamped modulation system, an all-new FX section and more.
The new interface has been designed to make Twin more accessible and easier to navigate than ever before. You can now add and remove individual filters and oscillators as required, and the filters can be tweaked on an interactive EQ-style display. There are also per-oscillator oscilloscopes, a spectrogram, and full visualisation of modulation signals throughout the signal path.
Twin 3’s oscillators - it now has four in comparison to its predecessor’s three - have been completely overhauled and, thanks to their new ‘drift’ feature, which introduces random pitch and phase fluctuations, are designed to sound more ‘analogue’ than ever before. The oscillators also offer pulse width modulation, hard sync and phase sync.
Polyphony has been doubled to 64 voices, with the Per Oscillator polyphony mode stepping through oscillators with each incoming note. Twin’s filter count has also been doubled - rising from two to four - and there are new vintage-style bell, shelf and notch types.
The FX section, meanwhile, now includes six processing modules - compressor, drive, reverb, delay, chorus and phaser - and every parameter is available as a modulation target. The new arpeggiator offers host sync, groove/legato and rate/offset controls.
Finally, a new preset browser replaces the menu that was in previous versions of Twin. This offers freely editable tags for filtering within the search engine, and options to ‘favourite’ presets and assign them author names and text descriptions. Anyone who has FabFilter 1 or 2 installed will see all their presets show up in version 3.
Twin 3 is available now priced at $129/£109/€109. It runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats and you can also download a 30-day demo.
Find out more on the FabFilter website. Existing customers can log in to their accounts for Twin 3 discount offers.
