MusicRadar

Twin 2's interface only displays what you're using.

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• Review

The original FabFilter virtual analogue, One, had a great sound, but due to its single oscillator and general lack of sound-sculpting muscle, it had a hard time stacking up against the competition.

FabFilter Twin was a much more fleshed-out affair, with two oscillators, two filters with a variety of modes, and a clever modulation routing system that increased the creative possibilities immeasurably.

Twin 2 isn't the revolution that the original Twin was, but it offers an array of attractive new features.

Overview

Upon launching the synth for the first time, Twin veterans will immediately notice the rather impressive new interface. This employs the same scalable system as FabFilter's Volcano 2 dual filter, with such niceties as a 'what-you-use-is-what-you-see' GUI that hides anything not in the signal chain, and a scrolling modulation section where sources can be created as necessary.

While this 'dynamic' interface can seem a little baffling at first, once you've grasped the basics, it's no more or less complicated than that of any similar synth. Plus it means that, although Twin 2's interface is about the same size as the original version's, it's impressively up to the job of cramming in many more features.

Architecture

Twin 2 stays true to the series' subtractive synthesis roots, so for the oscillators you have a choice of triangle, sawtooth, sine and square shapes, plus pink and white noise.

The square wave's pulse width can be adjusted with a dedicated control, and the oscillators have a Sync knob for creating hard-sync effects. Both of these controls can be modulated, and you can also set each generator to retrigger with every new note.

There's an extra oscillator, too, and the first two oscillators can now be used in ring modulation mode. These remain otherwise on the straightforward side, so the increased tonal possibilities afforded by the ring modulation are much appreciated.

The filter section comes directly after the generators in the signal chain. As with the original Twin, two self-resonating multimode filters are available, and can be configured in serial, parallel or per-oscillator mode. In the latter, the first two oscillators are routed to the respective filters, with the third routed to both.

There are 11 filter types available, which are instantly recognisable as those found in Volcano 2, and they live up to the FabFilter name, packing considerable sonic punch. Each type can be set to 12, 24 or 48dB roll-off and has its own Characteristic parameter. This last becomes particularly apparent when the resonance is turned up and the cutoff modulated, causing the filters to rumble and roar like a stressed-out grizzly bear.

In fact, the filters give Twin 2 the majority of its character. They have a round, rough, unpredictable quality that makes the synth feel more 'analogue' than your average soft synth. Oddly, it's not possible to adjust the volume level of each filter, but they can at least be panned.