How To Make The Ultimate Band Pass Filter Delay In Ableton

Here’s  a great tip on how to make the ultimate band pass filter delay in Ableton. It can be used various situations for example during DJ sets or before breaks during your progressions.

Before we start let’s check the devices which will process the audio signal(s).

We will need an EQ a Ping-Pong Delay, an Auto-pan, a compressor, and last but not least a limiter at the end of the signal chain.The cool thing about this effect that you can use it on any kind of channels if you like including the master channel.

If you are a DJ you will probably use on the master channel as cool filter effect. But if you are producer you can use on master channel also. Creating a nice atmospheric filter delay before break starts. So let’s get started!

Step 1: Creating the Rack and the EQ

First create an audio effect rack on any kind of channel. You can do it easily by clicking on the live device browser tab and drag and drop audio Effect Rack.After you do that open it and drop an EQ 8 into the effect rack.

In this effect rack we will create several effects and map these to macro controls.Right Click on the “2 frequency A” and select “Map to Macro 1″, then do the same for “2 resonance A, 4 resonance, A 4 frequency A”, map all these parameters to Macro 1 and rename it to “Filter”.

I also gave it a nice red colour.I’m using the 4 frequency as a low pass filter but in order to do that I have to invert the range of the frequency knob. You can easily invert the range of any parameters. Just right click on a parameter in the macro mapping and click on the appearing invert range label. Notice that as we map the parameters to macros, the parameter becomes disabled and a green dot appears next to it.

How To Make The Ultimate Band Pass Filter Delay In Ableton

How To Make The Ultimate Band Pass Filter Delay In Ableton
The EQ will work as resonance band pass filter and purpose of this to filter out the low and high frequencies at the same time. Use the mapping values as a starting point but of course you can try different values as always .

Step 2: The Ping Pong Delay

Next drag and drop a ping delay set the beat division to four, the center frequency around 3.38 kHz and the bandwidth to 6.94. The feedback amount is really important in our case because it will gives nice and long delay to the device. So set this to 59%. Map the “dry/wet” control to Macro 1 on same as we did it on the EQ 8.

How To Make The Ultimate Band Pass Filter Delay In Ableton

Step 3: The Auto Pan and the Compressor and Limiter

After the ping-pong effect drop an Auto Pan effect. It will gives nice progressively widen stereo effect the whole effect rack. Map the “device on/off, the amount and the frequency” to Macro 1 too.

As you can see the amount will increase as you turn the filter knob on the macro parameter but the frequency has an inverted range so the speed of the pan effect will decrease.After that create a compressor.

Why is it important? The answer is that the compressor will strengthen the EQ filter effect and the ping pong delay effect as you turn the filter knob more and more. I set the threshold to -22 dB, which is far enough to turn the audio signal dynamics into a great result. Map the “ratio control” to macro 1 too.

I setup a limiter at the end of the signal just to be sure not to overkill the audio signal and of course nobody wants to cross the zero dB line. Use the mapping values as starting point and try out different values.

How To Make The Ultimate Band Pass Filter Delay In Ableton

How To Make The Ultimate Band Pass Filter Delay In Ableton

Finally your rack is at your disposal. Just save it (click on the save button on the rack and give a memorable name) for later use. Now you can use this tool as a creative filter delay device. My final tip is to turn off the device when you are not using it because if you are using on the master channel it can create some unwanted side effects.