TBProAudio has announced the release of sTilt, a freeware linear phase tilt filter effect in VST/AU/RTAS plugin formats for Windows and Mac OS based host applications.
The plugin is designed for tilting the audio spectrum of the processed audio signal around a user-specified center frequency. Turning the tilt knob to the right will boost the signal above the center frequency, while attenuating everything below it (and vice versa). As opposed to standard parametric and graphic equalizers, tilt filter effects such as sTilt are suitable for applying extremely broad tonal adjustments to the audio signal on the input. Even more importantly, the resulting frequency boost/cut often sounds quite natural to the human ear, more so than what you’d normally get with a pair or shelving or peaking filters.
sTilt is a linear phase filter, meaning that it will perfectly preserve the phase of the processed audio signal. On the other hand, this feature introduces quite a bit of latency, so keep that in mind when using the plugin in a multi-track session (it won’t make too much difference in a mastering scenario, though). The reported latency depends on the Quality parameter setting. At minimum processing quality, the plugin reports 17.4 ms of latency, going all the way to a whooping 1114.5 ms latency at the maximum setting.
During our test, sTilt performed quite well. There were no stability issues, apart from periodic CPU spikes when the plugin is set to maximum quality (although such an extreme setting makes sense only when rendering the final export to WAV, anyway). The user interface is well designed and large enough to be compatible with modern high resolution screens. The tilt filter itself does the job pretty well and the built-in clip protection is handy for preventing any unwanted clipping on the master channel. The center frequency parameter offers a range between 10 Hz and 22 kHz, which is more than enough for most (if not all) tilt filtering needs in audio mixing and mastering.
The plugin is distributed as an installer which provides a choice between different plugin formats and individual installation folders for each format. It’s a bit of a drag to adjust all of these settings if you don’t use the default C:/Program Files/VST Plugins directory on your hard drive, which is why we’d definitely prefer to see a simple ZIP archive for manual installation, along with the EXE installer. Either way, sTilt is definitely a plugin worth checking out if you’re looking to add a quality tilt filter effect to your arsenal of mixing and mastering tools. Another interesting plugin in this category is BTQ2 by J1000.
Download
sTilt is available for free download via TBProAudio (4.99 MB download size, ZIP archive containing EXE installer, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/AU/RTAS plugin format for Windows & Mac OS).
