Review: Zynaptic Unfilter & Unveil Plug-ins

We all baulk at the idea of ‘fixing it in the mix’ but sometimes that’s exactly what needs to happen. As mix engineers, occasionally we receive tracks that aren’t quite up to scratch. Perhaps the vocals are noisy or have comb filtering, the drum overheads sound like room mics, or somebody’s applied a weird filter effect to a drum loop.

Sampling noise reduction, spectral repair and Autotune are some of the tools that allow us to deliver an acceptable final product when the odds are stacked against us. But it’s only every so often we get new, innovative and powerful tools that change what we can achieve with the material we’re given. Unfilter and Unveil, the latest offerings from plug-in developer Zynaptiq, fall right in that game-changing category. The name may sound new, but Zynaptiq’s Chief Technical Officer, Stephan Bernsee, has been developing DSP application since before he founded Prosoniq in 1990.

Unfilter is an intelligent EQ capable of correcting frequency response anomalies such as resonances, cut-off filtering, extreme EQing, and even comb filtering — all in real-time. The incoming signal is analysed and re-equalised based on the detected frequency response. Highly resonant or heavily band-passed material is effortlessly repaired with the turn of a single knob. Examples on the web were startlingly good, so naturally, I had to try it out myself. I recently mixed a heavy metal track that had been recorded in another studio. The main vocals were heavily processed with a band-pass filter (ie. a telephone effect). I felt this suited only a few parts of the song. Inserting the plug-in, I simply ‘unfiltered’ the audio. It didn’t become Frank Sinatra, but I could now achieve exactly what I wanted. Sure, you might achieve a similar result with regular EQ, but it would take a lot of time and I’m willing to bet the result would be inferior.

Tip: For non-wideband sources (vocals, individual instruments, etc) you will need to tailor the desired frequency response with the built-in EQ or Intensity Bias modes.

Unveil is designed to control reverberation and signal focus (similar to image blur removal) using a proprietary artificial intelligence-based technique. Its main purpose is removing reverb and ‘mud’ from any material, including music and dialogue — and it does that very well.

Excess room sound in source tracks is a problem all mix engineers have faced at some time and previously, there was little you could do. Transient designers and gates work with limited success and the end result is usually a compromise. Along comes Unveil and, once again, we have a game-changer. Distant-sounding drum overheads can rob a performance of its immediacy and punch, but thankfully, Unveil can dial it right back in. It’s not going to dry up the Grand Canyon of reverbs, but most of the time you just need a few dB less reverb to save your bacon. Extreme settings can result in unnatural, ‘pokey’ transients. However, just as Autotune was originally intended as a corrective tool, Unveil can be used creatively, too.

If you mix for a living and want to impress your clients, these tools will certainly give you a competitive advantage.