Every once in a while, a new piece of gear or plugin comes along that makes you go "huh, that's cool!", and Exp DSP's new Filtertable plugin is definitely among them!

The basic gist of Filtertable is that it generates filters by turning visual images into wavetables, which are then turned into complex filter shapes that can be additionally tweaked, tuned and manipulated in a variety of ways. While the idea of using visual data for audio processing is itself not new, Filtertable applies this concept to the realm of filters in a very polished and immediately useful way, allowing for the generation of highly complex and experimental filter shapes in a manner of seconds that would be very difficult to create by other means.

Below are some examples using paintings — personally, we've always wanted a Francis Bacon or Kadinsky "filter"!

The only downside is that as of now, the plugin has no native modulation capabilities (but can be automated/modulated from your DAW) and unfortunately is Windows only, at least for time being. Hopefully the dev is working on a Mac build for the future!

You can check out Filtertable over at the Exp DSP website. The plugin is $50 and a demo is available (VST3 and CLAP formats).