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Engineering Brief

Modeling the Korg35 Lowpass and Highpass Filters

Authors: Pirkle, Will

AES Convention 135 · Paper 103 · October 2013

Abstract

The Korg35 Filter is a voltage controlled Sallen-Key topology capable of producing both lowpass (LPF) and highpass (HPF) filter responses. It is known for its ability to self-oscillate as well as its saturated or distorted output as the damping factor of the filter approaches zero where self-oscillation occurs. Both LPF and HPF are second order but the highpass version features a 6 dB/octave roll off instead of the usual 12 dB/octave giving it a distinctive sound with more bass response. The analog Sallen-Key topology uses a delay-less positive feedback loop to implement the Q control of the filter. The saturation circuit is also inside this loop. Rather than use a typical biquad or state variable filter, we choose to use Virtual Analog (VA) filters [1] as building blocks to replicate the analog filter topology directly from its signal flow graph, including the delay-less loop as well as the saturation circuit. Both loaded and unloaded (lossy) versions of the Sallen-Key topology were designed and implemented in C++ with the point of self-oscillation exactly matching both analog transfer functions. Sample code and extra documentation are available at www.willpirkle.com.

Details

Published in
AES Convention 135
AES Convention
135
Paper number
103
Publication date
October 6, 2013
Session subject
Audio Processing
Affiliation
University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA (See document for exact affiliation information.)
Type
Engineering Brief