FabFilter

Hi Fabfilter,

long time user of all good things FabFilter. Only issue I've ever had is that Q3 sometimes let's no sound through. Happens once a month. No biggie, just load another instance.

Today, however, I experienced something that I never thought I would, when recording with headphones on a channel with tons of headroom, C2 and Q3 active on the channel. It suddenly played the loudest, most insane, gut wrenching, eardrum popping, distorted, horror sound I've ever heard. My brand new Genelec 8351B's might just be damaged, and what's worse, so might my ears be.

Now I read something about people having experienced issues like this in the past, and that this might even be a feature!! and not a bug. Something to do with piracy protection.

Please tell me that is not true!

It goes without saying that I don't use pirated software.

I use Cubase 12 on Win 10. No automation/ control information were going into the plug-ins when this happened.

Regards from Iceland,

Helgi Jonsson

Could it possibly be a feedback problem rather than FabFilter noise? It may happen when recording. Modern Genelec have a circuit protection system that stop the sound to actually damage the internal components though. It is also useful to have a limiter (which is not actually limiting) on the master bus, so when whatever feedbacks or noises happen, the sound would be limited.

Sounds really odd. What's your setup? Given either analog control control after D/A, or GLM volume control, it shouldn't be possible to get a sound louder than 0dBfs, reduced by the volume control to the given volume setting.

Are you running DA output at max to your monitors, reducing volume in software/pre D/A? If so, DON'T!!!!

(Same applies if running AES/EBU to your monitors and reducing volume in software rather than with GLM in the monitors. That said, I've had the GLM volume control glitch on me and set full volume on my 8341/3760 combination, and that was NOT fun, so also set up the volume level limit in GLM...)

Hi Helgi, is it possible you have a tool installed on your computer that might alter the binary? This will trigger the piracy warning...

In that case, please first remove our plug-ins from your computer, and then re-install them from our web site www.fabfilter.com/download/ without altering the binary afterwards.

Otherwise, could it be that you have ever installed unofficial versions of our plug-ins, and that some of these are still in your plug-ins folder?

Hi Helgi,

To clarify, the piracy detection code in our plug-ins can output white noise, but at a level of -20 dB so this is completely different than what you are describing.

Best regards,

Hi Frederik,

What do you think, how high could be the level of this -20 dB white noise, after passing through several compressors and a limiter?

Best regards,

Ferenc