FABFilter Volcano 3

What Volcano 3 Is For

Volcano 3 is a creative filter plugin designed for sound design and modern music production: expressive sweep movements, transitions, rhythmic effects, harmonic coloration, and highlighting a track in the mix. It adapts equally well to synths and drums as to vocals, guitars, effect buses, or atmospheres, thanks to precise control of timbre and harmonic dynamics via internal saturation. In the studio, it becomes a central tool to transform a static source into living material, while maintaining ergonomics designed for speed.

Main Features

A New Interface Designed for Creativity

Volcano 3 introduces a fully redesigned interface, simpler and smoother for everyday use. The design of modulation sources and the floating slot panel facilitate assignment, editing, and playback of your patch. Result: you spend less time searching and more time listening, testing, and refining your movements.

Vintage-sounding Filters and EQ-Type Shapes

In addition to its creative filter DNA, Volcano 3 expands its palette with new EQ-type filter shapes delivering an "old school" sound: bell, low/high shelf, notch, and all-pass. These models include internal saturation and nonlinearities, allowing you to combine tonal correction, resonance effects, and harmonic density in one gesture, without losing the musicality of transients.

Filter Saturation and Sonic Finishing

Filter saturation provides direct control over softness, bite, and presence. You can dose coloration on each filter to achieve a thicker parallel, a more "alive" sweep, or a resonance that cuts through without becoming harsh. The overall sound quality improvement, filters, and internal saturation further enhance the analog feel and coherence of the result, even on extreme settings.

Advanced Routing, Creative Stereo, and Mix Precision

Ultra-flexible filter routing (including per-channel and mid/side modes) opens very musical possibilities: animating left and right differently, widening a pad by filtering the side, tightening the center of a bass, or creating parallel chains. To maintain control, Volcano 3 also offers Level/Pan adjustment per filter, particularly useful when layering multiple processing paths.

Unlimited Modulation with Live Visualization

Volcano 3 emphasizes infinite modulation options: 16-step XLFOs for rhythmic patterns, XY controllers for expressive play, envelope generators to sculpt attack and decay, envelope followers to "track" a source's dynamics, and MIDI sources to drive your movements in performance. Live visualization of modulations, on both sources and targets, makes your patches more readable and speeds up fine-tuning.

Everyday Comfort: Interface Sizes, A/B, History, and Presets

To fit all setups, Volcano 3 offers different interface sizes and a full-screen mode. The Undo/Redo functions and A/B switching secure your explorations. You also benefit from carefully crafted factory presets, with support for presets from previous versions, perfect for quick starts and later customization.

Interactive Display, Optional Keyboard, and MIDI Learn

The large interactive filter display facilitates working "by ear" and "by eye," with an optional keyboard display to immediately link resonance to harmonic zones. The interactive MIDI Learn simplifies controller assignment, and the comprehensive help file with interactive tips supports the learning curve, even on advanced routings and modulations.

Technical specifications

Type

Full software

Downloadable

Yes

License validity	Unlimited	Mac OS	from 10.12 onwards
Copy protection	Online activation	Minimum CPU	Apple Silicon, Intel Core
Simultaneous activation	2	New vintage-sounding EQ-type filter shapes with internal saturation and nonlinearities	bell, low/high shelf, notch, all-pass
Windows	from Vista onwards