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How to use an indispensable DAW tool to focus tracks, find space in a mix, create vintage-style sounds, and more.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Recording Dojo installment. You may recall that back in November 2020 I introduced you to the mighty HPF (high-pass filter) and how to employ its power. This time, I'm going to focus on the other side of the spectrum: the LPF (low-pass filter). A DAW's LPF does exactly what its name implies: It allows low-frequency information to pass and attenuates the high frequencies. Strategic use of an LPF can really help clean up your recordings and mixes by allowing you to control where and how much high-frequency information you want—especially on groups of tracks where there might be a lot of high-frequency overlap.

Like its cousin the HPF, the LPF also has many of the same parameters and controls—most importantly, the slope of the filter. The slope of the filter is represented by dBs per octave, and the higher the value, the steeper the slope. Typically ranges include -12 dB to -48 dB per octave, but sometimes higher values can be really effective, as we will see.

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