Malfunction v3 is the third generation of Sinevibes' circuit-bent filter, first released in 2013 and rebuilt for version 3.0.0 on 29 October 2026. The idea is a filter model whose internal connections have been deliberately tampered with, so instead of cleanly removing frequencies it produces a rough, screaming distortion that turns plain sources into glitchy, unpredictable textures.
v3 upgrades that algorithm with two distinct character modes and 4x oversampling against aliasing, puts an adjustable noise gate at the input, and follows the bent filter with a smooth state-variable filter in low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, notch and peaking modes, stackable to four stages and -48 dB/octave. Two through-zero stereo LFOs with 15 waveforms, BPM and transport sync and a bipolar stereo offset animate both filters, and lag filters keep every sweep click-free. For the first time it runs on Windows and Linux as well as macOS.
It is a single-purpose effect with one sound family, and it overwhelms dense mixes quickly. For general creative filtering, FabFilter Volcano 3 and Soundtoys FilterFreak cover far more ground; Malfunction is the cheap, nasty extra you reach for when a part needs to break. It is $29 at Sinevibes and Plugin Boutique.
Our Malfunction v3 first look walks through every section, the sound demos and the comparison with Volcano 3, FilterFreak and Trash 2.