The Altar II from Ritual Electronics is an analogue 18dB state variable filter with a strong colouring sound character. The circuit contains a modern design which consists of discrete transistors. This provides a distinctive vintage sound. Unlike most other SV filters, Altar II has an unusual crossfade behaviour for the filter characteristics, going smoothly from Bandpass to Lowpass to highpass. The input stage accounts for a good part of the sound character, this ranges from very clean and vocal to a distorted acid-like sound. Thanks to two audio inputs (input 1 with variable gain, input 2 with fixed gain), no additional mixer is needed, depending on Patch, and individual handling of louder and quieter signals is no problem. Four control voltage inputs bring life to the beautiful basic sound, with two inputs for Cutoff, one for resonance and one for blending the filter characteristics.