Thereās certainly similarities. The basic resonator design (like for eg. the Serge Resonant EQ) is basically a bank of narrow bandpass filters, a comb filter is usually achieved by using delays. So the difference is more technical and the effect can be pretty similar, since both accentuate specific bands inside the spectrum. Still, in practical sue the resonator is more flexible regarding which frequencies are boosted, while for the comb filter you basically set the delay and feedback (and if the feedback is positive or negative), and derive the effect from there. A popular example of a resonator is the one included with Ableton live, which lets you define a base pitch and then set the other bands to intervals relative to that.
Well, I donāt claim to have absolute knowledge about this, itās just something I hear often, Iāll collect examples as I find them, you made me realize that I should have done that earlier on. I think itās something worth analysing a bit more in depth.
The thing is this, when you work with field recordings you have a set of tools that you can work with, some will be very āproduction orientedā, and others will let you have more āliveā control.
You can do a lot by just editing the audio, looping it and cut-and-pasting it. But thatās something you canāt really do much live. Thereās things you can do in a more performative way, and that includes two classics which are granular processing and boosting certain frequencies to create more tonal effects.
As you know noise does contain a lot of frequencies, synthetic noise usually containing all frequencies across the audible spectrum. Field recordings are often associable to noise from a spectral point of view, so they lend themselves quite a bit to be processed with resonators comb filters or karpluss-strong, since you have a lot of material there that can be boosted.
