User Reviews by KVR Members for SplineEQ
OS: Version: 1.0.5. Last edited by FarleyCZ on 22nd February 2012.
Once a while, when mixing and especially when sound desigining, you come to the point of: I wonder, what it wold sound like if I applied little ramp shaped EQ response with crazy steep end. Or: What if I just grab this band strictly from frequency to frequency and low it down?
...and such. Problem is, that you have no chance to do it. Classic parametric EQ offers you lots of sound shaping but responce is not so chirurgicaly precise as you'd need.
Developer of this plugin told himself in this situation: Naaah, I'll do my own EQ for that. ...and he did. And it sounds awesome.
One may say: So what? But think about it really...It's not that easy. EQ's as far as I know are bulit either by DSP (sometimes analog) filter modeling or by some FFT mangling. Nature of this idea kinda excludes any other then FFT way, so they needed to concentrate on that.
Now I don't know about you guys, but my expirience with FFT is kind of bad. These plugins always contain qualitty setting that sets length of window that plugin operates on. I often get wierd sound artifacts or "not so sharp" sound when turned down. This EQ? None of it, sounds absolutely cool even when qualitty turned to lowest. (Low and too steep filters loose a bit of definition when qualitty is set to low, but you're informed about it in very pleasant and non disturbing graphical way by "alternative curve".) Whole sound really tells you they have lot's of FFT expiriences from Photosounder.
One thing that's really a question is: How do you tell if it sounds good, when concept is so new? Well I don't know, but what I can tell is, if you draw some really crazy curve, it doesn't sounds harsh, aliased or with digital artifacts, but like some equally crazy sound alternation you hear in wierd nature conditions. And that is good. Really good.
I can also imagine it could be amazing for fixing these responses on recorded material while mixing. When something sounds like from coffe cup, it could be pretty nicely cured by exactly that ramp I described at the beginning, just inverted.
It has bad sides of course, every plugin has. Firstly, for casual mixing, it could be bit of overkill. Especially when some slope shaping demands two filters to model (in vector-spline way). Secondly, few more curve handling functions would be nice. I can imagine shift of selected filters or free hand drawing whith automatic filter position solving. Point down for that, but just as a little cheeky motivational poke. :) On the other side this "whole reponse shifting" is feature I'd like to see in some other EQs. :)
All and all this is really a breath of fresh air. Amazing for experiments and in some specific situations it can really save your ass I guess, becouse classic EQs could be too solid for some tasks. Sound is pleasant and without a single problem. Not you'r bread and butter EQ and handling could be still a little bit improved, but really fresh little plug.
Me recomend really much! :)
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Discussion
Endor-8o8 Really nice free EQ, very tweakable, efficient and colorless. Perfect for cleaning, mixing and mastering.
jam92189 I agree. the paid version is even better to. I use this for cleaning and mastering
jam92189 just a little thing to say I tried this out on a audio cleaning project i had and it kept the tone of the voice but got rid of the noise I mean whistling right next to the vocal frequency. no other eq i had was doing it right and this baby kicked ass.
ariston @myk: I haven't used SplineEQ, but as I understand it, EVERY linear phase EQ introduces latency because of the way linear phase adjustments are computed (the signal must be delayed a bit, kind of obvious if you think about it). That's why they're typically used for mastering and final mixing, as opposed to tracking. Seems kind of unfair (if not dead wrong?) to mark it down for something that's inherent to its way of working.
Iamnevyn @myk Just locate the latency knob and adjust it for lower latency, you should be just fine.
The reason why you want to be able to change latency, is for rendering purposes. If you are really anal about getting the best possible sound, you should increase the lantency when you render, and that will give you an even sharper sound. As you might have noticed with the "dotted real processing" line that shows up on the lower frenquencies,
it will become more accurate with higher lantecy settings, this is something you can't escape when processing audio the way linearphase eq's does it.
It's not fixable, it's just something you have to learn, with ALL linearphase eq's :)
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