Free EQ550 from Overloud! (time limited)

[Teksonik]

Very easy authorization process. Sound and performance are impressive in early tests so thanks to Overloud for this generous gift.

But....for the love of all that is holy whose idea was it to put scratches on the GUI ? My OCD brain wants to smack the crap out of the person who thought of that........

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

If it's true that time is money, then this plugin has already cost me a ton just trying to connect to their website. "Time Limited?" I will be if I spend the next six days trying to do the same

[VariKusBrainZ]

Its the least exciting out of the GEMs, for my use.
I wouldnt have bought it.

[sqigls]

sounds pretty good
the indented magnet snapping values 'feature' makes it unusable to me though unfortunately.

pretty smooth mids and top end.
keen to check it out properly.

slapped it on the master bus and got a pretty nice sound

[jbarish]

But....for the love of all that is holy whose idea was it to put scratches on the GUI ? My OCD brain wants to smack the crap out of the person who thought of that........

We don't need to escalate. You see, war is not the answer. For only love can conquer hate.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Just ran some test signals through it and checked out the results in SPAN and I'm less than impressed with the amount of aliasing at 44.1khz. Perhaps a bit of oversampling would've been in order to clean things up. It's certainly not the only analog modeled EQ to produce aliasing, but I'd hope for at least better performance than this. The recent Arturia preamps+EQ's fair very well in this regard, as does the PSP E27 and Kush stuff for example. All of those, however, introduce some latency to due to the oversampling implementation. I kind of wish more companies offered the optional oversampling on/off modes, and/or even let users select the amount of oversampling with additional "OS on Render" options.

That said, it's a freebie, and those are always welcome. So thanks to Overloud. If I were paying full price, I'd want optional oversampling to clean things up, so maybe that's some helpful feedback for them. Also, the scratches are a bit excessive. I can understand maybe some, but when the scratches are right over the frequency labels, it just looks sloppy IMO.

[Teksonik]

Very easy authorization process. Sound and performance are impressive in early tests so thanks to Overloud for this generous gift.
But....for the love of all that is holy whose idea was it to put scratches on the GUI ? My OCD brain wants to smack the crap out of the person who thought of that........

We don't need to escalate. You see, war is not the answer. For only love can conquer hate.

Ok then I'd love to smack the crap out of whoever thought scratches on the GUI was a good idea....

[sqigls]

Just ran some test signals through it and checked out the results in SPAN and I'm less than impressed with the amount of aliasing at 44.1khz. Perhaps a bit of oversampling would've been in order to clean things up. It's certainly not the only analog modeled EQ to produce aliasing, but I'd hope for at least better performance than this. The recent Arturia preamps+EQ's fair very well in this regard, as does the PSP E27 and Kush stuff for example. All of those, however, introduce some latency to due to the oversampling implementation. I kind of wish more companies offered the optional oversampling on/off modes, and/or even let users select the amount of oversampling with additional "OS on Render" options.

That said, it's a freebie, and those are always welcome. So thanks to Overloud. If I were paying full price, I'd want optional oversampling to clean things up, so maybe that's some helpful feedback for them. Also, the scratches are a bit excessive. I can understand maybe some, but when the scratches are right over the frequency labels, it just looks sloppy IMO.

pretty smooth though, and the CPU hit is low.
i'm at 96kHz so i probably wouldn't notice. my ears are only gold plated

[VariKusBrainZ]

Iv never done this test before on any plugins.

Now Ive tried it with a test tone and the aliasing is really obvious , I dont even need an analyser. I can hear it and Ive got severe high end roll off in my hearing!

And its the same at whatever sample rate.

I tested all the GEMs except Dopamine and they all exhibit exactly the same aliasing frequency characteristic.

Luck I dont compose with pure sines

Just ran some test signals through it and checked out the results in SPAN and I'm less than impressed with the amount of aliasing at 44.1khz. Perhaps a bit of oversampling would've been in order to clean things up. It's certainly not the only analog modeled EQ to produce aliasing, but I'd hope for at least better performance than this. The recent Arturia preamps+EQ's fair very well in this regard, as does the PSP E27 and Kush stuff for example. All of those, however, introduce some latency to due to the oversampling implementation. I kind of wish more companies offered the optional oversampling on/off modes, and/or even let users select the amount of oversampling with additional "OS on Render" options.

That said, it's a freebie, and those are always welcome. So thanks to Overloud. If I were paying full price, I'd want optional oversampling to clean things up, so maybe that's some helpful feedback for them. Also, the scratches are a bit excessive. I can understand maybe some, but when the scratches are right over the frequency labels, it just looks sloppy IMO.

[VariKusBrainZ]

oops

[sqigls]

do you own bx console E ? does that alias bad also ?
it too doesn't use oversampling

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Iv never done this test before on any plugins.

Now Ive tried it with a test tone and the aliasing is really obvious , I dont even need an analyser. I can hear it and Ive got severe high end roll off in my hearing!

And its the same at whatever sample rate.

Luck I dont compose with pure sines

Now imagine what's happening with a more complex signal.

Any signal with high end like cymbals, or acoustic guitar it even vocals may come off worse for wear. And I'm in the same boat as you, I can't hear above 17k, but once I started feeding it sine waveforms in that range, the foldover frequencies were clearly audible. I'm not saying it's a bad plugin, but definitely an opportunity for improvement if Overloud is open to feedback. Maybe with optional oversampling we could only run 150 per project versus 1500. Seems like it'd be worth it. And if it were optional, they could preserve the zero latency mode for tracking.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Iv never done this test before on any plugins.

Now Ive tried it with a test tone and the aliasing is really obvious , I dont even need an analyser. I can hear it and Ive got severe high end roll off in my hearing!

And its the same at whatever sample rate.

Luck I dont compose with pure sines

Now imagine what's happening with a more complex signal.

Any signal with high end like cymbals, or acoustic guitar it even vocals may come off worse for wear. And I'm in the same boat as you, I can't hear above 17k, but once I started feeding it sine waveforms in that range, the foldover frequencies were clearly audible. I'm not saying it's a bad plugin, but definitely an opportunity for improvement if Overloud is open to feedback. Maybe with optional oversampling we could only run 150 per project versus 1500. Seems like it'd be worth it. And if it were optional, they could preserve the zero latency mode for tracking.

Its the worst offender of the plugins Ive just tested.

The non Overloud plugins I had to crank up the sine output into the plugin to get a similar result. But then I dont really know whats aliasing and whats intended distortion.

Except with Overloud it is freaking obvious lol

[Harry_HH]

Iv never done this test before on any plugins.

Now Ive tried it with a test tone and the aliasing is really obvious , I dont even need an analyser. I can hear it and Ive got severe high end roll off in my hearing!

And its the same at whatever sample rate.

Luck I dont compose with pure sines

Now imagine what's happening with a more complex signal.

Any signal with high end like cymbals, or acoustic guitar it even vocals may come off worse for wear. And I'm in the same boat as you, I can't hear above 17k, but once I started feeding it sine waveforms in that range, the foldover frequencies were clearly audible. I'm not saying it's a bad plugin, but definitely an opportunity for improvement if Overloud is open to feedback. Maybe with optional oversampling we could only run 150 per project versus 1500. Seems like it'd be worth it. And if it were optional, they could preserve the zero latency mode for tracking.

I hear what you are saying, and I appreciate your signal measurement /numeric based analysis. However, I´m not sure, if the indicators you use, are alone indisputable accepted prove of "goodness" or "badness" of the audio unit.
There are so many parameters, which define the amiability of the sound. Not least the source audio material treated - and that´s why I have many different "same" plugin (Eq in this case), some work better with one audio material, other work better with other material.
So far my experience of the Overloud API 550 is "very good", especially with the vocals, and this plugin will be part of my toolbox in the future.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Iv never done this test before on any plugins.

Now Ive tried it with a test tone and the aliasing is really obvious , I dont even need an analyser. I can hear it and Ive got severe high end roll off in my hearing!

And its the same at whatever sample rate.

Luck I dont compose with pure sines

Now imagine what's happening with a more complex signal.

Any signal with high end like cymbals, or acoustic guitar it even vocals may come off worse for wear. And I'm in the same boat as you, I can't hear above 17k, but once I started feeding it sine waveforms in that range, the foldover frequencies were clearly audible. I'm not saying it's a bad plugin, but definitely an opportunity for improvement if Overloud is open to feedback. Maybe with optional oversampling we could only run 150 per project versus 1500. Seems like it'd be worth it. And if it were optional, they could preserve the zero latency mode for tracking.

I hear what you are saying, and I appreciate your signal measurement /numeric based analysis. However, I´m not sure, if the indicators you use, are alone indisputable accepted prove of "goodness" or "badness" of the audio unit.
There are so many parameters, which define the amiability of the sound. Not least the source audio material treated - and that´s why I have many different "same" plugin (Eq in this case), some work better with one audio material, other work better with other material.
So far my experience of the Overloud API 550 is "very good", especially with the vocals, and this plugin will be part of my toolbox in the future.

I don't think I used any words like "sounds bad" or "good" or even expressed an opinion about the overall sound of the plugin. At least I tried not to (apologies if I did). I tried to focus my comments on the aliasing performance, which is just one aspect of the sound. It's extremely CPU efficient, low latency, and has some interesting curves and cool features (extra band, band-listen feature, proper input/output gain knobs are always appreiated, nice browser). I'm not trying to rag on the plugin at all, just wish there were less aliasing, which I thought was high based on some limited tests. There's going to be more important elements to an EQ, such as the curves, the phase response, harmonic distortion, and aliasing is just one of those many factors and not the most important. However, I don't think anyone disputes that no audible aliasing is an ideal, however, you can't get there without some tradeoffs (CPU, latency). I actually use tons of plugins that alias to varying degrees when pushed, but anything developers can do to mitigate that is certainly welcome. Consider this more of an awareness compaign than any kind of product boycott.