EQs and difference in weight and transient

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adl wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 7:31 am
markmann wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 1:48 am I've been shooting out clean EQs for the past week - Equilibrium, Toneboosters EQ4, FabFilter, UAD AMS Neve, Crave, Melda MAutogain, etc. The new Weiss EQ MP from Softube is the best-sounding for my purposes. It seems to be in a league of its own for clarity.

Of course, you can get great results from the others. I will continue to use Toneboosters EQ4, MAutogain, and UAD AMS Neve on some individual tracks. But don't make a decision until you've tried Weiss EQ MP.
Thanks for sharing your results. The Weiss is supposed to be very good (clean) sounding, so you're definitely making the right decision to get that one. I personally couldn't get around dmg Equilibrium workflow wise, didn't feel intuitive (to me!). Fabfilter really stepped up the game regarding that. It's a shame that the transient smearing is so obvious with that one (as mentioned I use mAutoDynamic EQ from melda on transient material).
How did you feel about Crave EQ? Gets praised a lot for being very transparent (haven't tried myself). Also, how was workflow on the Weiss for you? (haven't tried that one either so far).
I guess my favorites in order would be Weiss, Toneboosters EQ4, MAutogain, UAD AMS Neve. I thought all of those beat Crave. Weiss takes some getting used to. The numbers are small and the frequencies seem to be stepped not continuous. But you can move right along and the results are very good. I also dived in and got the Weiss MM-1 finalizer and the Weiss Compressor/Limiter. That Weiss coding is doing something special to my ears. I'm willing to tolerate most interfaces as long as the sound is right. That's always the overriding priority for me.

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markmann wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 7:57 am
adl wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 7:31 am
markmann wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 1:48 am I've been shooting out clean EQs for the past week - Equilibrium, Toneboosters EQ4, FabFilter, UAD AMS Neve, Crave, Melda MAutogain, etc. The new Weiss EQ MP from Softube is the best-sounding for my purposes. It seems to be in a league of its own for clarity.

Of course, you can get great results from the others. I will continue to use Toneboosters EQ4, MAutogain, and UAD AMS Neve on some individual tracks. But don't make a decision until you've tried Weiss EQ MP.
Thanks for sharing your results. The Weiss is supposed to be very good (clean) sounding, so you're definitely making the right decision to get that one. I personally couldn't get around dmg Equilibrium workflow wise, didn't feel intuitive (to me!). Fabfilter really stepped up the game regarding that. It's a shame that the transient smearing is so obvious with that one (as mentioned I use mAutoDynamic EQ from melda on transient material).
How did you feel about Crave EQ? Gets praised a lot for being very transparent (haven't tried myself). Also, how was workflow on the Weiss for you? (haven't tried that one either so far).
I guess my favorites in order would be Weiss, Toneboosters EQ4, MAutogain, UAD AMS Neve. I thought all of those beat Crave. Weiss takes some getting used to. The numbers are small and the frequencies seem to be stepped not continuous. But you can move right along and the results are very good. I also dived in and got the Weiss MM-1 finalizer and the Weiss Compressor/Limiter. That Weiss coding is doing something special to my ears. I'm willing to tolerate most interfaces as long as the sound is right. That's always the overriding priority for me.
Thanks for your reply.
Maybe I'll check out the Weiss as it's still on the intro price.
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fabaessa wrote: Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:06 pm Hi all!!!
...Maat Blue -.... Loved the graph to show the frequencies (I would love to know the name and if we have more EQs like that).
If what you are referring to is a Sonogram than yes, there are quiet a few other EQs that have this feature. For example pretty much all Meldaproduction EQs (you can tweek it's colors, it's opacity etc); DMG Equilibrium

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I saw it in the DMG and loving it also!!!

I also tested the CRAVE Eq that was recommended...sounds great, specially on the low end (it sounds different than the other Eqs on the low end...I would like to know why).

Thanks guys

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Have you tried Waves Q-Clone?

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Burillo wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:26 am how can a completely linear EQ affect the transients in any way, shape or form?
Linear phase EQ's introduce pre-ringing into the signal. This will absolutely change the transients. If you take a snare, add a linear phase EQ, and start boosting the low end, you'll probably start to hear a "thwww-Pop" kind of sound. Like a reverse reverb coming into the snare hit. That's pre-ringing. That's why just using a linear phase EQ all the time isn't recommended and there's all kind of phase options in some EQ's. Some EQ's are linear phase, others have minimum phase modes, analog phase modes, etc. That's one way they can differ.

This is one reason why some EQ's will sound different. Here's some good info from the Crave EQ site that explains it better than I can:

https://cravedsp.com/blog/linear-phase-eq-explained

To the OP, another way they can differ is in how the Q behaves. A Q value of .75 or 1.0 may not be the same across different EQ's. You can't just match up two sets of settings on two EQ's and expect the same results. Some EQ's may employ proportional Q or other tricks. Some may just not be operating on the same Q scales at all. A good way to compare would be to match curves in Plugin Doctor, save those as presets, then go back into your DAW to do a listening test. Kind of a pain in the ass, but a way to be sure that you're actually hearing the same curves against two units.

For my money, CraveEQ is excellent sounding, but I don't love the workflow. I just haven't learned all the modifiers so I'm constantly adding or soloing a band by accident. I actually prefer the workflow of DMG's EQuilibrium, but I think it sounds best in the IIR mode with Digital+ Compensation on, and Digital+ phase on. Without those last two settings, I think it sounds audibly less impressive.

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Here's some talk from Dave Gamble himself, about precise Equilibrium settings for mastering. Taken from another forum :

There are no de-facto best settings for mastering. As a rule, I'd probably stick it in FIR mode with a Kaiser window (with the tuning at 0.5, which I set as default deliberately), with an IR length of 65536, in Free Phase mode, and maybe some padding if I was doing anything crazy. If your mastering is gentle, then these settings should be sane enough, and it'll be diminishing returns increasing from here.

Also, I would suggest using minimum phase for low frequency stuff and linear phase for mid and highs, which is achieved with Free Phase by having the control handles start at the bottom of the screen and end up in the middle.

If you have something a bit nasty to deal with, using higher settings should make your plight that little easier. The deal is that you can buy your way out of problems by spending CPU, and if you've used EQuilibrium for a while, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Specific answers:
FIR vs IIR - FIR allows you to dial-in the phase response, and give you a lot more control generally. For mastering, /try/ IIR, but 9 times out of 10 you'll likely end up FIR just because it gives you more to play with.

Phase - for mastering, start in Free. If you find you always prefer the sound with the bands in the middle, just use Linear. If you prefer the bands at the bottom, just use Analogue. If you prefer bands all over the place, stay in Free! (=me)

Window Shape - Kaiser all the way. Seriously, that guy did some very clever maths. Use it! It's parametric so you can play with it and get a feel for what it does. So, the window shape trades off between tightness in the time domain+ smoothness in the frequency domain vs slow decays in the time domain+sharp edges in the frequency domain. If you're notching something, you need the latter. If you're mastering, you most likely want the former. As you sweep the parameter around, you trade from one to the other. The other shapes do the same thing - they give you a specific balance between tight time-domain response and definition in the frequency domain. For high IR lengths, this stuff is all pretty subtle, so test it with a short IR. I included the full set of common window shapes, because it was easy, nice to be able to explore, and I suspected someone would ask at some point.

Padding - quite a fun trick this one. When it designs the filter, it will use a "virtual" IR length of padding * ir length (so, with padding x4 it'll design an impulse response four times as long). This dramatically reduces the (this is already too technical, I'm going to smudge language a bit) 'wrap-around' of the impulse response, because it gets unpacked into a bigger box. Then we take the part where all the action is, window /that/, and use that as the IR. So, you trade off spending CPU for computing the IR (which is every time you adjust the EQ) in exchange for a more accurate calculation of the IR.
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Great post. Never saw that one before. Very informative.

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weiss sound great, but fabfilter pro q beats it in ergonomics so badly, i just keep using proq3 anyway

frequency graph is "sonogram" or spectrograph or spectrogram or whatever you wanna call it, and melda EQ also has it
Burillo wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:26 am how can a completely linear EQ affect the transients in any way, shape or form?
it can't.
Linear phase - pre/post ring
Minmal phase - different phase distortion shape == different transient displacement around Fc. but the difference aren't dramatic nor is one "better" at it than the other.
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I've been on this journey myself for the past month or so. Yes, it really has been a journey. I started with TRacks EQual because I had it, but I wanted to see what else was out there. EQual is "fine" but it has a bad workflow. It's pretty utilitarian, and it does work. High end is a tiny bit rough maybe, compared to others.

The first one I bought was Toneboosters EQ4. I preferred it over the Crave, and Pro Q3. The next one I bought was Softube Weiss EQ MP, which is still on sale for the rest of today with an email coupon code for $109, along with the Weiss Maximizer sale that was just announced.

Crave - Has a really nice thickness to it in the low end and low mids, doesn't steal bass. The top doesn't seem to want to open up much on this one though. Top end doesn't have the same kind of impact as the lows. Image is good, better than Pro Q3 but not as good as Toneboosters, IMO.

Toneboosters EQ4- Wider sounding. Very "analog" to my ears. Small boosts in the lows will create massive tracks and mixes, you have to be judicious. Does not shrink the image. My initial shootout was an acoustic guitar source, and this was the most flattering of the three I've mentioned. The most complementary to the source. Doesn't seem to add any sort of crunch or anything like that in the mid or top. It's a flattering EQ, smooth. If Weiss is a cutting knife, then EQ4 is a butter knife, it has a bit of tone. I've been mixing a lot with EQ4 and I even did a solicited Mastering project with it. I've been really satisfied with my mixes these past few weeks. It's going to continue to be a main reach flavor for me.

Weiss EQ MP - One of the most "neutral" sounding things I have ever heard. Does not affect image, transients, fatness, sheen, etc. All it does is change the tone, seemingly. It's not a sweetener nor an enhancer. You can go big in the top boost and it holds together, and so on. This is day 2 for me so I will stop there, but I'm really excited about it. If original source clarity is what you're after, this is the best of the ones I've tested so far. It's complementary to Toneboosters EQ4 because it can do tighter notches, and steeper HPF/LPF filters.

Also I have been testing the SSL Native X-EQ2 and it's pretty exciting, too. It's similar to all the others but it has a sort of tightness to it, a tight punch. Not surprising when you look at the brand name. Really excellent on drums, drum bus. I am not going to pay $300 for it but maybe there's some way to get it cheaper in the future, I hope.

I really need to shoot out Crave vs the Weiss now, that seems like a relevant comparison out of all these, that I haven't done. They both have that sort of "invisible" kind of thing in parts of them.

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Burillo wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:26 am how can a completely linear EQ affect the transients in any way, shape or form?
Pre-ringing, I would never use an linear EQ for transients in the lows for example

google for 'pre ringing impulse response' with picture search and have a look at the impulse response

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midi_transmission wrote: Fri Mar 12, 2021 4:35 pm
Burillo wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:26 am how can a completely linear EQ affect the transients in any way, shape or form?
Pre-ringing, I would never use an linear EQ for transients in the lows for example

google for 'pre ringing impulse response' with picture search and have a look at the impulse response
thank god someone gets it
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I like PSP Neon. There are 3 versions included, i generally use standard but you have a much higher quality NEON HR with lin phase option and a low latency version.
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midi_transmission wrote: Fri Mar 12, 2021 4:35 pm
Burillo wrote: Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:26 am how can a completely linear EQ affect the transients in any way, shape or form?
Pre-ringing, I would never use an linear EQ for transients in the lows for example

google for 'pre ringing impulse response' with picture search and have a look at the impulse response
Have you tried Ozone EQ in Linear mode? Recently I did a test in RX (to see also spectral view) with a steep HPF on synthetic Kick and I couldn't hear any pre-ringing. I was really surprised. Maybe it's an isolated case.

So far Ozone 9 is the winner but I didn't stop looking for maybe even better options.

* The test was made to find EQ that I can use to clean foley / field recordings with minimum possible impact on the sound as those files will be used in sound design and then compressed in the game engine (not much control over the compression process there).

** Even more surprise I had when I discovered that Analog mode added signal at 30Hz (Cut off freq of HPF) fading out for about 3 seconds :scared:

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