KVR Audio

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:18 am

Kingston wrote:
Frippertronix wrote:
Kingston wrote:The thing I found most surprising was that I didn't reach out for my 96khz material at all. This sounds incredibly artifact free even on 44.1. The phasing and ringing effects are near absent, or well masked with algo magic.

Kingston, when you say artefact free, are you using quality level 5?
Yes. Although I have to admit I had a hardtime spotting the difference between the quality modes at first (not knowing what to listen to).

1500 is outrageous for a crap looking product like this. I would've preferred a GUIless version.

What do you listen to in judging quality differences now? Bass heavy material as they seem to suggest on their website? If so, do you hear a much better result at qualty 5 with that?

robenestobenz · Post by **robenestobenz** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:19 am

I don't buy the bullshit about perceived hearing restoration, but the plugin sounds OK. It hasn't got me puking up or creaming my pants, but it's alright.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:22 am

fritzman wrote:In the bass range the quality modes make the biggest difference. Boost some bass and then turn the quality step wise from 1 to 5. WOW!!!

Interesting, I'll do that, but I'm thinking the CPU hit is also huge there. Since we are talking about using this as a kind of "modular" EQ (in multiple instances), maybe it would work to only have the lowest band at level 5 and the others considerably lower. In my experiments so far, level 1 linear has sounded very nice on most things.

zck · Post by **zck** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:22 am

Kingston wrote:
Frippertronix wrote:
Kingston wrote:The thing I found most surprising was that I didn't reach out for my 96khz material at all. This sounds incredibly artifact free even on 44.1. The phasing and ringing effects are near absent, or well masked with algo magic.

Kingston, when you say artefact free, are you using quality level 5?
Yes. Although I have to admit I had a hardtime spotting the difference between the quality modes at first (not knowing what to listen to).

if you want to easily spot the quality between 1 and 5 eq a entire mix. Pick a mix with problems. The difference is huge. I started mastering a track with 1, later switch to 5 and was forced to reset all bands and start all over again this time with quality 5.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:26 am

robenestobenz wrote:I don't buy the bullshit about perceived hearing restoration, but the plugin sounds OK. It hasn't got me puking up or creaming my pants, but it's alright.

I think your reaction bings up a point which is---from my experience so far, what is great about this plug is the extent to which it isn't there (i.e. transparent). I haven't found this to an equal extent in the other plugin EQ's I've tried. While good, something like Firium seems much more intrusive on the sound. It's hard to cream your pants about something that is remaining largely neutral, but it is exactly the fact of how uncommon that is in a digital EQ (or any EQ really) that I think is making this one seem special to me.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:27 am

The quality difference is to do with perceived resolution. q5 just sounds tighter and bass below 150 actually sounds a lot different. q5 is just so good I doubt I'll be touching any lower values.

The difference is most audible with wide bell filters. Like Q 0.4 or similar.

There's a bombproof way to do a quick digital EQ shootout: set up a bell filter with Q around 1 on all of them. Put around -20dB of gain on it and sweep around in the treble region. There is simple no other plugin that passes this test with flying colors.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:28 am

All this is getting scary and making me hope the "multiple instance workaround for free limited plugin" concept continues working and doesn't get us all zapped by a karmic bolt from above.

The obvious reason being: there is no way I could ever afford the pay version of this plug unless they were to totally rethink the marketing of it.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:32 am

Frippertronix wrote:All this is getting scary and making me hope the "multiple instance workaround for free limited plugin" concept continues working and doesn't get us all zapped by a karmic bolt from above.

It happened here already. Wavelab crashlanded.

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:33 am

Frippertronix wrote:All this is getting scary and making me hope the "multiple instance workaround for free limited plugin" concept continues working and doesn't get us all zapped by a karmic bolt from above.

The obvious reason being: there is no way I could ever afford the pay version of this plug unless they were to totally rethink the marketing of it.

So you actually have multiple instances working? Damn man.. lucky you! I can't get em to work at all. When I load another instance the first instance gets bypassed or something.

Cheers!
bManic

nuffink · Post by **nuffink** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:34 am

nuffink · Post by **nuffink** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:35 am

You couldn't make it up.

robenestobenz · Post by **robenestobenz** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:37 am

Frippertronix wrote:
robenestobenz wrote:I don't buy the bullshit about perceived hearing restoration, but the plugin sounds OK. It hasn't got me puking up or creaming my pants, but it's alright.
I think your reaction bings up a point which is---from my experience so far, what is great about this plug is the extent to which it isn't there (i.e. transparent). I haven't found this to an equal extent in the other plugin EQ's I've tried. While good, something like Firium seems much more intrusive on the sound. It's hard to cream your pants about something that is remaining largely neutral, but it is exactly the fact of how uncommon that is in a digital EQ (or any EQ really) that I think is making this one seem special to me.

If it was transparent, I doubt it would have had such an immediately large positive response. My issue was more that it sounded flat to me, and kind of unclear. But beyond an obvious qualitative level (like obvious anomalies) all this stuff is subjective anyway.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:38 am

bmanic wrote:
Frippertronix wrote:All this is getting scary and making me hope the "multiple instance workaround for free limited plugin" concept continues working and doesn't get us all zapped by a karmic bolt from above.

The obvious reason being: there is no way I could ever afford the pay version of this plug unless they were to totally rethink the marketing of it.
So you actually have multiple instances working? Damn man.. lucky you! I can't get em to work at all. When I load another instance the first instance gets bypassed or something.

Cheers!
bManic

Again, I don't know for sure. Just haven't had enough time with the plug, though it definitely doesn't crash T2. Zck just said it did work and the website didn't outright state that that limitation is worked into the free version. Maybe we should email and ask in order to not waste anymore time (then again, we don't want to give them any ideas

).

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:46 am

robenestobenz wrote: If it was transparent, I doubt it would have had such an immediately large positive response. My issue was more that it sounded flat to me, and kind of unclear. But beyond an obvious qualitative level (like obvious anomalies) all this stuff is subjective anyway.

This kind of surgical and very 'sterile' EQ does sound a bit flat. I agree. It simply boosts or cuts frequencies without adding anything really. There's nothing 'fancy' about the sound at all it's just that there are no artefacts in it and this is why it is such high quality. People who have demoed the Weiss EQ1, TC 6000 massenburg EQ and Algorithmix EQ know what I mean. They all have this same "flaw", which is why they probably do not work in a mixing context that well but excell in a mastering situation for surgical tasks (a mastering enginer will of course always also need some 'flavour' EQs like the massive passive, pulteq, tubetech etc).

Cheers!
bManic

zck · Post by **zck** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:47 am

nuffink wrote:

laughing at somebody's distress ? that's grouchy and nasty. you seem to have problems with evaluating eqs. get that hearing aid fast.

i have 5 bands working. All are bypassed when bouncing or rendering but that obstacle can be overcome of course.

PLParEQ1?