New linear-phase EQ - SplineEQ

[Dunc]

Just bought this as it suits my way of visualising the changes made to sound .

Thanks for this A_SN.


Have a good New Year...

[A_SN]

Good news everyone, I've just written the manual! Hope it answers all your questions, and if it doesn't let me know about it.

http://photosounder.com/splineeq/manual.pdf

especially for the ultra low price This would be far more expensive if there was a big company marketing machine behind it, believe me. That's why I like the "smaller" (but devoted and high quality) developers so much

Haha yeah well that's what you have to do when you have zero marketing. And then I only have to pay for my own modest living expenses, no one else to write checks to.

Just bought this as it suits my way of visualising the changes made to sound .

Thanks for this A_SN.


Have a good New Year...

Thanks, glad you like how that works!

[deleted]

DELETED

[A_SN]

It crashed when I tried to load it into SAVIhost on Windows XP SP3. So I won't be using it.

SAVIhost is the first test I always use on VST(i)'s to see if they are stable. If they don't run on SAVIhost then I delete them. Ever since I have started this policy I've had much fewer crashes with plugins even if they seem to run in actual DAWs.

good luck with the development though. it looks interesting.

Cool, thanks for the heads up, it crashes here too! Great litmus test. So it looks like there's something wrong with what SplineEQ does with its memory, tomorrow I'll change and simplify how that works and that should do the trick. Hopefully that's the same thing that's been causing hangs on Macs.

[A_SN]

It crashed when I tried to load it into SAVIhost on Windows XP SP3. So I won't be using it.

SAVIhost is the first test I always use on VST(i)'s to see if they are stable. If they don't run on SAVIhost then I delete them. Ever since I have started this policy I've had much fewer crashes with plugins even if they seem to run in actual DAWs.

good luck with the development though. it looks interesting.

Good news, I said what I did I would and now it's fixed and v1.0.2 is out. No memory gets destroyed/created anymore except at initialisation which avoids problems.

It's possibly also the solution to every other problem (heap corruption causes all sorts of crap) so if you had a problem with SplineEQ before that would be nice if you could check if it's still there and let me know if it's fixed or not. Thanks you!

[A_SN]

v1.0.3 is out. It should fix the hangs on Mac.

It would hang because the AU validator would change sample rates, and in my rate-changing code I had a double lock of the same mutex which caused the hang.

[V'ger]

Yes that did it, loads up in a flash now, cheers

[A_SN]

Yes that did it, loads up in a flash now, cheers

Glad to hear that! Is there anything else that still needs resolving now?

[Six Bit Deeo]

Sounds interesting..

[DuX]

Very interesting EQ. The visualisation screen somehow suits me really well, even though I've been living with "normal" kind of analysers for years and years. It is useful and quicker to pinpoint the right frequencies. I have read the whole thread and I'll tell you my opinion on some things that others haven't mentioned. I have a pretty good 4 core PC running XP x86 SP3. So called, DuXP, I don't know why. I'm running EnergyXT and Reaper hosts. It works well with both of them, however, the zipper noise I hear when I move the bands is really not pleasant. I know I can get rid of it buy adjusting the "delay", but it doesn't look good when you start it that way. Probably the default preset should be a little different? So we don't get a zipper noise with the first preset when you move the bands? The second gripe that I noted immediately is only of cosmetic nature - the numbers are really hard to see even from a little distance from the monitor. The contrast between the numbers and the button background is far too low, and the numbers are too small. Also, what someone mentioned - we should be able to choose the range from -+6dB, over -+12dB etc. and the GUI is definitely too big, actually too tall, without any real need to be so tall. Only if you're making -78dB boosts and cuts, of course. But I think I needed that on just a very few occasions, and it usually is between -+6dB for mastering, and -+12dB for mixing.

I also find it weird that the limiter is turned off at -60dB, and turned on at 0dB. That's confusing as actually it should be in reverse. I don't know what that parameter should represent? If it's a limiter threshold, then it should work like I said - turned off at 0 and fully turned on at -60dB. However, that's too big of a threshold range for a limiter... so I still wonder what that button does. When you put a threshold on limiter at -60dB all you get is square signal full of distortion at -60dBFS. Could you explain how the limiter works, and what does that button do?

Otherwise, this EQ has made me a bit excited, which is very hard these days. Not with the sound, which is clean, but mostly with quite original and useful visualisation, and flawless, smooth GUI, except for the crackling/zipper noise when you move the bands... it should probably handle the audio buffers somewhat more gracefully?

Keep doing the great work! This EQ is a great, great value for money, and I might easily become accustomed to this kind of visualisation... it makes great sense for mixing, not so much for mastering, but it is helpful, too, and it all works smoothly - that says a lot about your programming skills. Really nicely programmed , except the buffers . Moving the bands should use a little less CPU, I think, and CPU usage should not jump so much as it can mean a world of difference when mixing. It can mean a difference between a nicely sounding, or crackly sounding project, when you work at 70% or more of constant CPU usage.

I'm going to keep an eye on this one! Thank you so much for an almost fully functional demo. One can really use it in mixes and mastering, and I think a lot of people could become "addicted" to it this way, as they can actually use it in their projects, and when they do... it's very hard to get away from buying it.

Cheers!

[A_SN]

Very interesting EQ. The visualisation screen somehow suits me really well, even though I've been living with "normal" kind of analysers for years and years. It is useful and quicker to pinpoint the right frequencies. I have read the whole thread and I'll tell you my opinion on some things that others haven't mentioned. I have a pretty good 4 core PC running XP x86 SP3. So called, DuXP, I don't know why. I'm running EnergyXT and Reaper hosts. It works well with both of them, however, the zipper noise I hear when I move the bands is really not pleasant. I know I can get rid of it buy adjusting the "delay", but it doesn't look good when you start it that way. Probably the default preset should be a little different? So we don't get a zipper noise with the first preset when you move the bands? The second gripe that I noted immediately is only of cosmetic nature - the numbers are really hard to see even from a little distance from the monitor. The contrast between the numbers and the button background is far too low, and the numbers are too small. Also, what someone mentioned - we should be able to choose the range from -+6dB, over -+12dB etc. and the GUI is definitely too big, actually too tall, without any real need to be so tall. Only if you're making -78dB boosts and cuts, of course. But I think I needed that on just a very few occasions, and it usually is between -+6dB for mastering, and -+12dB for mixing.

I also find it weird that the limiter is turned off at -60dB, and turned on at 0dB. That's confusing as actually it should be in reverse. I don't know what that parameter should represent? If it's a limiter threshold, then it should work like I said - turned off at 0 and fully turned on at -60dB. However, that's too big of a threshold range for a limiter... so I still wonder what that button does. When you put a threshold on limiter at -60dB all you get is square signal full of distortion at -60dBFS. Could you explain how the limiter works, and what does that button do?

Otherwise, this EQ has made me a bit excited, which is very hard these days. Not with the sound, which is clean, but mostly with quite original and useful visualisation, and flawless, smooth GUI, except for the crackling/zipper noise when you move the bands... it should probably handle the audio buffers somewhat more gracefully?

Keep doing the great work! This EQ is a great, great value for money, and I might easily become accustomed to this kind of visualisation... it makes great sense for mixing, not so much for mastering, but it is helpful, too, and it all works smoothly - that says a lot about your programming skills. Really nicely programmed , except the buffers . Moving the bands should use a little less CPU, I think, and CPU usage should not jump so much as it can mean a world of difference when mixing. It can mean a difference between a nicely sounding, or crackly sounding project, when you work at 70% or more of constant CPU usage.

I'm going to keep an eye on this one! Thank you so much for an almost fully functional demo. One can really use it in mixes and mastering, and I think a lot of people could become "addicted" to it this way, as they can actually use it in their projects, and when they do... it's very hard to get away from buying it.

Cheers!

That's strange, there really shouldn't be any zipper noise. I made a point to make sure there wouldn't be any and people have told me that it's all smooth. I'd like more information on how you get that zipper noise. Anyway it should take at least twice as much CPU when changing bands because the same piece of sound has to be processed once with the old EQ, again with the new EQ then the two must be blended together to have a smooth transition to the new EQ. Maybe the zipper noise comes from the fact that you're running out of CPU power? What kind of processor do you have? And what Resolution/Delay settings do you use?

As for the limiter it seems that lots of people are confused about what it does. Unlike limiters used for aesthetic effect which operate below 0 dB this limiter is to prevent any samples from going above 0 dB which is why the range is 0 dB to +60 dB and not -60. So +60 dB is off because no sample can possibly be above +60 dB.

As for the size of the GUI, well you're right, but I felt I kind of had to go with a one size fits all approach. But I will add a knob to choose a zoom, and when I do I guess I can make the GUI shorter vertically if that's what people want (it probably is).

And I'm glad you like the visualisation. I'll soon add an optional more classical analyser curves feature, it would be nice to design curves while having such an overlay as a guide.

[DuX]

Oh, I can get rid of the zipper noise easily, by putting the delay from 1.0 to 0.9 or less, but I was thinking that it would probably be better that the default preset didn't make this zipper noise right from the start. Speaking of delay... I would actually expect to get rid of the zipper noise at bigger delays [buffers?]?

This should help you to optimise it. It's the somewhat small ASIO buffer that I use, that is to blame for the zipper noise. The CPU usage is negligible, as it is a Phenom at 3.6GHz 4 core CPU. The ASIO buffer is set at 256 samples, which is quite normal, even too big, for today's standards. When I put it to 384 [or 512 and so on] samples, the zipper noise disappears and everything works smoothly. So it is possible that you optimised its processing for bigger audio buffers, and didn't take in account that many people today use 256, 128, and even 64 samples ASIO buffers. It is needed often when you record audio, and you want as short audio latency as possible, so many people who record audio, do use such small audio latencies/ASIO buffers. I put the latency to 512 samples only on rare occasions and usually when I'm just finishing the project, and there's nothing more to record or play left. Bigger buffer does give you smoother audio when your CPU is at 70% or more. It usually gives you some more headroom for more plugins, too. LOL

LOL - so the limiter works from 0dB to +60dB! OK, mystery solved, thanks! It would probably be more useful if it was the other way round, as some people like to flatten out those peaks in the -dB region of audio. However it's not a big problem to put it at 0dB, and lower the gain in the DAW and flatten those peaks. Limiters, if used moderately, really come in handy, even if they're just simple clippers, or null-clippers [better].

Yeah, this kind of visualisation is quite useful for mixing, as you can see the fundamental frequencies better than with usual analyser [at least for me], especially from the distance. Speaking of distance... those numbers are really tiny and hard to see.

Thank you again for a really interesting EQ! Cheers!

Edit: I noticed that it's doing weird things with the phase, though. The phase should be linear, right? Have you tried it in Christian Budde's VST analyzer? The phase runs all over the place which is not the case with DDMF LP-10 that I like and use, for instance. Link: http://www.kvraudio.com/product/vst_plu ... tian_budde The curve response is like it should be, but the phase response is hmmmm

[Krakatau]

I just downloaded the free version and my very first impression is really impressed by it tweakability, intuitiveness and overall responsiveness

I much appreciate among other goodies the feature that allows to reverse the equalisation profile that, i assume, can be very effective applied on submixers

[loopdon]

Reverse the EQ profile?
I shall check this!
I have so far only seen this kind of visualisation/eq inversion feature in
Image-Line's offerings, PEQ2 and Equo.

[Krakatau]

I think it could be very effective if you need to clearly distinguish two soundsources without changing both loudness

So logically the more effective would be then, on bus mixers