New linear-phase EQ - SplineEQ

[DuX]

"curve effects" are all VERY useful.

[Syrou]

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

You didnt check the review of the plugin by any chance?

[Krakatau]

indeed no...

...better did, well done !

[Panphobia]

Awesome plugin

Maybe the best free EQ I have found, and the full version is very cheap

So cheap in fact that I was wondering if it was made in SE or something, but you have cleared that up.

You said that it wasnt selling very well. This is a unique product, and after you upgrade it with new features such as the zoom you plan (and other features) I could see it gaining popularity. Its maybe not the type of thing that will create a buying frenzy. That is because while it has a neat visual, it is very similar to some other eq's, so my guess is that people are thinking that they already have something similar in their arsenal. Don't sweat it I can see this taking off over time, especially when people start to realize the price/awesomeness ratio.

Thanks for the free version! I would buy the full version but my wife is looking

[manducator]

You said that it wasnt selling very well.

Sad to hear... But I guess most people who do audiowork for a longer time already have a (favorite) eq. Me for instance; I have DMGaudio equality, which wasn't cheap but yeah, it's a great plugin. I really have to think again to buy another eq, after having spend big bucks on Equality already (and I'm satisfied). That's just reality, I guess.

But than again, SplineEQ is cheap...

[A_SN]

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

I still can't reproduce your zipper problem though. I tried in Reaper and setting the buffer size really low but it doesn't change anything (and it shouldn't given how it concatenates all the input buffers together into an intermediary buffer of a given length) even with the Delay knob all the way up.

I'm not sure why you'd want to limiter to go below 0 dB as your output is normally supposed to have samples up to 0 dB, right? What's a null clipper?

And those numbers are tiny (8 points) but i I made them bigger I'd have to make the knobs bigger and everything would be bigger!

As for the phase response it's actually what the phase response of a mere delay looks like. So I assume that the plugin analyzer somehow takes into account LP10's delay properly but not SplineEQ?

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

You mean split a sound using the EQ in a way that makes mixing again the split sound be the same again? That wouldn't work because a curve + its reverse != a flat line, since it's all logarithmic. Maybe I shiuld have a 'linear gain scale' knob for that then.

You said that it wasnt selling very well.

Sad to hear... But I guess most people who do audiowork for a longer time already have a (favorite) eq. Me for instance; I have DMGaudio equality, which wasn't cheap but yeah, it's a great plugin. I really have to think again to buy another eq, after having spend big bucks on Equality already (and I'm satisfied). That's just reality, I guess.

But than again, SplineEQ is cheap...

It's alright, I didn't even plan to make an EQ in the first place, it was all supposed to be just a part of that upcoming EQ-based dynamics processor. That's what I hope will do well, even though I already know I'll have a tough time explaining what it does. And SplineEQ is at the top of the KVR rankings, so I guess it's not all bad .

[Panphobia]

Cool, glad to hear that you have more plans for plugs

Spline is great, and Photosounder is on my short list. I never heard of it before but it looks really good, I like the demos. You are clearly a talented and creative developer, I can't wait to see what you come up with next.

[damstraversaz]

what a great Eq ! I will bought it for sure.reaper shows me a latency of 2048 samples, wich is great for mixing, could it be possible to have a 0 latency version ( I knew nothing about coding , Linear phase and limiter latency) but it will be great for live use.
fantastic work, congratulations !

By the way, i just saw this EQ by chance, so maybe you need to have more announcements or reviews ( rekkerd, Vi-control, audiofanzine etc)
Damien

[chokehold]

Tried the free version for about 20-30 minutes, and ... I'm not "hating", I just don't see the use in this EQ.

With Spline EQ, you don't select the frequency you wish to cut or boost, but you use the splines to "draw" curves around them.
To boost or cut a frequency range, you have to arrange 2 splines around the center frequency you wish to change, which then doesn't only affect the frequency you wish to change, but also affects everything between the two splines' "base points" and the next higher or lower "base points" of other splines.

You have to become somewhat of a spline-arranging artist, and you have to "think between the frequencies you want to change", to efficiently reach the boosting/cutting you wanted to make in the first place, and when time is money (which in the music biz it always is) that's just unintuitive, time-consuming and counter-productive.

If I reach for an EQ, it is because there are certain frequencies that should be boosted or cut, and not because I wish to draw a fancy curve with splines.

Select the center frequency ... and boost or cut it. Maybe even set how wide/narrow the band is. That's the perfect and most direct approach for altering frequency related stuff.

Load Spline EQ and try the most effective and commonly-used way of using an EQ for either Mixing or Mastering: Sweep.
Go ahead.

As I said in the beginning, I'm not just blindly hating or ranting.
There's a free version, a commercial version, both PC and Mac versions, a 64-bit version for both, the GUI is clean and you're doing everything around the plugin absolutely fine and "right".

It's just the sense of the whole thing itself, that seems a little odd to me. :/

But maybe I'm just doing something wrong. If that's the case: are there any YouTube tutorials for Spline EQ online? I'd be thrilled to be enlightened!

Still, I wish you all the best with Spline EQ, and of course I'm just as curious about your upcoming EQ/dynamics plugin as all the others are!

[A_SN]

I just released a new version (1.0.4), nothing major, the main change is that now it works in mono properly (doesn't output in stereo if the input is mono, saves half the CPU too), I fiddled with the visualisation a bit so now it's less bright by default and I might have fixed some rare bugs (but there isn't much left to fix in the way of bugs anymore I think).

what a great Eq ! I will bought it for sure.reaper shows me a latency of 2048 samples, wich is great for mixing, could it be possible to have a 0 latency version ( I knew nothing about coding , Linear phase and limiter latency) but it will be great for live use.
fantastic work, congratulations !

By the way, i just saw this EQ by chance, so maybe you need to have more announcements or reviews ( rekkerd, Vi-control, audiofanzine etc)
Damien

It's impossible to have a 0 latency for a linear phase EQ, it has to have some latency. You can make the latency go down with SplineEQ at the expense of CPU efficiency or frequency resolution, that's as good as it theoretically could get.

As for the press stuff, I guess maybe I'm not doing right. I e-mailed a bunch of them but it didn't do much. Well, I announced it successfully on Rekkerd though. As for reviews I don't know how to go about getting anyone to review it... I wish someone with an experience of doing that kind of thing effectively would help me.

Tried the free version for about 20-30 minutes, and ... I'm not "hating", I just don't see the use in this EQ.

With Spline EQ, you don't select the frequency you wish to cut or boost, but you use the splines to "draw" curves around them.
To boost or cut a frequency range, you have to arrange 2 splines around the center frequency you wish to change, which then doesn't only affect the frequency you wish to change, but also affects everything between the two splines' "base points" and the next higher or lower "base points" of other splines.

You have to become somewhat of a spline-arranging artist, and you have to "think between the frequencies you want to change", to efficiently reach the boosting/cutting you wanted to make in the first place, and when time is money (which in the music biz it always is) that's just unintuitive, time-consuming and counter-productive.

If I reach for an EQ, it is because there are certain frequencies that should be boosted or cut, and not because I wish to draw a fancy curve with splines.

Select the center frequency ... and boost or cut it. Maybe even set how wide/narrow the band is. That's the perfect and most direct approach for altering frequency related stuff.

Load Spline EQ and try the most effective and commonly-used way of using an EQ for either Mixing or Mastering: Sweep.
Go ahead.

As I said in the beginning, I'm not just blindly hating or ranting.
There's a free version, a commercial version, both PC and Mac versions, a 64-bit version for both, the GUI is clean and you're doing everything around the plugin absolutely fine and "right".

It's just the sense of the whole thing itself, that seems a little odd to me. :/

But maybe I'm just doing something wrong. If that's the case: are there any YouTube tutorials for Spline EQ online? I'd be thrilled to be enlightened!

Still, I wish you all the best with Spline EQ, and of course I'm just as curious about your upcoming EQ/dynamics plugin as all the others are!

Well, it's a different approach. It can't be everything that the regular approach is, it doesn't mean it should exist . All you have to know if you want to do the equivalent of sweep filters is just use 3 points, 2 low and 1 high in the middle. You don't even need to touch the handles most of the time, unless you want to really shape the curve. It sounds like you tried doing that with just 2 sloped points, that's not the best way to do it, you need 3 points. You can do most things without touching the handles, just shifting the yellow dots.

As for the sweep you can just use the transposition knob, it'll do your sweep. You can even do an imperfect kind of sweep just by dragging a point above a bunch of other points all at the same level. It's imperfect because the shape of bell curve keeps changing as you get closer/further from one of the flat points, but it's close enough.

And no videos yet, I really need to get around to it, it's just that I always end up prioritising other things...

[hardwinte]

Just bought after having the free version for 2 nights.

Man this thing is great, took some getting used to to realize how good this eq is. I found it hard to use the colour analyzer at first, and I was pretty annoyed at how easily I could in a split second go up to 60db on the slippy 'yellow dot' management. Now I know better, it never happens anymore (almost).

Anyways, working with this baby is fast, sleek, sexy...feels like I'm in the club while I'm working lol. More plugs need this

Eq as a creative sound design tool was never easier or quicker to get good results than with this plug (though I am still using an fft alongside it because those colors make it hard to tell sometimes exactly what it is I'm boosting). The unique curve designing method makes for some nice surgical mixing. Really nice in fact.

I would really like the option of using or overlaying the more commonly used analyzer. It could be colored black against the white background and white against black, with gain control for intensity.

[A_SN]

Just bought after having the free version for 2 nights.

Man this thing is great, took some getting used to to realize how good this eq is. I found it hard to use the colour analyzer at first, and I was pretty annoyed at how easily I could in a split second go up to 60db on the slippy 'yellow dot' management. Now I know better, it never happens anymore (almost).

Anyways, working with this baby is fast, sleek, sexy...feels like I'm in the club while I'm working lol. More plugs need this

Eq as a creative sound design tool was never easier or quicker to get good results than with this plug (though I am still using an fft alongside it because those colors make it hard to tell sometimes exactly what it is I'm boosting). The unique curve designing method makes for some nice surgical mixing. Really nice in fact.

I would really like the option of using or overlaying the more commonly used analyzer. It could be colored black against the white background and white against black, with gain control for intensity.

Thanks for the comments, you should write me a testimonial!

As for the FFT, well actually I've been working on it, this is what I've got so far: http://oi44.tinypic.com/20t34mx.jpg

Colour is the pan, blue is left, green is centre, red is right, although I might change it, maybe change the centre to purple to make it less rainbow like? What do you think? Also I intend to make a single control for it to adjust its gain, it would be -inf dB by default (disabled) but you could enable it by turning up the gain thus shifting the curve up or down as it suits you. And unlike most spectral analysers which do not compensate for the downward bass to trebles bias it does it, so a pink noise comes out looking flat, as it really should. The main idea for me is to help design curves based on the shape of the analyzer's curve. I'll probably also do a freeze button that will capture the accumulated spectrum for as long as it's held down.

[jensa]

This really is a no-brainer. Love it!

[jensa]

A nifty FR: When pressing the "Open preset"-button, could you please consider to make the file window default to the folder where the VST-plugin dll resides. If you don't want to hard code it to some place below/above the Users-folder.

[Nielzie]

As for the FFT, well actually I've been working on it, this is what I've got so far: http://oi44.tinypic.com/20t34mx.jpg

That looks sexy