Which MAAT EQ to choose?

[128kbpsMP3]

Hi all,

I’m currently looking into buying a MAAT EQ (or the whole suite, as long as it’s worth it) for daily workhorse duties in composing and mixing, but there are a couple of things I have some questions about which I couldn’t find answers for by simply googling..

FYI I only work ITB in logic with VI’s and drum samples, I don’t track/record anything most of the time. I only compose music/beats and (pre-) mix it and send it out for further processing to external parties. I make mostly urban style music (trap/uk drill/afrocarribean) with lots of low end. Even though I’m into fairly ‘simple’ genres my goal is to shape my sounds with the most high resolution/quality tools there are in the box. Hopefully some of y’all can shed some light on the following;

1. thEQorange looks like it has (along with red) the most & most advanced features and would be the ‘if you could only choose 1’ choice. But why is it geared towards mastering and not also mixing? Imo it’s toolset would be very welcome in mixing too. Wouldn’t it be great to fiddle with that great sound on individual channels too?

2. I see that both thEQorange & thEQred have high latencies because of what’s going on behind the scenes and from what I’ve read it’s inevitable, but how does latency affect you in a composing/mix session? Why is this an issue for anything except for tracking? I mean, there’s PDC (plug-in delay compensation), right?

3. Most of the times I’m a fan of meticulously choosing good base material to minimize having to do heavy processing (unless creative) so I probably won’t be doing any crazy complex EQ stuff, just basic LP/HP and regular bell shapes, nothing fancy, but I need it to be ‘best’ sounding albeit basic operations. For daily mixing tasks or usage while composing even, which one would you choose?

4. I’m not the most technical person so what is the difference in noob terms between the way orange & red work compared to blue. I can’t fully wrap my mind over that transient smearing & phase stuff.. so is blue ‘not so special’ as it’s a normal EQ which has those ‘disadvantages’ like ‘regular’ eq’s? Why is it offered when they market so much on that phase stuff and how the way those other eq’s work is ‘superior’?

5. I was looking for a proper analyzer/tuner (especially for drums samples which are quite hard to find) also and it seems the way they incorporated the sonograph and piano roll etc it could be used for those purposes also very easily. Am I right? I wish they made it stand-alone it’s seems so easily to identify stuff with that great interface from what I saw on the limited vids on YouTube. Anybody has any experience with it and would like to chime in?

For what it’s worth I’m downloaded the demos an hour ago and intent to intensively try it out next couple of days, but am also very interested in other people’s expertise and experiences.

Whew, that’s a big post — hope y’all still reading

Thanks

[DocSnyder]

None of them are worth their money. They're simply based on very old technology. They even pulled the marketing bs once like they have linear phase without smearing and had to row back quickly because it's physically not possible. However there are way cheaper eqs that do way better jobs...

[128kbpsMP3]

None of them are worth their money. They're simply based on very old technology.

Thanks for sharing your opinion and chiming in, I will extensively test it next couple of days and let my ears be the judge, but I'm really looking for the best workhorse EQ from the highest quality. Do you have any suggestions that you DO like?

I have for example also used DMG Equilibrium and it's great, but the intuitiveness of MAAT stuff (which is subjective maybe kinda) and all the things added up made me come to the conclusion of at least contemplate buying these. The devil is really in the details in this one for me, but I'm always open for alternatives or whatever, that's why I posted yo

p.s. all the stuff on which most emulation plugins are based on is also old technology, I think in music maybe age isn't that big of a factor if you look at it that way, or you disagree?

[imrae]

Sounds like you want Fabfilter's Pro-Q 3. It's pretty, well-regarded and has some phase options.

I don't have it, Acon Equalize 2 does me fine for that sort of thing.

[schpaeckulum]

He means old digital technology, as in code. That's different from modern code emulating old analog equipment.

DMG or FabFilter and stay away from Maat.

[Magnut]

Indeed the maat eq technology has been destroyed by a coder in a german livestream It's more their name based on the old algortihmix eqs which makes up the price.

There are many threads in here about eqs, their sounds, their features. Beginning from free to small prices of 50$ up to the "better" ones for 200$. All better than the maat stuff.

[Obsolete462444]

I once came by a thread on another forum where they did a blind test: Maat Orange against (among others) DMG Audio Equilibrium, DDMF LP10, TDR Nova Free Edition and the free QRange by ikjb.

Guess who won? Many users liked the two free EQs more than the 1000 bucks MAAT EQ (now 'only' 500 bucks I guess?). In fact: the MAAT one was voted last by most users.

And the free ikjb QRange, which was named as a pun at the MAAT thEQorange, even has a low latency mode for mixing during tracking and composing! Absolute winner: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/qrange-by-lkjb

[128kbpsMP3]

Thank you all for your opinions and experiences. I will keep you guys updated on my experiences throughout the demo, but it seems there not much love for this company. Did all of you try it also, not that it matters, I'm not judging, the price is really amazingly high, but I would like to know.. did you guys>?

btw I would love to hear those blind tests too, you have a link? I'm also going to check out the alternatives listed, thanks

btw some big names who aren't really the types to 'sell-out' kind of speak very highly, e.g. mr bob katz. Weird nobody likes it lol

[simmo75]

We have all the MAAT plugins here at work and if you’re looking for a workhorse EQ, Blue should be your only choice.
Orange and Red introduce crazy latency and are aimed more at mastering.

I take it you're demoing these very expensive plug-ins?

[Burillo]

when your product range is based on nostalgia among the big guys towards a plugin from 20 years ago, absolutely insane price tag, complete bullshit marketing claims, and a very niche copy protection (that they have since thankfully started to abandon), yes, people tend to not like that, and for good reason.

if you want an expensive workhorse EQ, get Fabfilter Pro-Q3. it's got everything you'd ever want. there are many alternatives with similar DSP pedigree (like CraveDSP EQ, DMGAudio Equilibrium) but without the insane price tag, dishonest marketing tactics and stupid copy protections.

and even then, an EQ is not going to make or break your production, so an argument can be made that it doesn't really matter than much which EQ you use.

[KenjiDeVries]

Until recently there wasn't really a chance to demo them unless you bought an additional codemeter dongle. But the unnecessary high plugin price, the issues with the codemeter protection and the marketing claims pretty much turned off many users. Even "influencer" reviewers needed to go through the hoops.

And as mentioned these eqs are an extended version of other old ones. Meanwhile technology has moved on. The "it costs more so it is better" approach taken here is insane and simply not true. The older guys you mentioned apeaking highly of them are the ones that already knew the Algorithmix stuff, which may was at some point good, 25 years ago We have 2020 and even free stuff gets equal or better results. EQs are not some innovative new technology which noone has fully discoverd yet, it is basic stuff.

[Burillo]

i don't think the issue is that the "technology has moved on" - i don't think there's somewhere to move on to, equalizers are not at all like e.g. tube emulation, where a more accurate model will yield more true-to-life result. a digital EQ is a completely linear device, which means the "technology" doesn't have anywhere to go from where it is right now. linear phase EQ's are well understood. cramping is well-understood. FIR and IIR EQ's are well understood. there's nothing more to the EQ's than the curves, latency and phase response.

as far as i can tell from MAAT's marketing claims, the main differentiating factor is what they call "architectures", which is a fancy way of saying "how gain and Q works". like, yeah, it's probably useful to have an asymmetric boost/cut for workflow purposes, but it's not like you can't replicate a wide boost/narrow cut by just changing the Q. there have been many tests that definitively show that, given the same curve and phase response, you can pretty much null any EQ with any other EQ. there are plenty of linear/digital/analog/mixed phase EQ's (CraveDSP, Pro-Q3, etc.) that will pretty much be able to replicate anything MAAT EQ's have to offer, so the differentiating factor will be the workflow. is it seriously worth that much money for you?

[BlueprintInc]

i don't think the issue is that the "technology has moved on" - i don't think there's somewhere to move on to, equalizers are not at all like e.g. tube emulation, where a more accurate model will yield more true-to-life result. a digital EQ is a completely linear device, which means the "technology" doesn't have anywhere to go from where it is right now. linear phase EQ's are well understood. cramping is well-understood. there's nothing more to the EQ's than the curves, latency and phase response.

I would disagree so far that for exmaple the old eqs were IIR based linear phase which happend to move on for example to the much more convinient zero latency FFT convolution (yes there was a time things like that weren't that common/easy). Additional filter types like tilting have gained popularity.

[Burillo]

i don't think the issue is that the "technology has moved on" - i don't think there's somewhere to move on to, equalizers are not at all like e.g. tube emulation, where a more accurate model will yield more true-to-life result. a digital EQ is a completely linear device, which means the "technology" doesn't have anywhere to go from where it is right now. linear phase EQ's are well understood. cramping is well-understood. there's nothing more to the EQ's than the curves, latency and phase response.

I would disagree so far that for exmaple the old eqs were IIR based linear phase which happend to move on for example to the much more convinient zero latency FFT convolution (yes there was a time things like that weren't that common/easy). Additional filter types like tilting have gained popularity.

there are still great IIR-based EQ's around (like DDMF IIEQPro), they don't sound any worse or better than FIR or FFT-based EQ's.

[BlueprintInc]

i don't think the issue is that the "technology has moved on" - i don't think there's somewhere to move on to, equalizers are not at all like e.g. tube emulation, where a more accurate model will yield more true-to-life result. a digital EQ is a completely linear device, which means the "technology" doesn't have anywhere to go from where it is right now. linear phase EQ's are well understood. cramping is well-understood. there's nothing more to the EQ's than the curves, latency and phase response.

I would disagree so far that for exmaple the old eqs were IIR based linear phase which happend to move on for example to the much more convinient zero latency FFT convolution (yes there was a time things like that weren't that common/easy). Additional filter types like tilting have gained popularity.

there are still great IIR-based EQ's around (like DDMF IIEQPro), they don't sound any worse or better than FIR or FFT-based EQ's.

I didn't say that and I specifically talked about linear phase methods. And that was the point, technology moved on and opened doors, being more performant and/or precise, introducing less latency, adding more types, new ways of calculating filter coefficients and such. Not talking about the pure sound and IIR vs. FIR or so.