SmartEQ2, Gullfoss, Soothe, Neutron - which one you recommend the most and why?

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Do You know other similar plugins like theses in title? Thank You.

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I’ve tried them all and gullfoss is my favorite. I use it on almost everything. It is NOT an auto-eq though. It is an auditory information maximizer. You don’t always want all information on every track to be maximized, so you’ll often want eqs before and after it for handling different tasks.

I wasn’t impressed with soothe when I demoed it. It’s supposed to be an automatic de-resonator...but you have to dial it in, and it uses a lot of cpu and latency. I don’t really get the point when I can just dial in an eq to de-resonate things faster. I dunno, maybe I’m using it wrong.

Haven’t been too impressed with smart eq or neutron. Smart eq has an update that I haven’t tried yet though.

You can also try the free sonible balancer plugin. It’s surprisingly good. No latency and low cpu too.

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Have you tried Zynaptiq Intensity?

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Well Zynaptiq Intensity is really expensive, but I'll try it. Thank You.

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DSEQ is great and reasonably priced.

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Including Intensify, they all do things slightly differently. I have them all (well, except Neutron, which I had but sold). Of them all, for general use on tracks, busses and master, I'd choose Gullfoss because it does the best job of making the audio sound better with less artifacts. Just beware of Soundtheory's unique transfer policy which toggles the license to NFR after the first transfer or if not purchased for full price (eg. if you bough it on sale, its NFR) - Soundtheory told me they would prefer to give a pro-rated refund back rather than do a license transfer, when I asked them.

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+1 on Gullfoss... not an auto EQ... it has to be tweaked and set but nothing i have tried does what it does as well as it does. if used properly it helps remedy masking of frequencies and helps tame resonances. :wink:

i also like and use SmartEQ2 from time to time but mostly use it as a plugin for the old Winamp media player to tweak commercial audio. :)
"There is no strength in numbers... have no such misconception... but when you need me be assured I won't be far away."

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Not sure if they qualify as being as AI focused as the other plugins mentioned in this thread, but the plugins that have had the biggest impact on my mixes are BassRoom and MixRoom.
I think of them more as having a second engineers opinion on my mix, than a 'set and forget' plugin.
They are incredibly good at analysing a commercial mix and then providing EQ suggestions to your mix, in order to improve it.

Soothe 2 is a superb plugin as well. Highly recommended.
I still use Gullfoss, but it's more for adding a bit of sparkle - it doesn't make change the mix to the same degree as BassRoom and MixRoom.

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They are all made for different tasks and not really comparable.
Neutron - all around feature rich channel strip with “automatic” mixing based on ML (don’t know how good it is today, I only have v1, and there it’s not overly convincing)
Soothe, DSEQ - dynamically removing resonances and harshness , deessing , problem fixing
Gullfoss - Dynamic spectral balancing, adding the final 10 percent. Great on the master bus.
SmartEQ - static EQ with automatic learning based on predefined profiles.

So in order to recommend one you need to specify your needs.

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my vote for fabfilter pro-q 3))

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I wonder if SmartEQ 3 is comparable to Gullfoss , now that it has dynamic EQ..? Plus it can do more standard EQ task, plus the group mixing feature seems excellent , whereas Gullfoss seems to be a more 'one trick pony'!?

Anyone have them both, and willing to give an opinion.!?

Cheers :D

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sokoleski wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 2:43 pm I wonder if SmartEQ 3 is comparable to Gullfoss , now that it has dynamic EQ..? Plus it can do more standard EQ task, plus the group mixing feature seems excellent , whereas Gullfoss seems to be a more 'one trick pony'!?

Anyone have them both, and willing to give an opinion.!?

Cheers :D
I have both. They are very different tools. First, Gullfoss is not a one-trick-pony in that it can be used on any audio, tracks, busses, master. It does only do one thing, but I wouldn't call it a one trick pony because it's one thing is so versatile across many use cases. Second, Gullfoss is a broadband processor for cleaning up the spectral content in real time. It's a "goodizer" and it's very effective. SmartEQ2, despite the dynamic filters, is an EQ, not a goodizer. So to me they are very different tools and don't really share much in common that is significant.

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There's also a new one from Mastering The Mix - RESO.
I don't know what to write here that won't be censored, as I can only speak in profanity.

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Also Baby Audio and MSpectral dynamics
Also TEOTE as a "goodizer"

I'd rank Soothe2, Gullfoss and TEOTE at the top (in no particular order) due to ease of use and inability to make them sound bad
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Before purchasing any of the plugins you mention, I would demo them, in addition to how they sound, visually, looking for artifacts (e.g., distortion and aliasing) using Melda's free Mosciliator, to generate a signal through the plugin, and a spectrogram (e.g, the free Span or Manalyzer). It seems that any plugin that has a fast attack/release in terms of changing the waveform is going to create artifacts, and possibly aliasing if it doesn't have sufficient oversampling.

Because my songs are almost mainly acoustic, I favour static EQ over dynamic EQ as static is more transparent. In the current mix, I am working on, I am using two instances of TDR Nova EQ in series on the mix bus, first to static EQ the mix, and second to dynamically, but subtly remove just a few key resonances. The TDR Nova EQ can both match a profile (e.g., another song or pink/brown noise) and auto detect resonances using the plugin's analyzer. So in conclusion, look for transparency, including anti-aliasing (e.g., oversampling).
Last edited by sambaji on Mon Dec 06, 2021 8:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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