PlugInBoutique Scaler EQ just released today!

[MountainKing]

If you want every track to sound like there's Disperser on it, this is the plugin you should use.

Could you please explain this?

[CinningBao]

If you want every track to sound like there's Disperser on it, this is the plugin you should use.

I said this on gearspace and was met with 'that's just a visualisation' so I'm not sure what glue they're on but it's better than mine.

[Ploki]

If you want every track to sound like there's Disperser on it, this is the plugin you should use.

Could you please explain this?

Whenever a transients passes through such aggressive phase distortion, the frequencies the transient is made from are dispersed in time, effectively smearing it.
Disperser is an allpass filter that only affects phase.
The more agressive the phase distortion, the more are transients smeared.
If you automate frequency on such filters it will sounds like slight pitch shifting as well (due to shifting time delays)

i use allpass filters often so i hear phase smacking immediately:)

In short, this type of filtering will kill any sound with transients. Sawtooths will change in timbre radically, attacks will sound different, and at one point it sounds like comb filtering.
It will also ring like hell.
This is either a super creative destruction filter tool, or a specific problem solver used with great caution.

Even if you accept that this in any way makes sense to begin with, which i dont

It also explains why they ignored every "what about phase response" comment on the live stream.

If you switched this to linearphase it would cause a ton of preringing.
HighQ filters just behave this way.

I said this on gearspace and was met with 'that's just a visualisation' so I'm not sure what glue they're on but it's better than mine.

Lol yeah. the 500$ power cable crowd be like that

[onerob]

Scaler EQ has similarities to FilterOrgan, which has been around for some time.

https://www.filterorgan.com/

[kraster]

If you want every track to sound like there's Disperser on it, this is the plugin you should use.

Could you please explain this?

Whenever a transients passes through such aggressive phase distortion, the frequencies the transient is made from are dispersed in time, effectively smearing it.
Disperser is an allpass filter that only affects phase.
The more agressive the phase distortion, the more are transients smeared.
If you automate frequency on such filters it will sounds like slight pitch shifting as well (due to shifting time delays)

i use allpass filters often so i hear phase smacking immediately:)

In short, this type of filtering will kill any sound with transients. Sawtooths will change in timbre radically, attacks will sound different, and at one point it sounds like comb filtering.
It will also ring like hell.
This is either a super creative destruction filter tool, or a specific problem solver used with great caution.

Even if you accept that this in any way makes sense to begin with, which i dont

It also explains why they ignored every "what about phase response" comment on the live stream.

If you switched this to linearphase it would cause a ton of preringing.
HighQ filters just behave this way.

I said this on gearspace and was met with 'that's just a visualisation' so I'm not sure what glue they're on but it's better than mine.

Lol yeah. the 500$ power cable crowd be like that

Yeah I noticed the responses to questions about phase being very handwavy.

I get the sense that people think that phase is some mysterious quality of audio where in reality it's pretty much a fundamental concept that needs to be treated with care. PARTICULARLY with an EQ.

They said they'd look into linear phase.

Well good luck with that....

I feel this would be better sold as an effect rather than the problem solving "musical eq" that it's being sold as.

This sounds like in terms of "musicality" it would cause more problems than it would solve.

[MountainKing]

If you want every track to sound like there's Disperser on it, this is the plugin you should use.

Could you please explain this?

Whenever a transients passes through such aggressive phase distortion, the frequencies the transient is made from are dispersed in time, effectively smearing it.
Disperser is an allpass filter that only affects phase.
The more agressive the phase distortion, the more are transients smeared.
If you automate frequency on such filters it will sounds like slight pitch shifting as well (due to shifting time delays)

i use allpass filters often so i hear phase smacking immediately:)

In short, this type of filtering will kill any sound with transients. Sawtooths will change in timbre radically, attacks will sound different, and at one point it sounds like comb filtering.
It will also ring like hell.
This is either a super creative destruction filter tool, or a specific problem solver used with great caution.

Even if you accept that this in any way makes sense to begin with, which i dont

It also explains why they ignored every "what about phase response" comment on the live stream.

If you switched this to linearphase it would cause a ton of preringing.
HighQ filters just behave this way.

Wow! Many thanks for your explanation. Great stuff.

Seems we have to think differently about this thing...

[HOTF]

I think it could be a cool sound design tool but for mixing purposes idk man... it's cool to see companies try new things

[kraster]

I feel like all it will do is sterilise your music, I guess if that's your goal for some really cold and pristine sound, but most music, it's the imperfections that are part of the perfection

Maybe. Will look forward to trying it. But once upon a time didn't zynaptic do something like this with adaptaverb? I guess the difference with this one is actually applying a musical scale to it.

The reason I don't like the patent is because I have low confidence that this particular software maker will make a top shelf EQ out of it with all the best DSP. I would much rather see some of the other high equality EQ plugin makers discover this as a useful mode and add it, with superior DSP inside. well hahaha, that is exactly why they got the patent to prevent that from happening...so it is what it is...

we shall see how it sounds. people have had EQ's with keyboards along the bottom for a long time already, but as best as I can tell, this is the first one that would let you quickly apply a scale..which is really just a preset of bands if you think about it...not exactly revolutionary and it's debatable that is enough to merit a patent if you ask me

Adaptiverb uses resynthesis by extracting tonal data from the input signal before it's fed into the reverb. It then uses a post process to compare the output to the input to avoid clashing frequencies.

This is fine in a reverb like Adaptiverb since you're not really worried about transient information.

In an EQ it is more often a liability for the same reason.

[aberration123]

eq.jpg

[Funky40]

To tailor or help create synthetic sounds it is helpful.
its a good tool for some things. Quick and intuitiv.

I demoed also ApQualiser in parallel. Its entirely different to me, taking the UI also into account.
I ended up doing completly different things with both.
Only tested on synthetic sound design/creation/enhancement.
Both were finally complementing each other quite nicely for me.

The YT-Demo was making "to my ears" the mix clearer.
But i really didn´t liked the guitar. the vocals had also notable artefacts.
So, the YT-dude was -to my perceiption- just telling the useful aspects, and completly overlooked the others.

Its not creating anything a type of music i´d want to get as a listener.
Guess its a question of: "where to take it and where to stop ?"
....similar as is -imho- with todays clipper usages.

[neverbefore]

eq.jpg

I thought this first too but harmonic peaks (apQualizr) are not scale based peaks - which is what ScalerEQ is doing

So far I find Scaler EQ pretty useful across a range of uses. Dfferent to apQualizr/Shade etc all of which have their own range of uses.

I guess the phase thing might be annoying if you do lots of drums and sharp transient music (and then of course using it only on those tracks) but the width of the peaks / troughs is not fixed and I dont know how noticable it would be in common listening situations using the wider settings at the sorts of small levels that 'sweetening' requires (rather than 'effecting')

[davidec]

Hi guys thanks for all the feedback, I get it that people are concerned about phase. Particularly when it comes to something as important as EQ. The reason I wanted this EQ made was to incorporate mixing and mastering processes I have been using throughout my career in one box. I wasn't asked any questions about phase during the live stream as the comments are fed to me by PIB otherwise of course I would have answered them. I have posted this on our forum that explains our decision process throughout the development of Scaler EQ. I'd also like to state that I love Scaler EQ, it's not a gimmick for me but something I am using on a daily basis in my mixing, mastering and producing. We were careful in having several major artists involved in the creation and development of Scaler EQ so we could deliver a serious tool. Finally common sense prevails, particularly with the unique features that Scaler EQ has. Notching lots of filters in the bottom end for example is going to cause post filter decay, you will hear that and we have a smart mode to minimise that. Aside from that it's the old if it sounds right it is right and Scaler EQ sounds so right to me. Please do check through my post here for my explantation of our use of minimum phase, zero latency where I reference posts from FabFilter Dan Worrall and Kristian Kohle. Happy to answer any questions and I would love you all to try out Scaler EQ to get your thoughts. Cheers, Davide Carbone
PS - thanks very much for the support we have received so far.
https://forum.scalerplugin.com/t/minimu ... logy/15046

[neverbefore]

Hi guys thanks for all the feedback, I get it that people are concerned about phase. Particularly when it comes to something as important as EQ. The reason I wanted this EQ made was to incorporate mixing and mastering processes I have been using throughout my career in one box. I wasn't asked any questions about phase during the live stream as the comments are fed to me by PIB otherwise of course I would have answered them. I have posted this on our forum that explains our decision process throughout the development of Scaler EQ. I'd also like to state that I love Scaler EQ, it's not a gimmick for me but something I am using on a daily basis in my mixing, mastering and producing. We were careful in having several major artists involved in the creation and development of Scaler EQ so we could deliver a serious tool. Finally common sense prevails, particularly with the unique features that Scaler EQ has. Notching lots of filters in the bottom end in the bottom end for example is going to cause post filter decay, you will hear that and we have a smart mode to minimise that. Aside from that it's the old if it sounds right it is right and Scaler EQ sounds so right to me. Please do check through my post here for my explantation of our use of minimum phase, zero latency where I reference posts from FabFilter Dan Worrall and Kristian Kohle. Happy to answer any questions and I would love you all to try out Scaler EQ to get your thoughts. Cheers, Davide Carbone
PS - thanks very much for the support we have received so far.
https://forum.scalerplugin.com/t/minimu ... logy/15046

excellent article davide - I am enjoying what Scaler EQ offers. Congratulations from me

[Ploki]

Hi guys thanks for all the feedback, I get it that people are concerned about phase. Particularly when it comes to something as important as EQ. The reason I wanted this EQ made was to incorporate mixing and mastering processes I have been using throughout my career in one box. I wasn't asked any questions about phase during the live stream as the comments are fed to me by PIB otherwise of course I would have answered them. I have posted this on our forum that explains our decision process throughout the development of Scaler EQ. I'd also like to state that I love Scaler EQ, it's not a gimmick for me but something I am using on a daily basis in my mixing, mastering and producing. We were careful in having several major artists involved in the creation and development of Scaler EQ so we could deliver a serious tool. Finally common sense prevails, particularly with the unique features that Scaler EQ has. Notching lots of filters in the bottom end for example is going to cause post filter decay, you will hear that and we have a smart mode to minimise that. Aside from that it's the old if it sounds right it is right and Scaler EQ sounds so right to me. Please do check through my post here for my explantation of our use of minimum phase, zero latency where I reference posts from FabFilter Dan Worrall and Kristian Kohle. Happy to answer any questions and I would love you all to try out Scaler EQ to get your thoughts. Cheers, Davide Carbone
PS - thanks very much for the support we have received so far.
https://forum.scalerplugin.com/t/minimu ... logy/15046

The phase question was asked at least 5 timed i was there and i joined late

It’s not just filter decay, it’s also messed up group delay from the amount of narrow Q filters.

Could you explain what problems does this eq solve?

The mastering example in your live stream sounded odd imo, the transients on vocals had obvious phase distortion artefacts and sounded fuzzy. Dry sound was absolutely better than processed with scalerEQ when you did a/b.

Also there’s the obvious elephant in the room that most music isn’t locked on the exact frequencies of the key and that inharmonic content is not wrong by itself.
The way it works, when you select c major for example all frequencies of C major are boosted/notched.
For some those will be fundamentals, for others those will be harmonics, for some other it wont even be harmonics due to inharmonicity, but because phase distortion is there it will mush the transients anyway.
And if you dip in the mids, a low octave will now effectively sound different then a higher octave because different harmonics will be cut/boosted.

Re minimal/linear:
I prefer minimal phase 90% of the time I work, but i also practically never use such highQ notches except for some really specific resonances in snares or some bad vocal recordings.
Bunched HighQ peak filters are the problem, not the fact that they’re minimal/linear phase, in my opinion.

So I did download the demo, tried it, got some cool odd resonator fx and some transient smearing i usually do with Volcano + allpass, but as a serious mixing tool i’m very sceptic.
As a mastering tool, this thing is way too destructive to everything you put through.

It’s like when baby audio did the cheap soothe2 clone and suddenly for 3 months i had to tell clients to please disable it and let me do what they’re paying me to do.

There’s also the fact that the magic shelf is just a pultec type shelf with normal shelf visual overlay. What purpose could that possibly serve? you dont need the normal graphic if you’re doing the pultec thing, just display it as it is, it will only cause confusion.

[Harry_HH]

the mastering example on vocals on the livestream right now sounds pretty bad :/

The plugin looks interesting - had deserved much better presentation than this.