Fabfilter Pro-Q 4!

[dastewart]

The best thing about Black Friday is the new/updated plugins that get announced afterwards to squeeze any remaining money from your wallet. It's childish and amateurish but this will be insta-upgrade for me.

[hey212]

Have they also added saturation ? There was a drop-down with 'Subtle', 'Clean' and 'Warm' : )

That little icon for the Clean/Subtle/Warm dropdown looks like the universal symbol for a transformer.

[Jac459]

Also I can confirm: Pro-Q4 absolutely kicks ass!

The dynamic EQ section has been greatly improved and is now suuuper powerful. You can change the internal sidechain meaning you can have an EQ node in the bass region that reacts to the high frequencies if you want (great for Kick drums where the EQ listens to the 'click' instead of the woof). And of course you even have access to external sidechain (though just one main one.. not for each EQ node separately).

You also finally have attack and release controls with a very wide range going from super fast to really quite slow.

The new spectral dynamics is really impressive and works exceptionally well. It's not a Soothe killer as it doesn't work exactly the same way nor is it as flexible but it's amazingly useful and absolutely amazing to have it available at the click of the mouse!

The sound quality seems to also have improved somehow. It's probably placebo on my part but at least the Dynamic EQ section sounds better and can't be completely nulled with old Pro-Q3. Whatever they did to it, is good!

Oh and you get extremely fine control over the filter slopes now. You can make beautiful 3dB/octave gentle filters and they are awesome! Heck, why not even 1.5dB/octave if that's your thing!

Overall this is a very solid update to an already amazing plugin. The UI is virtually unchanged except for some refinements in graphics so everybody who was intimately familiar with Pro-Q3 will feel right at home.

The side chaining based on chosen regions as well as the attack release control were surprising absent features of proQ3. Bitwig proposes that by default with a unbeatably simple workflow.

I hope the upgrade price will be measured.

[Jac459]

What curves are you missing?

Pultec bass trick, SSL shelves, Massive Passive high boost, DMG high shelf with the % fully negative or positive + some Q.

A curve table like the filter table of kilohearts (but that would be more for volcano lol).

[Jac459]

Here’s what I find exciting in the promo video, in no particular order:


Saturation Options: Clean, Subtle, and Warm saturation modes.

Didn't this makes volcano obsolete?

[jtsterays]

Here’s what I find exciting in the promo video, in no particular order:


Saturation Options: Clean, Subtle, and Warm saturation modes.

Didn't this makes volcano obsolete?

Volcano is per band, this is output saturation.

[Jac459]

Here’s what I find exciting in the promo video, in no particular order:


Saturation Options: Clean, Subtle, and Warm saturation modes.

Didn't this makes volcano obsolete?

Volcano is per band, this is output saturation.

[MrJubbly]

Here’s what I find exciting in the promo video, in no particular order:

Saturation Options: Clean, Subtle, and Warm saturation modes.

Didn't this makes volcano obsolete?

Volcano is per band, this is output saturation.

Volcano also has more filter styles and its own internal modulation system.

Horses for courses.

[jtsterays]

Is bmanic here? I would like to ask about both Q4 and Saturn. Are the subtle/clean/warm modes just different gain staging?

[Jac459]

Here’s what I find exciting in the promo video, in no particular order:

Saturation Options: Clean, Subtle, and Warm saturation modes.

Didn't this makes volcano obsolete?

Volcano is per band, this is output saturation.

Volcano also has more filter styles and its own internal modulation system.

Horses for courses.

Oh my, that's true....
To my excuse, I just woke up!

[roman.i]

So, is it shit?

[bmanic]

Is bmanic here? I would like to ask about both Q4 and Saturn. Are the subtle/clean/warm modes just different gain staging?

How do you mean? They do operate quite differently at different gain points but I can confirm that they are two completely different algorithms. You can see the harmonic series are different and how they act to your EQ moves/incoming audio is quite different.

Personally I wasn't impressed by the saturation algorithms. I did find them useful in some specific situations but mostly I kept it set to clean. As some kind of competition for dedicated "mojo" plugins or analogue modeled EQs? No, this is not it. Keep in mind that this is 100% subjective. When it comes to saturation there is no right or wrong opinion.

[jtsterays]

Is bmanic here? I would like to ask about both Q4 and Saturn. Are the subtle/clean/warm modes just different gain staging?

How do you mean? They do operate quite differently at different gain points but I can confirm that they are two completely different algorithms. You can see the harmonic series are different and how they act to your EQ moves/incoming audio is quite different.

Personally I wasn't impressed by the saturation algorithms. I did find them useful in some specific situations but mostly I kept it set to clean. As some kind of competition for dedicated "mojo" plugins or analogue modeled EQs? No, this is not it. Keep in mind that this is 100% subjective. When it comes to saturation there is no right or wrong opinion.

Sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant was that when I saw the saturation option in Pro-Q4, first thing I noticed is that there's no drive knob for this so how do you drive it? So I assumed the subtle/clean/warm are just drive amount/gain staging. Then it reminded me of Saturn where it uses the same naming for modes and I remember the subtle/clean/warm modes for each type in that always sounds kinda same-ish, it sounds more like different gain staging rather than different algos (I just pulled up PD, looks like they are different algos).

[Jac459]

Taking advantage of bmanic presence, what are the use cases brought by spectral processing in Q4? I mean there was already brick wall filter which I guess is spectral so what is new? The variable slopes?

[vitocorleone123]

What curves are you missing?

Pultec bass trick, SSL shelves, Massive Passive high boost, DMG high shelf with the % fully negative or positive + some Q.

Everyone has different needs, but I’ve never once thought to myself I needed any of those things. But I’m also not a pro mixer.