Fabfilter Pro-Q 4!

[Niowiad]

Q3 was very underwhelming for me... I ended up upgrading out of boredom after like 3 years on a black friday sale.
It has been my go-to eq but I've been using it in the exact same way I used Q2.
Not even once I went for the dynamic option for its lack of A/R parameters.

This one finally looks much more interesting and it makes me want to buy right now at launch.
Specifically the A/R time constants on the dynamic side and spectral processing are substantial upgrades in my view.

What do you expect to do with spectral processing?

Sounds like a trick question... spectral dynamic processing has been out in a while

For starters and quite frankly we don't know how everything is implemented in Q4 yet.
But assuming it provides the ability to set spectral processing and time constants on a curve, the benefits would consist in being able to more closely detect and target specific resonances on a given frequency range, rather than subtracting the entire curve shape on that range.
This can provide a "cleaner", less "destructive" processing on the source material, but obviously that must be evaluated by ear on a case-by-case basis.

Currently I have MSpectralDynamics for that, which is nice but I wouldn't mind an all-in-one solution of standard eq with added standard and spectral dynamic processing, if Pro-Q4 can provide it.

More a curious question than a trick question .

And I am happy with your answer.

I don't know if there is a definition of spectral processing but for synthesis I often see it associated to the decomposition of sound in sine waves. Here your definition is less extrem and you are refering to frequency ranges which makes sense in this context I guess.

By "frequency range" I was referring to the fact that processing can selectively be applied to a specific part (e.g. with a bell curve placed between 2-7k) rather than "wideband" on the entire signal like some other plugins are set to do.

But yes, similarly to the concept of spectral synthesis, when looking at audio through a spectrum analyzer those are all sinewaves composing the whole sound.
If some sinewaves (due to a variety of reasons in recording and production) get to be too prominent or offending, they're usually called "resonances" to be tamed, individually with a narrow bell/notch, or targeted in group (yet individually since it's spectral) over on a specific range.
Being able to set the range is also helpful if you had a single resonance dancing around, which would be often missed by a static notch.

[bmanic]

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?

Not sure I quite understand what you are asking.

The new spectral dynamics is like Soothe/DSEQ/Waves Curves Equator etc. Has nothing to do with the filters.

The fully customizable filter slope control is also new, meaning you can get absolutely anything and everything in between the normal shapes. This is some seriously hardcore clever mathematics behind all this and the shapes look "more correct" than for instance in Kirchoff EQ (where you also can get inbetween shapes). So I suspect a LOT of work has gone into this feature.

[bmanic]

How much do they usually charge for upgrade?

FabFilter has that dynamic discount thing so depending on how many plugins of theirs you own it varies.. but they are and have always been quite expensive (especially considering the crazy pricing of today's plugins). My guess is around 70 - 80$.

[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?

Not sure I quite understand what you are asking.

The new spectral dynamics is like Soothe/DSEQ/Waves Curves Equator etc. Has nothing to do with the filters.

The fully customizable filter slope control is also new, meaning you can get absolutely anything and everything in between the normal shapes. This is some seriously hardcore clever mathematics behind all this and the shapes look "more correct" than for instance in Kirchoff EQ (where you also can get inbetween shapes). So I suspect a LOT of work has gone into this feature.

Well you did not understood my question but you answered to it perfectly.
Thanks.

[Lesha]

In case you are new to FabFilter pm me for a 10% discount.

Very excited to try it tomorrow!

[Dr.Gunjah]

A nice surprise that it will have spectral balancing. However, it wasn't exactly smart to not reveal this before black friday.
Is it known yet if you can use it with an external sidechain so you can use it like trackspacer?

[mxbf]

overpriced company. Pro-Q is good but a lot has caught up to it, even like built in DAW EQs are basically fine like Bitwig EQ+ or StudioOne Pro EQ (though no mid-side, etc). it's not really worth it imo.

just my opinion which might be unpopular.

The "DYNAMIC EQ" features are OK in Pro-Q but it might as well just combine their Pro-MB with Pro-EQ as its basically the same thing. But they have to be two 200 dollars plugins

[Ploki]

long quote

All the new features are amazing, but i'm still quite sad that they didn't include more curves though, did they ever answer why they didn't do that?

My guess is, because it becomes a hot unwieldy mess of features that you have covered with tons of plugins when you need that specific curve

i don't want 50 options on a dropdown, that's not why i go for ProQ3 or why i reached for ProQ2.
I reach for ProQ3 when i need to EQ something quickly and not kill my CPU, it's an -every track- EQ, not "lets do a pultec here" EQ in my opinion

overpriced company. Pro-Q is good but a lot has caught up to it, even like built in DAW EQs are basically fine like Bitwig EQ+ or StudioOne Pro EQ (though no mid-side, etc). it's not really worth it imo.

just my opinion which might be unpopular.

The "DYNAMIC EQ" features are OK in Pro-Q but it might as well just combine their Pro-MB with Pro-EQ as its basically the same thing. But they have to be two 200 dollars plugins

Dynamic EQ is not supposed to be a multiband compressor, if you can't tell what the difference is and how their usage differs, you probably don't need either. I wan't Pro-MB to go into a different direction than ProQ4 dynamic modes - i want to have ProC2 algos per band rolled into it, up/downward compression at the same time and things like that.
I don't need that in an EQ.
Also the whole bundle can be had for 400 bucks on sale, and considering how reliable these are and how often i use them, they're easily the best purchase i made as far as plugins go

[jtsterays]

long quote

All the new features are amazing, but i'm still quite sad that they didn't include more curves though, did they ever answer why they didn't do that?

My guess is, because it becomes a hot unwieldy mess of features that you have covered with tons of plugins when you need that specific curve

i don't want 50 options on a dropdown, that's not why i go for ProQ3 or why i reached for ProQ2.
I reach for ProQ3 when i need to EQ something quickly and not kill my CPU, it's an -every track- EQ, not "lets do a pultec here" EQ in my opinion

I'm not asking for 50 options though, just take a look at Ozone EQ, they did that really well.

[Ploki]

long quote

All the new features are amazing, but i'm still quite sad that they didn't include more curves though, did they ever answer why they didn't do that?

My guess is, because it becomes a hot unwieldy mess of features that you have covered with tons of plugins when you need that specific curve

i don't want 50 options on a dropdown, that's not why i go for ProQ3 or why i reached for ProQ2.
I reach for ProQ3 when i need to EQ something quickly and not kill my CPU, it's an -every track- EQ, not "lets do a pultec here" EQ in my opinion

I'm not asking for 50 options though, just take a look at Ozone EQ, they did that really well.

How did they do it? I’ve stopped using iZotope a while ago

[jtsterays]

long quote

All the new features are amazing, but i'm still quite sad that they didn't include more curves though, did they ever answer why they didn't do that?

My guess is, because it becomes a hot unwieldy mess of features that you have covered with tons of plugins when you need that specific curve

i don't want 50 options on a dropdown, that's not why i go for ProQ3 or why i reached for ProQ2.
I reach for ProQ3 when i need to EQ something quickly and not kill my CPU, it's an -every track- EQ, not "lets do a pultec here" EQ in my opinion

I'm not asking for 50 options though, just take a look at Ozone EQ, they did that really well.

How did they do it? I’ve stopped using iZotope a while ago

They kept it minimal with visualizations and technical names, unlike Equilibrium where it has like 10 hardware bells type and 9 of them are the same thing, just with different value mapping.

[Ploki]

They kept it minimal with visualizations and technical names, unlike Equilibrium where it has like 10 hardware bells type and 9 of them are the same thing, just with different value mapping.

Decent, but everytime you change shape it would take two menus = more time = less speedy workflow

[jtsterays]

They kept it minimal with visualizations and technical names, unlike Equilibrium where it has like 10 hardware bells type and 9 of them are the same thing, just with different value mapping.

Decent, but everytime you change shape it would take two menus = more time = less speedy workflow

Fabfilter could improve on that, maybe you can only change the shelf type at the bottom floating window, the menu above the node can be the same like right now. At the end of the day, it's an EQ, they should only add features that revolve around EQing. If you're really concerned about feature clutter then you should be upset about the saturation option which is probably just a basic waveshaper, it's better to just add Saturn or something else afterward.

[Ploki]

Fabfilter could improve on that, maybe you can only change the shelf type at the bottom floating window, the menu above the node can be the same like right now. At the end of the day, it's an EQ, they should only add features that revolve around EQing. If you're really concerned about feature clutter then you should be upset about the saturation option which is probably just a basic waveshaper, it's better to just add Saturn or something else afterward.

To be honest, i'm not hyped about the built in saturation

[mxbf]

Dynamic EQ is not supposed to be a multiband compressor, if you can't tell what the difference is and how their usage differs, you probably don't need either. I wan't Pro-MB to go into a different direction than ProQ4 dynamic modes - i want to have ProC2 algos per band rolled into it, up/downward compression at the same time and things like that.
I don't need that in an EQ.
Also the whole bundle can be had for 400 bucks on sale, and considering how reliable these are and how often i use them, they're easily the best purchase i made as far as plugins go

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distincti ... difference

The difference between Dynamic EQ and Multiband Compression is so minor it really makes zero discinerable difference. There's no reason for Dyn EQ not to have fine tune compressor settings for attack release etc, as ProQ.