Fabfilter Pro-Q 4!

[DCrown]

I've got a $63 upgrade price, but I just don't care enough about anything they added or improved here to be seriously tempted. The instance view is kind of neat. Everything else feels kind of gimicky. If I need resonance suppression, I'll use a plugin that specializes in that. If I need saturation mojo, I'll use a plugin that specializes in that. And I just tend to reach for EQuilibrium and CraveEQ first as-is, and I don't see anything here changing that.

Someone early in the thread was hoping for hardware-inspired curves. I think that would've been much more up my alley. Dave Gamble's been working on other stuff, but something like EQuilibrium's hardware-based curves combined with good saturation modeling (which is a weak point for Fabfilter IMO), would've been interesting. A product that combines the best parts of ProQ3, EQuilibrium, TDR SlickEQ would be something that gets me using less plugins on tracks. Which is what I'd want.

Anyway, I'm just quite underwhelmed. I would've been much more into a ProMB update or updates to ProG and ProDS. Like, ProG with a higher latency "Noiseprint Mode" and newer style GUI would be worthwhile. Or bringing ProMB up to the level of ProC. This feels more like ProQ3.5 to me.

I see it the same way. Upgrade is nice, but I don't think I need to upgrade. There are other plugins that can do some added features better imo

[comfortablynick]

I only own three FF plugins so my upgrade price is $89.50. $75.60 on Plugin Discounts. Meh. Even though I expected to buy this today, I think I'll wait a while.

[cryophonik]

When I stop and consider that I probably use Pro-Q at a ratio of at least 4:1 compared to my second most-used individual plugin and probably 10:1 or higher compared to most other plugins, the difference in price between my upgrade cost ($63) and what I anticipated (probably $40-ish) is ultimately not that important to me. I've spent far more on special-purpose plugins that rarely get used at all, whereas Pro-Q is on almost every track and bus in every one of my projects.

[comfortablynick]

I downloaded the demo just to check it out. So far the only feature I really like is the instance list. Maybe also the attack and release, although it worked pretty well without those already. I also have Nova GE for dynamic EQ duties with a few extra controls.

Also I keep creating bands accidentally by clicking on the plugin; that will take some time to get used to.

[Crowzilla]

I paid 112.50 € for Pro-Q 3 on a 2023 Black Friday deal on Gear4music. To update now, I'd have to pay half of the asking price for the full version, so 84,50 € - it seems a bit steep! Hopefully this update price comes down "soonish" or some other vendor chimes in with a better deal in a couple of months?

[cryophonik]

Also I keep creating bands accidentally by clicking on the plugin; that will take some time to get used to.

Click back a few pages in this thread and you'll see where someone shared the option to turn off the drawing feature, which returns it to the default double-click to create a band.

[DCrown]

Holy shit, that plugin was SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060513184 ... m/eqlp.php

What did Waves Q 10 cost in 1992, 10.000 USD?

[VitaminD]

Holy shit, that plugin was SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060513184 ... m/eqlp.php

What did Waves Q 10 cost in 1992, 10.000 USD?

The earliest list I can find is from 1997 where it is listed at 600. I'm guessing that is why the sonic timeworks is the same price, competing there.

https://web.archive.org/web/19970614131 ... duals.html

Oh yeah plus 100 dollars for the wavekey dongle

[Daimonicon]

Holy shit, that plugin was SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060513184 ... m/eqlp.php

What did Waves Q 10 cost in 1992, 10.000 USD?

I don’t know but 20 years ago you had to pay at least $500-1000 for waves plugins.

[Dr.Gunjah]

As soon as you activate spectral mode for one band, it will add a freaking 5120 samples of latency to that instance. This is more than Soothe2 + Speccraft + Gullfoss combined. That kills it for me as trackspacer/firespacer replacement.
And I've only played with it for half an hour or so, but from a workflow perspective it's only on the meh side so far. Yeah, it's all in one GUI, but that floating bottom bar with freq/gain/etc. gets more and more crowded with a lot of tiny buttons.

Curve drawing is a useless gimmick imo. It's barely faster than just grabbing the line a few times on the locations you need them.
The saturation would be nice if we all wouldn't have 3423432 saturation plugins already (like Saturn2), I doubt I will ever use that.
The instance list also seems like a gimmick... the instances are not named automatically, so they're just called "Pro-Q, Pro-Q(2), Pro-Q(3)" ... what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
The seemless slope is cool, but not worth 60 bucks to me.

I also wonder if they will actually settle on a GUI style at some point. It looks different to Pro-R2 which also looks different to Timeless3/Saturn2/Volcano3 while Twin3 has both, old style and new style knobs. And tbh I do not like the new style at all because it totally depends on the band color if you get a decent contrast or not.

[VitaminD]

The instance list also seems like a gimmick... the instances are not named automatically, so they're just called "Pro-Q, Pro-Q(2), Pro-Q(3)" ... what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

It provides the track name in Cubase 14. I just downloaded the trial and tested it.

[MirkoVanHauten]

As soon as you activate spectral mode for one band, it will add a freaking 5120 samples of latency to that instance. This is more than Soothe2 + Speccraft + Gullfoss combined. That kills it for me as trackspacer/firespacer replacement.
And I've only played with it for half an hour or so, but from a workflow perspective it's only on the meh side so far. Yeah, it's all in one GUI, but that floating bottom bar with freq/gain/etc. gets more and more crowded with a lot of tiny buttons.

Curve drawing is a useless gimmick imo. It's barely faster than just grabbing the line a few times on the locations you need them.
The saturation would be nice if we all wouldn't have 3423432 saturation plugins already (like Saturn2), I doubt I will ever use that.
The instance list also seems like a gimmick... the instances are not named automatically, so they're just called "Pro-Q, Pro-Q(2), Pro-Q(3)" ... what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
The seemless slope is cool, but not worth 60 bucks to me.

I also wonder if they will actually settle on a GUI style at some point. It looks different to Pro-R2 which also looks different to Timeless3/Saturn2/Volcano3 while Twin3 has both, old style and new style knobs. And tbh I do not like the new style at all because it totally depends on the band color if you get a decent contrast or not.

You can adjust the spectral resolution. At low it will add some 3000 samples. I guess that just changes the FFT size in the background to 2048. Nut sure what resolution a tool like trackspacer needs where it's about wide ducking and not surgical Eqing.

Not sure what DAW you're using, but instances are colored and named perfectly fine. Of course your host and plugin format need to support it.

[eerie_audio]

Holy shit, that plugin was SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060513184 ... m/eqlp.php

What did Waves Q 10 cost in 1992, 10.000 USD?

The earliest list I can find is from 1997 where it is listed at 600. I'm guessing that is why the sonic timeworks is the same price, competing there.

https://web.archive.org/web/19970614131 ... duals.html

Oh yeah plus 100 dollars for the wavekey dongle

You do know that at the time it was released, there wasn't a parametric EQ that existed, they invented it. You also have to remember how long ago it was and how little competition actually existed back then. Those prices were aimed at professionals making professional money back then. Times have changed, like they always do.

[VitaminD]

Holy shit, that plugin was SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060513184 ... m/eqlp.php

What did Waves Q 10 cost in 1992, 10.000 USD?

The earliest list I can find is from 1997 where it is listed at 600. I'm guessing that is why the sonic timeworks is the same price, competing there.

https://web.archive.org/web/19970614131 ... duals.html

Oh yeah plus 100 dollars for the wavekey dongle

You do know that at the time it was released, there wasn't a parametric EQ that existed, they invented it. You also have to remember how long ago it was and how little competition actually existed back then. Those prices were aimed at professionals making professional money back then. Times have changed, like they always do.

There wasn't a plugin that existed. That was the first commercially released one.

[eerie_audio]

You do know that at the time it was released, there wasn't a parametric EQ that existed, they invented it. You also have to remember how long ago it was and how little competition actually existed back then. Those prices were aimed at professionals making professional money back then. Times have changed, like they always do.

There wasn't a plugin that existed. That was the first commercially released one.

I assumed you understood that since we are talking about plug-ins and Pro-Q4. I guess never assume someone's intelligence.