Fabfilter Pro-Q 4!

[Synthman2000]

The more you divert concentrated focus from ears to visual stimuli the less discriminatory your hearing is towards the instantaneous facets of a sound which produce the whole. And that is one sound alone never mind in a complex mix down.

Looking at a spectrum takes no account at all of what is heard in your specific listening environment.

Just another band aid and obstacle in the way of true learning.

A good plasterer can do a wonderfully smooth job with 1 or 2 tools. Having 20 complex tools does not make a job end result become good. In fact if you have missed the fundamentals you have missed something big. And chances are you will carry this lack of ability to make a good decisions onwards and end up with even greater difficulty recovering from the mess you end up in.

I appreciate good tools and the advantages they can bring to an end result, but it is very important to be able to hear, and learn in other ways, with great clarity what is fundamental. Otherwise you will easily band aid yourself into even more complex unfathomable audio problems.

[Funk Dracula]

My upgrade price was too high for a bunch of new features I'm fairly confident I wouldn't actually use.

- No way I'm ever using the sketch EQ

- I have access to All Pass filters in Bitwig

- The instance thing looks nice, but it would force me to throw Q4 on every track, and I've never worked this way. There is just no way I'd paint myself into a corner by only using Q4's across an entire session just to take advantage of and morph myself into working this way, especially considering I have a "new" main digital EQ I reach for that isn't Fabfilter, but Toneboosters. I also use a few vintage modeled EQ's for quick limited work, like Pulteq's for example. This is the same thing that ended up happening with the collision detection feature across instances of Q3... I never used that feature because Q3's weren't present across my entire session. It's a neat feature on paper, but it never got used in actual practice.

- I can't comment on the saturation.

- I was excited about the Spectral Dynamics of the Pro Q4, but for a 75 dollar upgrade price, I ventured over to the Spec Craft webpage and picked that up for 69 dollars instead. I feel like for the convenance of having a somewhat downgraded and less tweakable spectral dynamics processer being right there in my digital EQ, using that digital EQ as my EQ is a downgrade from the filters I now always want access to in the Toneboosters Equalizer Pro, so I figured I might as well throw my money at a dedicated and more comprehensive spectral dynamics plug-in that's cheaper than my upgrade price for Q4.

Cheers

[MrJubbly]

While Bitwig Studio and CLAP plugins aren't specifically mentioned in the documentation, I'm happy to confirm that track names and colors in the Instance List work flawlessly in the CLAP version of Pro-Q 4 in Bitwig Studio 5.3 beta 2.

Quoting the "Instance List" documentation:

When using the VST3 plug-in in DAWs like Studio One, Cubase or Ableton Live, Pro-Q 4 instances know the track order and color of the track they are placed on.

In FL Studio, the CLAP version of Pro-Q 4 shows neither the instance list names nor colours.

Meanwhile, the VST3 version of Pro-Q 4 shows only the instance list names, but not any channel or mixer/playlist track colours.

At 3:20 in the above video, Dan Worrall explains that the instance names/colours currently only works for the VST3 format of Pro-Q 4.

He then states that Fabfilter are in communication with other DAW developers to bring the functionality also to AAX and AU versions. But no mention of support of this feature for the CLAP format?

Does anyone with CLAP expertise know of any reason why this isn't currently supported in FF's CLAP format of Pro-Q 4? Or whether that format should also be able to support this feature?

[Dr.Gunjah]

The more you divert concentrated focus from ears to visual stimuli the less discriminatory your hearing is towards the instantaneous facets of a sound which produce the whole. And that is one sound alone never mind in a complex mix down.

Looking at a spectrum takes no account at all of what is heard in your specific listening environment.

Just another band aid and obstacle in the way of true learning.

A good plasterer can do a wonderfully smooth job with 1 or 2 tools. Having 20 complex tools does not make a job end result become good. In fact if you have missed the fundamentals you have missed something big. And chances are you will carry this lack of ability to make a good decisions onwards and end up with even greater difficulty recovering from the mess you end up in.

I appreciate good tools and the advantages they can bring to an end result, but it is very important to be able to hear, and learn in other ways, with great clarity what is fundamental. Otherwise you will easily band aid yourself into even more complex unfathomable audio problems.

"... and now you kids get off my lawn!!!"

[LoveEnigma18]

It's a subjective thing and while I may still upgrade, it's starting to feel that this upgrade is not essential.

[kinkajou]

I'd like to know which EQ is lighter on CPU (MAC and PC) - Pro-Q 4 or Kirchhoff? Is it possible to compare them?
Mainly for the "bread and butter" use cases (simple EQing, dynamic EQ....), not all the fancy shiny stuff...

[FakeNatty]

It's a subjective thing and while I may still upgrade, it's starting to feel that this upgrade is not essential.

The price is especially inessentially high

[Ploki]

I'd like to know which EQ is lighter on CPU (MAC and PC) - Pro-Q 4 or Kirchhoff? Is it possible to compare them?
Mainly for the "bread and butter" use cases (simple EQing, dynamic EQ....), not all the fancy shiny stuff...

ProQ, no contest.

[MrJubbly]

It's a subjective thing and while I may still upgrade, it's starting to feel that this upgrade is not essential.

The price is especially inessentially high

And yet worth every single penny.

...imho, ymmv.

[MrJubbly]

I'd like to know which EQ is lighter on CPU (MAC and PC) - Pro-Q 4 or Kirchhoff? Is it possible to compare them?
Mainly for the "bread and butter" use cases (simple EQing, dynamic EQ....), not all the fancy shiny stuff...

I don't use Kirchhoff, so can't comment on that. However,...

Why don't you demo it and find out? The 30 day Trial is free.

As others have already said, the base Pro-Q functionality is as CPU-light as it ever was, comparable to many stock DAW plugins.

The newer features may add some additional latency and CPU bump, ranging from slight to more noticeable, depending on each user's device.

For me personally, having briefly tested this plugin on my existing projects (substituting previous Pro-Q 3 instances for Pro-Q 4) and enabling/utilising the newer Spectral features, etc., I expect to continue using v4 just as frequently within all my future projects as I previously did with v3.

[kraster]

The more you divert concentrated focus from ears to visual stimuli the less discriminatory your hearing is towards the instantaneous facets of a sound which produce the whole. And that is one sound alone never mind in a complex mix down.

Looking at a spectrum takes no account at all of what is heard in your specific listening environment.

Just another band aid and obstacle in the way of true learning.

A good plasterer can do a wonderfully smooth job with 1 or 2 tools. Having 20 complex tools does not make a job end result become good. In fact if you have missed the fundamentals you have missed something big. And chances are you will carry this lack of ability to make a good decisions onwards and end up with even greater difficulty recovering from the mess you end up in.

I appreciate good tools and the advantages they can bring to an end result, but it is very important to be able to hear, and learn in other ways, with great clarity what is fundamental. Otherwise you will easily band aid yourself into even more complex unfathomable audio problems.

You can get plastering machines that can plaster an entire room in a few minutes.

These kinds of ascetic takes on modern technology are odd to me.

I don't buy the fact that visual aids somehow lessen your hearing acuity.

Nobody serious is looking at a spectral meter in isolation without actually listening to what's going on.

A spectral meter is a visual representation of the sound. That's it.

It can help pinpoint things you actually hear.

If you have a signal that's dense in a certain frequency range you can use these aids (not bandaids) to pinpoint what it is that you're hearing. You then use the tools and listen.

They're there to assist not replace.

I think being wedded to any particular ideology about music production is actually the most restrictive thing.

I spent years recording on tape and using consoles and I enjoyed it but I would never put any result down to the technology itself. I've had equally enjoyable and fruitful times with purely digital approaches.

It's up to the operator's discretion what to do with the tech and that absolutely entails accounting for musical considerations. Not every technological development is some kind of heresy.

[Jac459]

My upgrade price was too high for a bunch of new features I'm fairly confident I wouldn't actually use.

- No way I'm ever using the sketch EQ

- I have access to All Pass filters in Bitwig

- The instance thing looks nice, but it would force me to throw Q4 on every track, and I've never worked this way. There is just no way I'd paint myself into a corner by only using Q4's across an entire session just to take advantage of and morph myself into working this way, especially considering I have a "new" main digital EQ I reach for that isn't Fabfilter, but Toneboosters. I also use a few vintage modeled EQ's for quick limited work, like Pulteq's for example. This is the same thing that ended up happening with the collision detection feature across instances of Q3... I never used that feature because Q3's weren't present across my entire session. It's a neat feature on paper, but it never got used in actual practice.

- I can't comment on the saturation.

- I was excited about the Spectral Dynamics of the Pro Q4, but for a 75 dollar upgrade price, I ventured over to the Spec Craft webpage and picked that up for 69 dollars instead. I feel like for the convenance of having a somewhat downgraded and less tweakable spectral dynamics processer being right there in my digital EQ, using that digital EQ as my EQ is a downgrade from the filters I now always want access to in the Toneboosters Equalizer Pro, so I figured I might as well throw my money at a dedicated and more comprehensive spectral dynamics plug-in that's cheaper than my upgrade price for Q4.

Cheers

No word about the finally good implementation of side chaining ? The most important new feature imho.

[kraster]

As others have pointed out Pro Q isn't just a checklist of features. No EQ plugin is.

What Fabfilter excel at is bringing those features together in a cohesive package.

The UI and UX pretty much best in class.

I've used a whole bunch of other like Kirchhoff and that's the most standout thing. It may have more bells and whistles but the moment to moment operation and experience is just subpar compared to Pro Q.

Ergonomics, stability, responsiveness, performance are really the most essential part of a bread and butter utility plugin like an EQ and there's nothing out there, imho, that gets all of that as well as Pro Q.

Version 4 simply builds on that paradigm.

The changes like sketching, instancing and spectral dynamics will ultimately save me time so whatever amount of money (60 euro in my case) will pay for itself in a few days.

[JanuszPelc]

While Bitwig Studio and CLAP plugins aren't specifically mentioned in the documentation, I'm happy to confirm that track names and colors in the Instance List work flawlessly in the CLAP version of Pro-Q 4 in Bitwig Studio 5.3 beta 2.

Quoting the "Instance List" documentation:

When using the VST3 plug-in in DAWs like Studio One, Cubase or Ableton Live, Pro-Q 4 instances know the track order and color of the track they are placed on.

In FL Studio, the CLAP version of Pro-Q 4 shows neither the instance list names nor colours.

Meanwhile, the VST3 version of Pro-Q 4 shows only the instance list names, but not any channel or mixer/playlist track colours.

At 3:20 in the above video, Dan Worrall explains that the instance names/colours currently only works for the VST3 format of Pro-Q 4.

He then states that Fabfilter are in communication with other DAW developers to bring the functionality also to AAX and AU versions. But no mention of support of this feature for the CLAP format?

Does anyone with CLAP expertise know of any reason why this isn't currently supported in FF's CLAP format of Pro-Q 4? Or whether that format should also be able to support this feature?

You’re quoting my post, in which I confirm that, based on my own testing, this works flawlessly in the CLAP version of Pro-Q 4 in Bitwig.

[Dr.Gunjah]

Automatic naming does not work in Reaper with the CLAP version, but the VST3 version works.