Equality VS Pro-Q (final answer, Equality).

[contrary]

I think the developers of DMG are aware that you cannot please all the people all the time! But they are willing to give it a go ! I'm glad that there are Dev's with such ambition and talent who also aim to please all sorts of us audio nerds out here.

It's obvious that the fact they'll be offering their wonderful eq dsp with an alternative GUI that is designed with sound designers and folks who prefer a More modernistic GUI..... (very few knobs and zillions of bands !)

I'm mostly happy with the existing implementation , which I find to be feature rich and very helpful to my meager efforts , whether I'm mixing or mastering !!!!



In short .

VIVA DMG

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[sonicpowa]

So far i can NOT get my head around compassion but i KNOW that with Dave behind it there's got to be something uber about it, so i am stubbornly testing it out more.

That's a bit of problem for me too. It's great but almost too deep, I prefer simple and fast to set compressor.

[DaveGamble]

Hi,

Right. 1.02 Compassion has gone off to beta, so I'm back for a bit

We need to talk workflow

There's been bouncing around discussion of "what type of thing EQuality is designed for" etc, so let me clear all this up.

It's about how you work.

EQuality is designed as a mixing and mastering EQ, with an emphasis on mixing, in the same way that a mixing desk EQ is designed for mixing.

Some people like to mix analogue, regardless of any sonic traits, simply because that's how they're used to working; all the controls in front of them, all values can be read at a glance, finite number of bands (so you concentrate on fixing the most important things, and so you have a threshold for what material you accept and what you reject. Mute button is there for a CREATIVE reason too. )
Same people use plugins like the Sonnox, Sonalksis, UAD Cambridge - you know the ones. These are the guys who've switched over to EQuality. Post-production (films and that) have also moved over to EQuality in droves.
It's studying their workflow and their requirements (people from that tradition of mixing) that led to the EQuality design. And I stand by it. I'm from that old-school too (we didn't have infinite band counts back at Focusrite... but we did have solid aluminium fascias ), and EQuality works the same way as my head does. For me and plenty others like me, it's literally perfect. We honed it to be that way for months.

But not everyone engineers the same way. It would be mad to think that they did! But I started with what I knew (and because I wanted an EQ I'd use myself). And that's how we got to here.

People who use Pro-Q are not looking for something with a fixed number of bands. That would be a limitation for them, yet it's an advantage for the likes of me. Having no more than two shelves is great for me, because it forces me to focus on what changes I want to make. But that's a limitation for a Pro-Q user.

So here are these two cultures. They're really different. I know a lot more about one than I do the other.
I can see that I've neglected this other culture, so I'm going to fix that. But I'm going to need your input on this.
Designing EQuality was fairly easy, because I know a lot of people from that camp, and I can observe their working processes to figure out the design criterion.

I can sit for as long as you want with Pro-Q, but I won't "get it". Because it's not what I was taught, nor what I've learned.

So, here's my plan: I'm going to pester you lot for design ideas on this new EQ, and ask tonnes of seemingly stupid questions, until I can extrapolate how your workflow actually works. And then I'll take that and map out how this new EQ needs to be. A few points are really obvious: loads of multi-mode bands, low cpu, etc... but that's a specification, not a design

I'll kick this off with a new thread in a week or so

Dave.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[A.M. Gold]

Dave, I think I understand what your concept was, but on the other hand, some people feel like cattle going down a chute when too many design factors are prearranged for them. Obviously in the h/w world this kind of thing is inevitable, but I think many people who use plug-ins feel it shouldn't be that way in the virtual world because it isn't necessary.

There are processing limitations but everything can be scalable. I think the feedback you have been getting on this is coming out of that mentality (i.e. why have h/w style limitations in software form when you aren't literally emulating a specific piece of hardware?).

[Breeze]

I gave Pro-Q a shot when it was first released but I heard some weird distortions while I was testing it and passed on it right away. To be fair, I think this got resolved in later revisions. But I loved the GUI! Sound as art, really. I find there's a lot of more effort put into GUIs for us sound people than in most other industries. Maybe we're a tad spoiled?

EQuality was clean and effective from day one. To be honest I didn't absolutely need it but I liked the sound and features... and the opening price made sense to my wallet. Unless there's some tried and true setting I need from my older EQ's, I use it more often than any other because it's adaptable to so many uses and does them all well.

[bmanic]

I can sit for as long as you want with Pro-Q, but I won't "get it". Because it's not what I was taught, nor what I've learned.

I think you are putting way too much emphasis on the fact that Pro-Q has the capability of up to 24 bands. That is NOT what makes it brilliant.

The brilliant part is how it's GUI works. I can literally fix any typical EQ problem within about 3 seconds using Pro-Q. How? I simply double click exactly where I want the boost or cut, at the exact location of the required amount of boost or cut. If I need to change the Q I simply hold the CTRL key+drag or a quick flick of the mouse wheel. Done.

If I need a filter or a shelf, I simply click in the appropriate area (filters being created approximately below 60hz and above 15khz marks, shelves between 80-120hz and 8-15kHz).

Once you get used to this workflow, there simply is not any faster way of doing it. No messing with virtual knobs, no staring at tiny interfaces and tiny numbers. It's just visually right there. Easy to read, easy to use.

.. now if a person really needs a knob, they can have that as well. A very precise knob at that, with a certain "weight"/precision to it, not found in the EQuality knobs (probably a sub-pixel accuracy thing on the GUI side and intelligent "ballistics" on the mouse movement side. If you move the mouse slowly, you get fine tuning of values, move it fast and you get larger jumps of values and quicker knob response. Extremely intuitive to use. This is true for mouse wheel behavior as well. Spin it fast and you get large changes, spin it slowly and you get small changes in parameter values).

This is in my opinion what makes Pro-Q special.

Cheers!
bManic

[kelldammit]

Unfortunately our minds are too susceptible to the placebo effect to truly be able to trust our own opinions when it comes to these very subtle things. <snipped for brevity>
Cheers!
bManic

I do agree with everything you said. However, to be fair, there's a difference between "detecting" slight placebic nuances, and dialing in the usual settings, and going "wtf?"

k

[lightsfadelow]

I don't really get why people want DMG to clone Pro-Q. The plugin space is pretty limited with a small number of devs and the unfortunate part is that so many of them build similar plugins when they could be applying their creativity and passion to create NEW concepts. Do we really need someone who makes a great EQ to clone another great EQ? We have 2 great EQs now that behave well for 2 different workflows. Great! Lots of great!

I don't think a redundancy of EQs is really what the plugin space needs when there's the opportunity for fresh thinking from talented devs like Dave.

But that's just me...

[A.M. Gold]

I'll tell you why I bought EQuality:

1) I thought the high boost was the best I'd heard so far in plug-ins (not having tried the monumentally-priced Algorithmix EQ's).

2) I got the impression that Dave Gamble was a smart guy and a good developer (which I still think is true).

The design structure/limitations were not a motivation for me. I certainly didn't buy it because it had knobs and a set number of bands.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[ouroboros]

it's fine, ttoz - hang in there!

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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