Sonic Flavours DQ7 EQ

[bduffy]

http://www.deviceplug-ins.com/eq2.htm

Holy JEEZ that is one wild interface!

[aMUSEd]

Too expensive for me (just for an eq)

[bduffy]

And you have to have a SCOPE card too...

[aMUSEd]

I have that (two actually) - just not convinced eqs make that much of a difference to my music for me to pay for one. There seems to be so much bs and mystification in sales of eq's.

[bduffy]

I have that (two actually) - just not convinced eqs make that much of a difference to my music for me to pay for one. There seems to be so much bs and mystification in sales of eq's.

Yeah, that goes for a lot of things! Like with this DQ7, I had a certain expectation in my head last night, then when I just critically listen to it today, without hype, etc, it sounds fine. I'm glad you're not convinced that EQ's make a big difference in your music - lord knows I'm convinced I need them, so I would be willing to break the bank for a miraculous EQ. But you remind me to filter out hype when deciding.

[VanLichten]

Mr. Amused, give the Ison EQ Demo a try; also, there is a
cheaper version.
And don't forget to d/L the demo of their new Compressor; best software Comp, period.

(I am not payed nor do i own them, but i love to ).

[greg]

I want to be able to grab the node and sweep without having to switch to the top Filter Head to sweep; it makes quick tests more difficult. And I wanted to be able to bypass the EQ band by clicking on its name in the Filer Head.

Thanks bduffy for your kind words. Didn't feel offended at all. I just didn't understand the word "coldness" related to our DQ7. The question was only out of curiosity.

You don't have to switch to the top filter head to change the frequency. Just hold the control key while adjusting and you're fine. We did this to prevent you from errorously changing the frequency while tweaking the boost.
When you have like 20+ EQ's open during a mix (with a CPU friendly EQ this is possible) you probably won't memorise all frequency settings and in this way we prevented you from making small but sometimes dramatic mistakes without even noticing (especially during long and tiring sessions). You wanted to be able to bypass the band by clicking on its name in the filer head. You can do so in the top right corner of the DQ7. However I understand your wish very clearly. I'll ask my collegue who programmed and designed the DQ7 to answer this one.

[aMUSEd]

I will. I do have the full Mix and Mastering bundle already though which has a good analog modelling compressor. Maybe my ears aren't sensitive enough to get the eq's magic - they all sound the same to me (eg tried all the Voxengo demos and couldn't really tell the difference between them).

[bmanic]

I would have to say that Sonic Flavours EQ main competiton comes from a free plugin, namely posihfopit. After 15 minutes of trying your eq I came to the conclusion that it doesn't really offer anything vastly superior, sound nor feature wise, compared to the posihfopit eq. My needs have been thoroughly satisfied with freeware, mainly posihfopit and PLPar4EQ. For flavour I have hydratone and sonalksis. It's a very crowded market and you need something special to hit through.

Why not include internal Mid/Side matrix in your eq as an added little bonus? You already have separate L/R control so why not give the user a single button to do Mid/Side instead? It is features like this that would set your eq apart from the competition.

Here's a little test that I usually run new eq's trough (both hardware and software). Boost +12dB on a closed hihat sample around 2 to 5 kHz and listen carefully to the transient. Same goes for cutting, cut around the same frequency with a narrow Q and listen to what happens. This is where certain EQ's start to brutally "shape" the transient. The high-end ones keep the transient intact (PLpar, weiss, algorithmics etc). Btw, I had some time to play with the weiss EQ, again, at the AES conference and I have to take back what I have said before: PLParEQ is NOT superior to it. I truly thought this was the case but damn that weiss unit is nice (I don't like it in linear phase mode though).

The CPU usage is very good and I would heartily recommend your plugin to anybody who is after their first track eq unless there wasn't so nice free ones or far cheaper alternatives around. I found the controls quite intuitive after I figured out that keeping CTRL down allowed me to drag the EQ around normally. The GUI is maybe a bit too large but that's a minor niggle.

Overall: A quite good eq with a clear GUI and superb CPU usage. Unfortunately it drowns in the masses of freeware and cheap alternatives as it doesn't offer anything superior nor unique.

My 2 cents worth,
bManic

[bduffy]

I want to be able to grab the node and sweep without having to switch to the top Filter Head to sweep; it makes quick tests more difficult. And I wanted to be able to bypass the EQ band by clicking on its name in the Filer Head.

Thanks bduffy for your kind words. Didn't feel offended at all. I just didn't understand the word "coldness" related to our DQ7. The question was only out of curiosity.

You don't have to switch to the top filter head to change the frequency. Just hold the control key while adjusting and you're fine. We did this to prevent you from errorously changing the frequency while tweaking the boost.
When you have like 20+ EQ's open during a mix (with a CPU friendly EQ this is possible) you probably won't memorise all frequency settings and in this way we prevented you from making small but sometimes dramatic mistakes without even noticing (especially during long and tiring sessions). You wanted to be able to bypass the band by clicking on its name in the filer head. You can do so in the top right corner of the DQ7. However I understand your wish very clearly. I'll ask my collegue who programmed and designed the DQ7 to answer this one.

Oh I wasn't offended, not at all - no worries.

OK, that ctrl thing works! Good on you, sorry I missed that (should've RTFM!) - I would've preffered the opposite, but I see where you're coming from. As for the bypass thing, what I intuitively pictured is double-clicking (or maybe right-clicking) the band name (e.g. "E1"), and that de-activates it - maybe fades it out to 40%, so you can still see it, but it's obviously de-activated? Just a thought. Thanks for the responses, it's good to sort this stuff out.

[bduffy]

I would have to say that Sonic Flavours EQ main competiton comes from a free plugin, namely posihfopit. After 15 minutes of trying your eq I came to the conclusion that it doesn't really offer anything vastly superior, sound nor feature wise, compared to the posihfopit eq. My needs have been thoroughly satisfied with freeware, mainly posihfopit and PLPar4EQ. For flavour I have hydratone and sonalksis. It's a very crowded market and you need something special to hit through.

Why not include internal Mid/Side matrix in your eq as an added little bonus? You already have separate L/R control so why not give the user a single button to do Mid/Side instead? It is features like this that would set your eq apart from the competition.

Here's a little test that I usually run new eq's trough (both hardware and software). Boost +12dB on a closed hihat sample around 2 to 5 kHz and listen carefully to the transient. Same goes for cutting, cut around the same frequency with a narrow Q and listen to what happens. This is where certain EQ's start to brutally "shape" the transient. The high-end ones keep the transient intact (PLpar, weiss, algorithmics etc). Btw, I had some time to play with the weiss EQ, again, at the AES conference and I have to take back what I have said before: PLParEQ is NOT superior to it. I truly thought this was the case but damn that weiss unit is nice (I don't like it in linear phase mode though).

The CPU usage is very good and I would heartily recommend your plugin to anybody who is after their first track eq unless there wasn't so nice free ones or far cheaper alternatives around. I found the controls quite intuitive after I figured out that keeping CTRL down allowed me to drag the EQ around normally. The GUI is maybe a bit too large but that's a minor niggle.

Overall: A quite good eq with a clear GUI and superb CPU usage. Unfortunately it drowns in the masses of freeware and cheap alternatives as it doesn't offer anything superior nor unique.

My 2 cents worth,
bManic

Interesting, Bmanic. First: you know what pisses me off about posihfpoit? the controls. right-clicking does 12 things, double-clicking sometimes does things, it's really easy to mess up your settings and it's really hard to directly enter data. It is an amazing EQ, though, and it pretty much trumps many things in the $100-$300 range. We may be getting to the point where we don't need to shell out for a great EQ! But I still think URS has something special - you didn't like them?

Second: there's a freeware PLPar4EQ?? I thought there was only a 3-band! It's unfortunate that PLParEQ is so CPU-intensive; not a practical track EQ.

[bmanic]

Totally agree with you. Posihfopit's controls and stability are the true weaknesses. It's flimsy to use but at least Christian fixed the "draging" sensitivity a bit so it doesn't jump too easily. The sound is too good to get bogged down by these problems though.

PLPar4EQ was offered right at the beginning, it's without GUI. PLPar3EQ is the one I actually meant as it has the GUI. I think you can still get the 3 band version if you email them.

Oh, and btw. I didn't like URS eq's at all. The problem was the precision for me. The basic "eq curve" is good on them (very close to the originals too! I've A/B tested the 1073 neve versus the URS, which is apparently 1081 clone) but the 'density' or 'smoothness' is not there. They simply sound like what many would call "digital". A bit grainy. Maybe they are better now that they are upsampled? I haven't tried the new versions yet.

Cheers!
bManic

[RaelDWTW]

Hm.. Boosting or cutting by 12dB might be scientifically interesting. But for me, such a test would never, ever win me over. There's so much more to an eq than how it handles transients at extreme values. And 12 dB!? I normally work in 0.05 - 0.5dB increments. Starting from +-0.

[bduffy]

Totally agree with you. Posihfopit's controls and stability are the true weaknesses. It's flimsy to use but at least Christian fixed the "draging" sensitivity a bit so it doesn't jump too easily. The sound is too good to get bogged down by these problems though.

OK, phew! It's not just me! I experience so many problems (and even crashes) with Poshifopit that I hardly use it. The disturbing thing is that I found the payware ElectricQ to behave exactly the same! Perhaps I should email Christian about it.

PLPar4EQ was offered right at the beginning, it's without GUI. PLPar3EQ is the one I actually meant as it has the GUI. I think you can still get the 3 band version if you email them.

Oh yeah...I'm sure I have that lying around somewhere. I almost never use GUI-less effects as Steinberg's default UI is just awful.

Oh, and btw. I didn't like URS eq's at all. The problem was the precision for me. The basic "eq curve" is good on them (very close to the originals too! I've A/B tested the 1073 neve versus the URS, which is apparently 1081 clone) but the 'density' or 'smoothness' is not there. They simply sound like what many would call "digital". A bit grainy. Maybe they are better now that they are upsampled? I haven't tried the new versions yet.

I thought that might be the case, that you didn't like them. I haven't tried the new version either (the last one was unstable on PC too!), but I was impressed - mind you, I'm not sure if they were better than Pohsifopit or PLParEQ...they are very light on CPU, which blew me away for an analog-modelled product, and I'm not a mastering-type guy so something light and useable as track EQ is very important to me (Cubase EQ! UGH!).

I wonder if Waves or URS look at Poshifopit and the affordable stuff and worry about their prices sometimes? But when I dig into the pro market, it seems like there is no shortage of studios that can afford literally any price for prestigious, brand-name plugins. Oh well, too bad for them!

[bmanic]

Hm.. Boosting or cutting by 12dB might be scientifically interesting. But for me, such a test would never, ever win me over. There's so much more to an eq than how it handles transients at extreme values. And 12 dB!? I normally work in 0.05 - 0.5dB increments. Starting from +-0.

Hmm.. I disagree. This might be true in a mastering situation but sometimes you need to use an EQ quite roughly to fit a certain instrument to the mix. A good example would be drums where it is not un-common to use big cuts to tame snare ringing. Of course it would be better to get the desired sound on the spot by using sticker tape and napkins but that is not always the case. To get that pop/rock kick drum sound without using trigger samples you also need to use eq a lot (usually in excess of 8dB). It's in these situations that a good eq can make all the difference as drums/percussion need their transients intact.

Cheers!
bManic