Soundtheory GULLFOSS computional auditory perception EQ

[DJ Warmonger]

I just tried it and, while often subtle, it does great job.

It works great especially on trance basses (mid part) - rebalances and recovers the material that otherwise had to be resynthesized.

On leads, Gullfoss allows to tame all the lower harmonics - something that couldn't be done with simple EQ or even dynamic EQ as the notes constantly change.

On percussion... extra smooth. It's a dynamic device so can boost or cut only momentary noises, while leaving the core sound intact.

Overall I want to buy it sometime soon despite iLok Will see if it helps with my 4 leftover tracks that can't get signed

[MadDogE134]

i love this thing

[foosnark]

I avoided trying it until now... and I'm highly impressed.

It works well on full mixes -- less so on mixes that have a lot of noise in the high end, but with some tweaking it can still bring a little more clarity.

The Soma Lyra-8 has some really fierce resonances. Gullfoss tames them perfectly. (I'd been using Hornet 31, or more often, manual EQ with Tooneboosters or CraveEQ. I think Gullfoss actually does better for fixing resonances, then I can apply manual EQ over the top to taste.)

Bought!

[bmanic]

I really love this thing too. Have been exploring the extremes a lot, using two instances of Gullfoss instead of doing it all in one instance.

For instance, the 'Tame' control does it's thing very differently depending on the bias control. If you set bias to 100% and then use tame, you get very tight compression like frequency riding/fixing. However if you set it to -100% you get a really open, kind of slow and pillowy, almost expanded yet controlled sound.

Thus if you are in a hurry and need to absolutely nail a bass guitar or synth in place, without resorting to a lot of manual EQ + compression, you simply insert gullfoss on the bass, set bias to 100% and 'tame' to something like 50 or more. Then dial in the crossovers to the problem area. Boom.. instant awesomely controlled bass at any note range.

The 'recover' control works exactly opposite. If you set bias to -100% you get highly aggressive, almost upwards expansion like recovery of various frequencies.. thus sort of increasing the dynamic range perception on the material. Whereas at 100% you get the opposite.. pillowy and slow upwards expansion of various low level frequencies.

Gullfoss also tends to want to boost really high frequency stuff, like noise.. in the upper 15kHz to 22kHz range. I usually mitigate this with either the crossover thing or by setting brightness to around -30 or -40. In general I find Gullfoss to go for a quite bright sound, which is not always desirable.

[DJ Warmonger]

After few sessions I'm convinced to buy it. It does some great job, has no real alternative AND is very fast.

Time is money and life is short, you know. Why waste time when you can have cutting-edge tech do the job for you?

[adl]

I really love this thing too. Have been exploring the extremes a lot, using two instances of Gullfoss instead of doing it all in one instance.

For instance, the 'Tame' control does it's thing very differently depending on the bias control. If you set bias to 100% and then use tame, you get very tight compression like frequency riding/fixing. However if you set it to -100% you get a really open, kind of slow and pillowy, almost expanded yet controlled sound.

Thus if you are in a hurry and need to absolutely nail a bass guitar or synth in place, without resorting to a lot of manual EQ + compression, you simply insert gullfoss on the bass, set bias to 100% and 'tame' to something like 50 or more. Then dial in the crossovers to the problem area. Boom.. instant awesomely controlled bass at any note range.

The 'recover' control works exactly opposite. If you set bias to -100% you get highly aggressive, almost upwards expansion like recovery of various frequencies.. thus sort of increasing the dynamic range perception on the material. Whereas at 100% you get the opposite.. pillowy and slow upwards expansion of various low level frequencies.

Gullfoss also tends to want to boost really high frequency stuff, like noise.. in the upper 15kHz to 22kHz range. I usually mitigate this with either the crossover thing or by setting brightness to around -30 or -40. In general I find Gullfoss to go for a quite bright sound, which is not always desirable.

Thanks for sharing!

[ElVincente]

Anyone compared Gullfoss to apulsoft apunmask ?

[Ah_Dziz]

Works very well for mixing together tracks that have huge production differences. Like putting together indie promo compilations or doing more “off the wall” dj mixes.

[plexuss]

Anyone compared Gullfoss to apulsoft apunmask ?

apunmask is different, it seems, from my comparison experience. upunmask is a goodizer but is more subtle than Gullfoss and seems to impart a 3Dism to the audio. It might just be some psychacustic thing going on with transients. In any case they do different things to my ears.

I had not heard of apunmask until now. thanks, it looks interesting and worth further demoing!

apunmask is more of an exciter or a anti-exciter. Gullfoss allows you to dial in various kinds of quality and character, not so much the same thing as apunmask.

[ElVincente]

Thanks for the comprehensive answer!

[Hez]

...
Gullfoss also tends to want to boost really high frequency stuff, like noise.. in the upper 15kHz to 22kHz range. I usually mitigate this with either the crossover thing or by setting brightness to around -30 or -40. In general I find Gullfoss to go for a quite bright sound, which is not always desirable.

Yeah, agreed on the bright thing. I've personally found that I need brighten at around -40% on my own tunes to end up with my preferred spectral balance (or rather to keep the output spectrum more or less consistent with the input spectrum) and just allow Gullfoss to deal with resonance and smoothen things out.

One thing I've noticed is that it can really aggressively pull up reverb tails in the high end, which can ruin your spatial imaging if you're not careful. Like you also mentioned, keeping bias fairly far into the negative can help to mitigate that somewhat.

I wonder whether the parameterisation of the algorithm could be expanded a bit to help us nudge it more in the direction we want it. I imagine some sort of Soothe-esque 'EQ' curve over the spectrum, though I'm not sure exactly what parameter it could control - perhaps a frequency dependent bias? A positive gain 'EQ node' could prioritise recovery in the given spectral region, and a negative gain could prioritise taming. That way I could tell Gullfoss not to bring stuff up too much in my high mids, for example.

I realise it's not that simple as the algorithm isn't acting on specific frequencies individually but rather the signal as a whole (from what I understood of the manual), but I still feel like there must be some clever stuff that could be done to allow us to tailor Gullfoss to our personal 'sound' a little bit more.

Of course I don't mean any of the above as a criticism - it's an unbelievable tool that I use in every single song nowadays.

[bmanic]

I do recall the guys at Soundtheory teasing that they would at some point release a "Gullfoss Pro" plugin with a lot more control.. but haven't heard anything more about this in a long time.

[MogwaiBoy]

Anyone compared Gullfoss to apulsoft apunmask ?

apunmask is different, it seems, from my comparison experience. upunmask is a goodizer but is more subtle than Gullfoss and seems to impart a 3Dism to the audio. It might just be some psychacustic thing going on with transients. In any case they do different things to my ears.

I had not heard of apunmask until now. thanks, it looks interesting and worth further demoing!

apunmask is more of an exciter or a anti-exciter. Gullfoss allows you to dial in various kinds of quality and character, not so much the same thing as apunmask.

Just demo'ing apUnmask now... VERY interesting. Simple, beautiful GUI and the way it subtly reveals detail according to how you push frequency bands is quite unique. Price is awesome too... I think I'm sold.

[Kalonai]

So I just demoed this plugin, and there's an issue that I've seen other people also have even months ago. When you play around with the parameters, after a little while, they stop doing anything. If I then copy/paste the plugin with the exact same settings, I can suddenly hear the changes. But then after a while, same issue happends.

I've tried both in FL Studio and Studio One, with nothing but an audio file and the plugin.

How is this still not fixed? I wanted to buy this, but it's completely useless if I cant rely on what it's doing.

[gondii]

Yeah, agreed on the bright thing. I've personally found that I need brighten at around -40% on my own tunes to end up with my preferred spectral balance (or rather to keep the output spectrum more or less consistent with the input spectrum) and just allow Gullfoss to deal with resonance and smoothen things out.

I tend to filter out the very high frequencies with Gullfoss almost by default. It appears that it doesn't even matter what material you are using it on, there is always this sharp bump from 13-15k.