Fabfilter Pro-Q 4!

[cryophonik]

That looks like a great upgrade! Drawing curves and the ability to see instances across a project look like great additions. Definitely an insta-buy for me.

[Alexander_D]

Fabfilter as always! Looks great!

[cryophonik]

Alright, it's been nearly two hours since this thing was announced. Where the hell is our Dan Worrall video?!!!

[jtsterays]

One thing that has always bugged me about Pro-Q is it's mouse wheel behavior, it's accelerated instead of linear which makes a huge jump in value with my mouse, making the mousewheel useless with Pro-Q, I hope they added an option to change that.

[bmanic]

One thing that has always bugged me about Pro-Q is it's mouse wheel behavior, it's accelerated instead of linear which makes a huge jump in value with my mouse, making the mousewheel useless with Pro-Q, I hope they added an option to change that.

Linear behavior doesn't make sense when you need to be able to scroll through thousands of values. The way it works is just like their knobs when using normal left click + mouse. If you move it fast, the values jump by big increments. Move it slow and you get very precise fine tuning.

Mouse wheel works the same way, or should do so. Unfortunately it's been quite buggy in previous FF plugins but I CAN CONFIRM that this mouse wheel non-linear behavior has been improved for Pro-Q4. Not sure how it'll work for your specific mouse and scroll wheel settings in your operating system but at least here on my Mac with a Logitech G series mouse, it works now much better than it has ever before.

Still.. I think they could further refine it so do send feedback to them directly or through their forum (they are NOT reading any audio forums as far as I know).

[bmanic]

Also I can confirm: Pro-Q4 absolutely kicks ass!

The dynamic EQ section has been greatly improved and is now suuuper powerful. You can change the internal sidechain meaning you can have an EQ node in the bass region that reacts to the high frequencies if you want (great for Kick drums where the EQ listens to the 'click' instead of the woof). And of course you even have access to external sidechain (though just one main one.. not for each EQ node separately).

You also finally have attack and release controls with a very wide range going from super fast to really quite slow.

The new spectral dynamics is really impressive and works exceptionally well. It's not a Soothe killer as it doesn't work exactly the same way nor is it as flexible but it's amazingly useful and absolutely amazing to have it available at the click of the mouse!

The sound quality seems to also have improved somehow. It's probably placebo on my part but at least the Dynamic EQ section sounds better and can't be completely nulled with old Pro-Q3. Whatever they did to it, is good!

Oh and you get extremely fine control over the filter slopes now. You can make beautiful 3dB/octave gentle filters and they are awesome! Heck, why not even 1.5dB/octave if that's your thing!

Overall this is a very solid update to an already amazing plugin. The UI is virtually unchanged except for some refinements in graphics so everybody who was intimately familiar with Pro-Q3 will feel right at home.

[jtsterays]

One thing that has always bugged me about Pro-Q is it's mouse wheel behavior, it's accelerated instead of linear which makes a huge jump in value with my mouse, making the mousewheel useless with Pro-Q, I hope they added an option to change that.

Linear behavior doesn't make sense when you need to be able to scroll through thousands of values. The way it works is just like their knobs when using normal left click + mouse. If you move it fast, the values jump by big increments. Move it slow and you get very precise fine tuning.

Mouse wheel works the same way, or should do so. Unfortunately it's been quite buggy in previous FF plugins but I CAN CONFIRM that this mouse wheel non-linear behavior has been improved for Pro-Q4. Not sure how it'll work for your specific mouse and scroll wheel settings in your operating system but at least here on my Mac with a Logitech G series mouse, it works now much better than it has ever before.

Still.. I think they could further refine it so do send feedback to them directly or through their forum (they are NOT reading any audio forums as far as I know).

That's good to now. But yea, Pro-Q 3 value mapping is atrocious, I have to scroll REAL slow for it to be smooth.

[jtsterays]

Also I can confirm: Pro-Q4 absolutely kicks ass!

The dynamic EQ section has been greatly improved and is now suuuper powerful. You can change the internal sidechain meaning you can have an EQ node in the bass region that reacts to the high frequencies if you want (great for Kick drums where the EQ listens to the 'click' instead of the woof). And of course you even have access to external sidechain (though just one main one.. not for each EQ node separately).

You also finally have attack and release controls with a very wide range going from super fast to really quite slow.

The new spectral dynamics is really impressive and works exceptionally well. It's not a Soothe killer as it doesn't work exactly the same way nor is it as flexible but it's amazingly useful and absolutely amazing to have it available at the click of the mouse!

The sound quality seems to also have improved somehow. It's probably placebo on my part but at least the Dynamic EQ section sounds better and can't be completely nulled with old Pro-Q3. Whatever they did to it, is good!

Oh and you get extremely fine control over the filter slopes now. You can make beautiful 3dB/octave gentle filters and they are awesome! Heck, why not even 1.5dB/octave if that's your thing!

Overall this is a very solid update to an already amazing plugin. The UI is virtually unchanged except for some refinements in graphics so everybody who was intimately familiar with Pro-Q3 will feel right at home.

All the new features are amazing, but i'm still quite sad that they didn't include more curves though, did they ever answer why they didn't do that?

[MirkoVanHauten]

What curves are you missing?

[jtsterays]

What curves are you missing?

Pultec bass trick, SSL shelves, Massive Passive high boost, DMG high shelf with the % fully negative or positive + some Q.

[Razzia]

The teaser looks very very promising. Some QOL features like the instance list oder just drawing curves seem so simple yet they'll improve my workflow massively. I hope they've pimped the dynamics section a bit and did not just add the automatic spectral stuff. UI also looks also very clean.

There was a short shot in the teaser that shows what looks like ADSR envelope controls. If I had to guess, I'd say that's for the dynamic EQ

[neverbeeninariot]

Have they also added saturation ? There was a drop-down with 'Subtle', 'Clean' and 'Warm' : )

[pekbro]

I was thinking they might add some spectral processing to their eq... Cool at any rate, they need to look at their compressor and limiters now as well imo...

I rarely use either these days, with so many great alternatives...

[VitaminD]

I'm guessing their EQ is probably their biggest sales, so it gets the most attention. But it is hard for me to believe Q3 is already 6 years old now.

[JanuszPelc]

Here’s what I find exciting in the promo video, in no particular order:

• Instance List: Edit curves for any channel in a list of active instances.
• Variable Slopes: Set any slope value like 9.9 dB/oct, not limited to fixed steps.
• Spectral Dynamics: Controls for Density, Attack, and Release.
• Saturation Options: Clean, Subtle, and Warm saturation modes.
• Free Detectors: Place at any frequency range for dynamic bands.