Curves Equator a "Soothe Killer" from Waves

[Frankie.T]

Waves has just released Equator, the first plugin of a new series called "Curves".

From the product page

Curves Equator is a smarter resonance suppression plugin. It immediately improves any full mix, vocal, instrument or sample by removing problematic frequencies, fixing resonances and balancing inconsistencies.

Additionally, it can learn your content & safeguard your work with a personalized suppression curve to avoid overprocessing. It offers groundbreaking frequency unmasking by learning the sidechain of a clashing source and dynamically applying the inverse curve on the part you’re mixing.

Equator is the first in our new Curves Spectral Series of plugins, which pioneers the evolution of EQ. Two more Curves plugins will be available in early 2025: Welcome to your first self-driving EQs!

Immediately fix resonance, mud, harshness, imbalance & tonal inconsistency on ANY source
Pull the blanket off your mix and hear it open beautifully
Safeguard to ensure you don't overprocess
Linear Phase filters, transparent sound, no artifacts
‘Learn’ feature provides a personalized suppression curve
‘Learn via SC’ offers perfect frequency unmasking & carving
Rider feature allows attenuation only when audio from the SC comes in
Dynamic Auto-makeup gain matches the input RMS, no loss of energy
Shape & tilt adjust the target suppression curve for tonal control
Additional control with 3 adjustable crossovers and 2x8 nodes

Intro Price: $39.99
Regular Price: $79

Product Page: https://www.waves.com/plugins/curves-equator

Here you find my video review

If you like it and you want to support what i do you find the affiliate link in the video description

[TheSweetSpot]

Been trying it out for the last hour or so and early impressions are good - it combines features I like from Mastering The Mix's Reso, Waves' own Silk Vocal and the Ozone 11 modules Clarity, Spectral Shaper and Stabilizer. All that I feel it's missing at the moment is the ability to solo bands and a bypass button for the whole plugin. Unless they're there and I've missed them. $39 seems a decent intro price.

Edit: the ability to disable individual bands would be nice too - the only way of doing that as it is is by turning the processing on them down all the way.

[hightyde]

Can anyone who has tried this and has soothe 2, tell me what the cpu on this one is. I love soothe, but mannnnn does it hit some cpu

[TheSweetSpot]

Can anyone who has tried this and has soothe 2, tell me what the cpu on this one is. I love soothe, but mannnnn does it hit some cpu

I don't have Soothe 2 but one instance of this is peaking at around 14% CPU for me in Reaper and 1087 samples of latency.

[martinjuenke]

Waves

[foosnark]

I have an album almost ready to master, and one particular song has a bit of an obnoxious resonance at a particular spot. Good opportunity for testing this sort of plugin...

TEOTE vs Wavesfactory Equalizer vs Equator

None of these three did enough to actually fix the obvious problem area. I'm not surprised -- despite the descriptions I always feel like these kinds of tools are better at polishing tracks than repairing problems. Of course the obvious stuff is easier to fix with EQ anyway (if sometimes tedious), it's the subtleties where tools like this seem to be more helpful.

In terms of overall sound, TEOTE is always subtle and transparent. Most of the time I can't consciously notice it doing anything, and yet once in a while the result just feels 5% better. This particular track isn't one of those where it seems to help.

Wavesfactory Equalizer is what I have usually used when mastering -- the effect is much more noticeable if you max it out, and it has controls to sculpt how much it takes effect. On this track my quick attempt with it was "different but not necessarily better" (if I was actually mastering I'd spend more time to see if I could get it dialed in better).

Equator... the funny thing was, I thought it made my track sound louder, and therefore better and clearer -- but I confirmed with MAGC that it wasn't actually louder. I'm going to have to try this on other tracks as well, I'm intrigued, gonna have to spend more time demoing it on several tracks when I'm not supposed to (checks the clock) be working.

[sinkmusic]

I'd be curious to try it against Hornet Sleek or TDR Slick eQ...

[jens]

I hope it works way more reliably than their own Clarity VX, which is basically unuseable, unless you freeze/render it... (but I assume it won't be, since I guess it's using the same unreliable realtime-analyzer)

[kidslow]

By unreliable you mean CPU heavy? Definitely heavy on the old processor. I've never had a problem with reliability besides need to set a bigger buffer size, and I have both Clarity Vx plugins, but then I use them in a chain on a single track and then render.

[billinder33]

I have an album almost ready to master, and one particular song has a bit of an obnoxious resonance at a particular spot.

Soothe is probably the better tool for this, and maybe better yet would be Master the Mix's RESO.

Are these your productions, meaning you have access to the individual tracks? Obviously the best place to deal with this. Otherwise automating Soothe or RESO in the offending spot will probably give you a better result than these dynamic EQ tools.

[jens]

By unreliable you mean CPU heavy?

nope - I mean different processing results with consecutive runs using the exact same settings...

[kidslow]

I almost exclusively use them to clean dialogue and it's not so important for me to duplicate results, just that I get the best results I can dial in and then render out the track. But good to know, and I wasn't aware of that, so thanks for sharing.

[joshuaveldman]

I have an album almost ready to master, and one particular song has a bit of an obnoxious resonance at a particular spot. Good opportunity for testing this sort of plugin...

TEOTE vs Wavesfactory Equalizer vs Equator

None of these three did enough to actually fix the obvious problem area. I'm not surprised -- despite the descriptions I always feel like these kinds of tools are better at polishing tracks than repairing problems. Of course the obvious stuff is easier to fix with EQ anyway (if sometimes tedious), it's the subtleties where tools like this seem to be more helpful.

In terms of overall sound, TEOTE is always subtle and transparent. Most of the time I can't consciously notice it doing anything, and yet once in a while the result just feels 5% better. This particular track isn't one of those where it seems to help.

Wavesfactory Equalizer is what I have usually used when mastering -- the effect is much more noticeable if you max it out, and it has controls to sculpt how much it takes effect. On this track my quick attempt with it was "different but not necessarily better" (if I was actually mastering I'd spend more time to see if I could get it dialed in better).

Equator... the funny thing was, I thought it made my track sound louder, and therefore better and clearer -- but I confirmed with MAGC that it wasn't actually louder. I'm going to have to try this on other tracks as well, I'm intrigued, gonna have to spend more time demoing it on several tracks when I'm not supposed to (checks the clock) be working.

I would recommend trying DERES from WA. The stuff from that particular lineup is not the same quality as the typical stuff WA has been known for. They are working with an engineer who knows his stuff to develop them.

[enCiphered]

As soon as I saw the clickbait title I knew it had to be a youtuber..
If only there were a plugin that could EQ out all this hype and leave behind some real content... but I guess that wouldn't drive your precious exposure..

[bmanic]

If you have one particular problematic frequency poking out every once in a while, I highly recommend just using a good low-ringing EQ like EQuilibrium and notch out the frequency until it doesn't bother any more.

Soothe and other similar tools are not optimal for that particular job. A single narrow EQ band will be much better at the task, at least in mastering.

If it moves around then automation is the key. If it moves around wildly then you may have better luck with something like Soothe.