Once a while, when mixing and especially when sound desigining, you come to the point of: I wonder, what it wold sound like if I applied little ramp shaped EQ response with crazy steep end. Or: What if I just grab this band strictly from frequency to frequency and low it down?
...and such. Problem is, that you have no chance to do it. Classic parametric EQ offers you lots of sound shaping but responce is not so chirurgicaly precise as you'd need.
Developer of this plugin told himself in this situation: Naaah, I'll do my own EQ for that. ...and he did. And it sounds awesome.
One may say: So what? But think about it really...It's not that easy. EQ's as far as I know are bulit either by DSP (sometimes analog) filter modeling or by some FFT mangling. Nature of this idea kinda excludes any other then FFT way, so they needed to concentrate on that.
Now I don't know about you guys, but my expirience with FFT is kind of bad. These plugins always contain qualitty setting that sets length of window that plugin operates on. I often get wierd sound artifacts or "not so sharp" sound when turned down. This EQ? None of it, sounds absolutely cool even when qualitty turned to lowest. (Low and too steep filters loose a bit of definition when qualitty is set to low, but you're informed about it in very pleasant and non disturbing graphical way by "alternative curve".) Whole sound really tells you they have lot's of FFT expiriences from Photosounder.
One thing that's really a question is: How do you tell if it sounds good, when concept is so new? Well I don't know, but what I can tell is, if you draw some really crazy curve, it doesn't sounds harsh, aliased or with digital artifacts, but like some equally crazy sound alternation you hear in wierd nature conditions. And that is good. Really good.
I can also imagine it could be amazing for fixing these responses on recorded material while mixing. When something sounds like from coffe cup, it could be pretty nicely cured by exactly that ramp I described at the beginning, just inverted.
It has bad sides of course, every plugin has. Firstly, for casual mixing, it could be bit of overkill. Especially when some slope shaping demands two filters to model (in vector-spline way). Secondly, few more curve handling functions would be nice. I can imagine shift of selected filters or free hand drawing whith automatic filter position solving. Point down for that, but just as a little cheeky motivational poke. :) On the other side this "whole reponse shifting" is feature I'd like to see in some other EQs. :)
All and all this is really a breath of fresh air. Amazing for experiments and in some specific situations it can really save your ass I guess, becouse classic EQs could be too solid for some tasks. Sound is pleasant and without a single problem. Not you'r bread and butter EQ and handling could be still a little bit improved, but really fresh little plug.
Me recomend really much! :)
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@myk: I haven't used SplineEQ, but as I understand it, EVERY linear phase EQ introduces latency because of the way linear phase adjustments are computed (the signal must be delayed a bit, kind of obvious if you think about it). That's why they're typically used for mastering and final mixing, as opposed to tracking. Seems kind of unfair (if not dead wrong?) to mark it down for something that's inherent to its way of working.
@myk Just locate the latency knob and adjust it for lower latency, you should be just fine.
The reason why you want to be able to change latency, is for rendering purposes. If you are really anal about getting the best possible sound, you should increase the lantency when you render, and that will give you an even sharper sound. As you might have noticed with the "dotted real processing" line that shows up on the lower frenquencies,
it will become more accurate with higher lantecy settings, this is something you can't escape when processing audio the way linearphase eq's does it.
It's not fixable, it's just something you have to learn, with ALL linearphase eq's :)
just a little thing to say I tried this out on a audio cleaning project i had and it kept the tone of the voice but got rid of the noise I mean whistling right next to the vocal frequency. no other eq i had was doing it right and this baby kicked ass.
i use this for sound design and it is awesome
yea its a great plugin i love it
Really nice free EQ, very tweakable, efficient and colorless. Perfect for cleaning, mixing and mastering.
I agree. the paid version is even better to. I use this for cleaning and mastering
Yep, i discovered what the free is by itself capable of on a sample design purpose and after that i'll certainly by the full version ASAP ...really excellent tool !
You know what is awesome is if you set it to minimal delay and stuff right to find something like if there is this annoying hum then you cut the hell out of it swap back to max mode and render you will be amazed on how high the quality of the eq its like you never did anything but the hum is gone. its very non destructive
well i currently experience narrow bandpass (rather than bandstop) to isolate locust's stridulation at almost a precise frequency then rendering, not much different technique as you know, that what made me amaze about spline eq
I know some people complain because its super latency ridden but that's what i think makes it so good the quality of the eq is so high that it has to be
@feng:
Great review. I like how you brought out more information about the unique graphically-driven features.
Brilliant mastering EQ. Top quality.
TOP notch EQ plugin right here..
Best delivered in final mixing master bus and mastering.
Why no hpf/lpf filters?
You have to make them yourself. Place a control point high and another low.
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