Good VST Parametric EQ

  • Thread starter Thread starter MrWrenchey
  • Start date Start date
Oh you folks have sucked me in.......... If I remember, this thread was about a free/cheap vst eq plug-in. De-evolution follows: Very few have mentioned a product; instead this has de-evolved into something far from the OP. I joined this forum seeking information as to ways that I may improve my audio production skills. Sorely disapointed I have become as the finger pointing and gross lack of objectivity dissuade newbies or even pre-borns from delving deeper here. There is ton of information here but the, "you are an ass@##$$, you do nto know Sh@# serve neither ourselves and do a great diservice to the COMMUNITY. Are we failing in our duty to assist others to make better recordings? I respond, yes. Now the apology for the hijackand rant. Sorry. My last bit: Read and study as much as you can; study acoustics, psychoacoustics, instrument design, electronics, recording techniques, business management etc. in doing so apply what you have learned from your education to filter out the B$. Use your ears then your eyes and put a limiter on the master to save your monitors etc. just in case your ears hang out with gilligan and the skipper.
 
Thurgood said:
Oh you folks have sucked me in.......... If I remember, this thread was about a free/cheap vst eq plug-in. De-evolution follows: Very few have mentioned a product; instead this has de-evolved into something far from the OP. I joined this forum seeking information as to ways that I may improve my audio production skills. Sorely disapointed I have become as the finger pointing and gross lack of objectivity dissuade newbies or even pre-borns from delving deeper here. There is ton of information here but the, "you are an ass@##$$, you do nto know Sh@# serve neither ourselves and do a great diservice to the COMMUNITY. Are we failing in our duty to assist others to make better recordings? I respond, yes. Now the apology for the hijackand rant. Sorry. My last bit: Read and study as much as you can; study acoustics, psychoacoustics, instrument design, electronics, recording techniques, business management etc. in doing so apply what you have learned from your education to filter out the B$. Use your ears then your eyes and put a limiter on the master to save your monitors etc. just in case your ears hang out with gilligan and the skipper.
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Exactly!! But my ears usually hang out with Ginger and Mary Ann. :D
 
Thanks Moresound. Forgive me for falling off the original post but someone had to state it. The voxengo SPAN is cool, Ozone has nifty fft type thing, Reaper/JS very good and low cpu usage. I like the spectrograph (js) and one other ( i can't remember but it is available at the JS site). One above poster properly adddressed the learning aspect of music production (eq): listen and sweep away! In formal Music education this a MAJOR part of learning to listen. Ear training!!. be it via EQ or solefege a diligent effort to ID frequencies/pitches is an invaluable tool for both players and engineers. With a little practice and patience you will ultimately integrate what your ears hear with what your eyes see. To that end freq analysis tools are a great help. Howard Roberts put it well when he addressed teh disconnect between what we see vs what we hear. The production/recording, mastering etc. operates as an integreated system, to ignore one is to comprimise the whole. My .02 use both eyes and ears (ok, the heart/soul too). In closing, thank you all for the years of insight and information I have had the benefit of learning from this (and other) sites. Be well all. WS.
 
This is a place for sharing information, with the implicit desire that the information actually be correct. Otherwise there's no good reason to share it. So when someone starts posting bad information, like "put a limiter on your master to save your monitors", for example, it's the duty of those who actually know to point out the error. If feelings get hurt in the process, it's more the fault of the pride of the provider of the bad information, not of the person who calls it out.

This is not a "community", it's a place for sharing information. When someone corrupts that purpose by putting out bad information, they need to be corrected.

If you want "community", head over to Facebook, This place is about discussing audio, not singing Kumbayah to each other.

G.
 
dude plenty about this place is a community...just because you dont view it so doesnt make it the right opinion

sorry just correcting wrong where I see it too...carry on ;)


"Kumbayah allah, kumbayah, Kumbayah allah, kumbayah, oh allah kumbayah..."
 
just wanted to throw in that i like to use the voxengo glissEQ3. the point with the included FFT is not "EQing by eyes", but to have a cross-check. of course if someone knows what he does, he could live without it, but on the other hand i'm faster with FFT. and a lot mastering & mixing engineers i know are EQing with FFT. its just a different viewing angle. i would appreciate if more people would *use* FFT instead of trying to mix without it, esp. non-pros which where told that they do not need it (or should learn to mix w/o it). i think they need it & it helps. they can learn EQing w/o FFT later on...
 
There's a big difference between using an EQ that "shows you what's happening" and relying on LOOKING at an EQ to KNOW what something sounds like.

I use FFT filters all the time for problematic frequencies - And although it's very handy that it might show VDO whine at 15.375kHz instead of me wondering if it's up by 15.875kHz, the fact is that there's VDO whine. A spectrum analyzer isn't going to tell you if something sounds "good" -- It's simply going to show the spectrum of the source. That doesn't tell anybody anything. If a recording sounds a little tubby around 250Hz and you notice a bit of a peak going on at 260Hz, there you go. But if you don't notice that tubbiness in the first place, the spectrum does you no good.
 
Massive Master said:
But if you don't notice that tubbiness in the first place, the spectrum does you no good.
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and thats the point where i would like to separate. i agree with you if someone is very experienced. if not, people could also go the other way around. figuratively speaking: looking on the (e.g. smoothed) FFT for e.g. large hills & try to EQ that range and see what happens. then revise if its good or not. you can learn a lot by just looking on the spectrum.
 
karumba said:
and thats the point where i would like to separate. i agree with you if someone is very experienced. if not, people could also go the other way around. figuratively speaking: looking on the (e.g. smoothed) FFT for e.g. large hills & try to EQ that range and see what happens. then revise if its good or not. you can learn a lot by just looking on the spectrum.
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There's not much wrong with experimenting and trying to learn, but IMHO you really won't be able to tell the difference if you couldn't tell what was good or bad before.

If one would insist on using an EQ in the process of learning how to listen, it may be better to start with some basic operations and common frequency ranges, rather than randomly attacking a random peak. That way, you would be able to learn to use the tool to do for the mix the things that you determined were necessary by listening. Of course, knowing what knob produces what effect is something you will have to learn. But I would be surprised if the spectrum would play a big part in that.
 
hppnq said:
There's not much wrong with experimenting and trying to learn, but IMHO you really won't be able to tell the difference if you couldn't tell what was good or bad before. .
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That's exactly the point everyone that's trying to defend the use iof these things is missing. They won't help a beginner in any way. If anything, they'll hurt the beginner's progress by becoming a crutch.

You'd think people would realize that the best recordings in history weren't even made on computer, let alone with the use of a bunch of visual aids.
 
RAMI said:
That's exactly the point everyone that's trying to defend the use iof these things is missing. They won't help a beginner in any way. If anything, they'll hurt the beginner's progress by becoming a crutch.
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if you are a non-pro, you can't have too much viewing angles, since judging by ears is the biggest problem. so i think FFT is one good viewing angle, maybe cross-checking the mix on headphones another one, and so on. and if you don't mix professionally since at least 10 years, you are still in this process. there is no shortcut.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
If assholes like you actually knew what you were talking about before you stepped in front of your keyboard, assholes like me wouldn't need to be such assholes.
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LOL!! LMAO!! :laughings:

I'm sorry if I sound like I haven't read everything else, but this statement more than any other proves to me that you know what you are talking about! Even if I didn't already know that you know what you are talking about, this would suggest to me that you know what you are talking about...... :drunk:

Hope that came out right..... :D
 
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RAMI said:
You'd think people would realize that the best recordings in history weren't even made on computer, let alone with the use of a bunch of visual aids.
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Probably used more sexual aides than anything......
 
I hate my Ovation acoustic, it does not mic worth a crap. Has a horrible muddy boomy thing going on that bugged me for months in my mixes. I finally approached it with a method and a rhyme and reason.....start muting things until the muddy boom was the only thing left. That's how I figured out it was the Ovation doing it. The mud comes from the guitar no matter what mic I use or how I tried to position the mics, I get that mud from it no matter what.

Quick and dirty fix? Look at the acoustic track thru a spectrum analyzer, see right away that there is a spike at 125hz that coincides with the the muddy boom noise, break out the parametric and set a very narrow notch cut at 125, cutting it just enough to even out the muddy boom but leaving the sound otherwise not noticeably affected. Apologies to the OP, it was a black box rack mounted EQ plugged in to a channel insert on a Mackie mixer. I have never found a free EQ plugin that will do that, and I cant afford to pay 3 figures for a plugin that will. I tried to recreate it in Sonar once with Sonar plugs, but it never worked as well, sounded like the Q parameter would not give me a narrow enough bandwidth to kill the mud without having a noticeable impact on the overall guitar sound.

Long term clean and expensive fix? Get a nice $4000 dollar Taylor guitar!
 
yeah the solution is ALWAYS get rid of the ovation!
 
Spectrum Analysis is certainly a useful tool for someone like myself, i'm into making music not engineering it. i don't need to worry about any badge of honor just cause i need a visual aide to show me things that are over my head. perhaps for people who make a living out of this its another way to justify the price to their clients in a "you're paying for my ears and expertise" sort of way. but if it weren't for these tools i wouldn't be able to tell that most all pop/pro songs have a roll off at the extreme high end as well as most having a hpf at the lowest sub end. its another way for someone who wants demo quality songs, if not better, to see what the pros do and what a typical frequency spectrum looks like for a professional song. over time i would imagine there wouldn't be a need for visual aides, just like over time there isn't a need for training wheels. but you don't make fun of the people who use training wheels. i would hope someone who's been doing this for a while could listen to a song and know where the trouble is on a spectrum. so many people like to compare cock sizes in these kinds of boards, its so funny.
 
Hell Atlantic said:
Spectrum Analysis is certainly a useful tool for someone like myself, i'm into making music not engineering it. i don't need to worry about any badge of honor just cause i need a visual aide to show me things that are over my head. perhaps for people who make a living out of this its another way to justify the price to their clients in a "you're paying for my ears and expertise" sort of way. but if it weren't for these tools i wouldn't be able to tell that most all pop/pro songs have a roll off at the extreme high end as well as most having a hpf at the lowest sub end. its another way for someone who wants demo quality songs, if not better, to see what the pros do and what a typical frequency spectrum looks like for a professional song. over time i would imagine there wouldn't be a need for visual aides, just like over time there isn't a need for training wheels. but you don't make fun of the people who use training wheels. i would hope someone who's been doing this for a while could listen to a song and know where the trouble is on a spectrum. so many people like to compare cock sizes in these kinds of boards, its so funny.
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Lots of win in this post - lol the comment about comparing cock sizes...
 
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