looking for a better EQ plugin

crunkthanamug said:
Hi, Im wondering what you guys think the best EQ plugin is (excluding UAD and Powercore) Right now Im using Waves EQ...but Im not satisfied. Do you all know of any EQ with more than 10 bands??? Any help would be appreciated.
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More than 10 bands? Have you been to voxengo.com? I seem to remember that you could add as many control points as you wanted with one of his eq's - don't rememeber which one.
10 bands or more... whew... good luck with all that eqin' your doin' ;)
 
Are you using this EQ for individual tracks or on an overall stereo mix?


a parametric EQ with more than 10 bands seems kina unessessary and messy to me.
 
Massive Master said:
Let me get this straight... You're using one of the most expensive EQ plugs made, but you want to exclude probably the best plugs available (from UAD and Powercore) for reasons that I can only imagine.

And you're looking for a parametric with more than ten bands?!?

Now, I've always made fun of Waves for having a parametric with 10 bands (how bad does a sound have to be to require 10 bands?) but maybe you can tell us what it is that you're not satisfied with...
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LOL, man you took the words right out of my mouth.

I can think of two (admittedly specialisied) reasons for using a 10+ band parametric though, neither of which have anything to do with mixing. One is to get rid of unwanted noise such as hum. Ideally of course one shouldn't be there to begin with, and using an EQ to get rid of it is going to mess other things up anyway, but sometimes there is no choice. The other reason is as a sound-design tool, in a sense using it as a filterbank for things such as formant filtering and customisable comb/phaser type stuff, specially when automating the frequencies of all 10 bands together.

However, if you need to use 10 bands of parametric to EQ your sound so it actually sits in the mix, then there is something very wrong with your sound to begin with.
 
To defend the guy, he never actually asked for parametric, though by comparing against the Waves stuff, it sounds like he is.

To not defend the guy, there is one plain and simple reason he is not intersted in UAD or Powercore products; you can't download cracked hardware.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
To defend the guy, he never actually asked for parametric, though by comparing against the Waves stuff, it sounds like he is.

To not defend the guy, there is one plain and simple reason he is not intersted in UAD or Powercore products; you can't download cracked hardware.

G.
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:eek: Believe what you want to believe...im just looking for the BEST sounding stuff. In my second post I said if the UAD stuff is really better i might have to get one. I was under the impression that the real "magic" of UAD/powercore was that it had DSP power on the card, and wouldnt need CPU. What if Im only concerned with sound and dont care about CPU usage??? I never heard of half these plugs that people are recommending, and I want to get a feel of what is out there/try some DEMOS before I commit a large sum of money to it. Last I checked, you cant demo hardware.
 
The UAD is a mixed bag. While I love how their plugin's sound, the hardware is very well known ISSUES!

Many people have had big problems getting it to work on their systems. A variety of problems arise installing that card on your box.

Also, they still haven't fixed buffer issues with the code! This is totally unacceptable on code that has been on the market this long, and is this expensive!

The various problems with the UAD is what has kept me from purchasing it right now. I would rather try to find non-hardware based plugin's to try before I open that can or worms! If not so many people had huge problems getting that card to work right, I would have already purchased one.
 
Ford Van said:
The UAD is a mixed bag. While I love how their plugin's sound, the hardware is very well known ISSUES!

Many people have had big problems getting it to work on their systems. A variety of problems arise installing that card on your box.

Also, they still haven't fixed buffer issues with the code! This is totally unacceptable on code that has been on the market this long, and is this expensive!

The various problems with the UAD is what has kept me from purchasing it right now. I would rather try to find non-hardware based plugin's to try before I open that can or worms! If not so many people had huge problems getting that card to work right, I would have already purchased one.
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I would not say many. It's more like a few who are very vocal. I notice that most of those having problems are using too little memory or an AMD based chipset. I am running Intel and have never had one of the Error 21 problems or even a crash with the UAD-1 card. For every problem user there are probably 20 more that are using the product successfully.

This card is used by many of the top studio engineers today along with the Powercore. They provide easy access to effects having similar characteristics to the original hardware. I know guys running 4 or more of these cards in a single PC.

I can say that the quality of these DSP based cards can take you from an amateur sounding status to a professional sounding status which is why they are so popular. I know of some engineers that have sold off their banks of 1176 and LA2A compressors and replaced them with UAD-1 cards because they sound that close to the real thing.

That said, I would prefer to have a real 1176, LA2A or even a Fairchild while tracking but that would cost $33,500. At $1000 for all the UAD plug ins, its one of the best values in recording.
 
AMD/UAD compatibility

Middleman said:
I would not say many. It's more like a few who are very vocal. I notice that most of those having problems are using too little memory or an AMD based chipset. I am running Intel and have never had one of the Error 21 problems or even a crash with the UAD-1 card. For every problem user there are probably 20 more that are using the product successfully.
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Im glad you said that...Im running an AMD (1400+) machine! But I plan to upgrade soon so i might grab a UAD-1 when i do. Do you know if those problems are with all the AMD sets, or just the older/slower processors??? (because i was thinking of upgrading to a AMD64 system...)
 
Middleman, I really checked into these issues a while back when we installed the card at the studio. I seen as many Intel users having "issues" with this card as AMD users.

I am NOT saying that everybody WILL have issues. Only that on the UAD BBS, I seen a LOT of people having issues. My own experience with it is that it has issues. Not all the issues are just the card passing enough i/o. Other little things include the DX version of the plugin's not doing latency compensation correctly, not being able to use certain plugin's after the UAD plugin's, not being able to use certain UAD plugins after certain UAD plugins, the "gaping" issue, the "stutter" issue.

This card is plagued with many problems. Not everybody has them, but if there is a consensus on WHAT EXACTLY is causing them, UAD has NOT been forthright in presenting that information to the public!
 
Yeah, didn't mean to slam you there. It's just that I know a lot of people using this card including top name engineers and problems are more chipset dependant in my experience.

Regarding DXI, they no longer support it. I converted to the VSTs a few months back when I heard that this standard was not being developed for. I have just never had any problems what so ever with the product except the occasional maxing out of the available DSP space.
 
As you may know, UA has discontinued dx support - so that's no longer an issue. With other issues, I had trouble with my card at first but swapping pci slots solved the problems. It's been solid every since.
Being a hardware deal you could buy, try, and return if it doesn't work in your system. IMHO the plugs are worth having, but it's hard to know for sure unless you can try them with your system, songs and workflow.
 
I got word that they never truely had DX version, but rather that they had their VST's wrapped in a crappy wrapper, which was WHY the DX versions never worked right! LOL

They sure are great sounding prugin's. BUT, anybody thinking of buying this card should do some EXTENSIVE research about hardware they have to make sure that this card is going to work right for them.
 
My UAD card has now been in 3 different AMD systems without a hitch. It never crashes or locks up, I have not personally found a plugin combination that did not work either. Also, I have never posted my succesful situations at the UAD forums either. In fact, my UAD card has worked so well for the last 2 and a half years that I have never even visited the UAD forum. I have not however used the DX plugins so I cannot comment on that.
 
Bumping this because it's a good topic.

Tried the demo of the URS Fultec plug the last few days and it ROCKED. Way more musical with additive EQ than any other plug. It just fattens up the sound. Forces you to really listen to the changes versus looking at a graph. Not a bad CPU hit either. Still have to try some of their other ones but this guy was amazing.

I also really like the PSP MasterQ for general EQ, not too bad on the CPU, about the same as the URS. Very easy to use and pretty musical. Didn't really degrade the sound but didn't add to the sound like the URS. I wouldn't call it transparent, but mostly so in a musical way.

Still have to try out the Sonalksis SV-517. I don't know how much use I have for a super flat EQ, but everyone raves about it. Might be redundant with the MasterQ since I don't do anything requiring really flat sound...maybe on the master buss?

Also tried the Wave Arts TrackPlug which a lot of people like and I really didn't like it. It made everything sound very flat and plastic-like. Way too much going on at once and I honestly don't need gate, compression, limiting, and EQ on every track. I prefer the Sonitus plugs that came with Sonar PE for pretty much every purpose, especially the gate.

I've used the Waves plugs but not for many years. Can't really remember how those were. I remember really liking the Voxengo HarmoniEQ and GlissEQ but not enough to buy them as the PSP MasterQ was better and easier to use.

So for me, I think the PSP MasterQ is a real winner and the URS Fultec will be my next EQ purchase. I'll be trying the Sonalksis SV-517 and the PSP Neon next time I've got something to master.

Now I've just got to find some comparisons for compressors :D
 
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