Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins?

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
dubdub
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Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins?

Post by dubdub »

Sorry if this thread has already been made but "EQ" isn't searchable so I thought I'd just give it a shot. I've been wanting to try out some analog EQ emulation rather than ableton's EQ8 to see if it can take off some of the perceived sharpness out of my mixes with less acurate / more musical EQing. I get that it's not always the right choice but I have no idea what to even look for in terms of "analog" EQ plugins, so I'm asking here!

While we're at it, I absolutely love messing around with Filters, Ableton's 9.5 Filters seem capable, but again, I'm wondering what else is out there and what's good.

Of course preferably stuff that isn't Slate/UAD and costs more than a hardware synth or some shit.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by Lost to the Void »

Abletons EQ is actually pretty soft as an EQ. even the steeper shelves are very forgiving.
So any sharpness in your mixes is probably down to technique rather than the EQ.

But some nice EQ's i like are DMG stuff, and stillwell stuff, and variety of sound, oh and the softube tilt Eq is nice too.
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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by dubdub »

Lost to the Void wrote:Abletons EQ is actually pretty soft as an EQ. even the steeper shelves are very forgiving.
So any sharpness in your mixes is probably down to technique rather than the EQ.

But some nice EQ's i like are DMG stuff, and stillwell stuff, and variety of sound, oh and the softube tilt Eq is nice too.
Interesting. My EQing is mostly fairly basic low/high cuts, maybe some less steep cuts and more resonance?

Thanks for the plugin recommendations. Any advice on Filters?

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by Resin »

TDR Slick EQ is my favourite... also +1 on Stillwell.

http://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-vos-slickeq-ge/

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by Lost to the Void »

dubdub wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:Abletons EQ is actually pretty soft as an EQ. even the steeper shelves are very forgiving.
So any sharpness in your mixes is probably down to technique rather than the EQ.

But some nice EQ's i like are DMG stuff, and stillwell stuff, and variety of sound, oh and the softube tilt Eq is nice too.
Interesting. My EQing is mostly fairly basic low/high cuts, maybe some less steep cuts and more resonance?

Thanks for the plugin recommendations. Any advice on Filters?
Steep cuts are harsher than shallow, but more resonance is also harsher as you can get pre ringing and phase problems with high Q.

That depends on what you mean by sharpness, if you mean your sounds are brittle and clinical, then you are cutting and pushing too much. So relax your EQ work or use sounds that fit the mix more naturally (the best EQ is no EQ, pick the right sound for the right place).

If it is simply top end harshness then, make sure you aren't boosting in the high end, and if you are, boost wide and shallow.
Roll off more high end from more sounds to soften the mix.

If it is a harsh transient issue, then compression and saturation can be used to round down some of those spikey transients.
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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by dubdub »

Lost to the Void wrote: (the best EQ is no EQ, pick the right sound for the right place).
I think this has come up a few times in different threads, could you expand on this? (I actually though about making a seperate thread for this but might aswell ask here, I suppose)

I mean it seems obvious from a musical standpoint, however I'm struggling to understand this concept at a sort of a technical, frequency-based level. To give an example, the other day I made all the melodic content for a new track and then discovered that it only went up to about 10k hz. At first I thought well shit, now my track's going to sound all muddy, better add some more high end but then I thought about this concept of placing sounds right and thought wait, maybe that's better because then my hihats have more space in the mix. But I'm still not sure what's the right approach there. Then I added some snares, which naturally occupy quite a broad frequency spectrum and I was wondering how this concept is applied there without heavy EQ work, since the snare is going to sit across most of my track pretty much. Another example, a lot of techno tracks tend to have multiple hihats at the same time for phasing, texture etc., how to avoid overlaps when you have multiple sounds naturally occupying the same sort of space in the spectrum?

What I'm trying to get at (I think), is that if you are making a sound, are you thinking about the spectrum the sound is supposed to occupy before you make it? Say, now I'm going to make my lower midrange, then my high-end etc.? I tend to just fuck around until I get something cool and then I add something else that's cool, however what makes sense to my ears often doesn't on a technical level, ie. the frequency range overlaps. How do you determine when there is too much frequency overlap, because avoiding it seems impossible to me, at least to a certain level.

Sorry for all the questions and I'm rambling but this is something I've been thinking about for a while when making tracks :)

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by Barfunkel »

I don't think they even had EQ back in the day. Plenty of classics have been recorded in some very primitive studios. If they're really old, they might even had just one microphone, the mixing was done by manually moving the musicians around the studio space until the mix sounded right to the engineer's ears.

Some of the those old tracks, in jazz particularly, sound really good even today.

This has of course very little to do with modern production. Still, something can always be learned, such as getting the sounds as right as possible before the mixing stage.
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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by willemb »

dubdub wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote: (the best EQ is no EQ, pick the right sound for the right place).
I think this has come up a few times in different threads, could you expand on this? (I actually though about making a seperate thread for this but might aswell ask here, I suppose)

I mean it seems obvious from a musical standpoint, however I'm struggling to understand this concept at a sort of a technical, frequency-based level. To give an example, the other day I made all the melodic content for a new track and then discovered that it only went up to about 10k hz.
The idea is picking the right sounds rather than trying to push sounds into a mould they don't fit in. If your mix needs your melody to have content above 10 kHz, then you've got the wrong sound. Or if you have a kick with a 120 Hz peak, and a snare with lots of content below 150 Hz, pick a different snare (and or kick), rather than trying to force them to work together.

That doesn't mean your melodic content that stops at 10 kHz is useless, because every mix is different. It might even leave some space for something else like you already said. It might be that a high string or some higher frequency hats, rides or percussion can fit in there nicely.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by terly »

You can have overlapping frequencies and missing frequencies. It's true that this might lead to your tracks sounding muddy (or thin, depending on the frequencies), but this obsession with filling out the entire frequency spectrum and having total separation between parts leads to clinical sounding music.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by willemb »

Yea that's true, i just meant it as an illustration. If sounds work together, then they work together. Also you have the time spectrum, and purposely mixing frequency areas.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by terly »

By the way, I didn't mean my post as a direct response to you. More of a general comment because I know we are (I think we are) concerned with punch & clarity, maybe to a fault.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by dubdub »

I guess I'll try to ease up a bit on my frequency filling obsession :)

I'm fairly anal about having sounds that sound like they fit together anways.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by kirkwoodwest »

I really like these Kuassa Neve emulations...

http://www.kuassa.com/products/eve-at-series/

Very good value. IMO.

I keep trying to like the Slate VMR ones with all the hype but i don't like them in my mix.

The other ones I enjoyed were 1073 emulation from IK Multimedia. I didn't have the money for the last group buy tho...
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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by dubdub »

kirkwoodwest wrote:I really like these Kuassa Neve emulations...

http://www.kuassa.com/products/eve-at-series/

Very good value. IMO.

I keep trying to like the Slate VMR ones with all the hype but i don't like them in my mix.

The other ones I enjoyed were 1073 emulation from IK Multimedia. I didn't have the money for the last group buy tho...
Cheers, will check these out.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by rktic »

Pultec. Great for soft corrections.

Here's a free one: http://sonimus.com/products/soneq/

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by arkos »

Plugin Alliance Maag Audio EQ4 and Cytomic The Drop.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by rktic »

Another free one: SlickEQ - comes with different models, M/S processing, saturation modes, and all kinds of great tricks. Eg you can dial in some loudness around the lows, clean them up with the high pass.

In-depth look at it here:
http://modernmixing.com/blog/2014/04/01 ... in-review/ incl dl link.

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by PixelKind »

Here is another Pultec style EQ for free:
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2016/02/ ... d-windows/

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Re: Your favorite "analog" / "character" EQ / Filter plugins

Post by msl »

Recently its Sound Toys Primal Tap... its just fucking amazing. It has mojo, it adds character to anything you run through it, even with the delays defeated. Actually I'm using it more for that than as a delay.

Long time favourite Sonic Charge Permut8, instant character plugin (when used in moderation) or full on obliteration of the source if you want. Perfect for techno.



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