Dmg Equality Vs Fabfilter Pro Q

Audio fidelity is a real passion of mine - so I revamped the EQuality audio engine to allow a further layer of control; the IIR mode replaces Digital mode in EQuality - that was a bad choice of name, since the entire point of it is that it sounds indistinguishable from the analogue, whilst using the minimum possible amount of CPU usage.

EQ & Compression Plug‑ins

DMG Audio's innovative plug‑ins combine friendly interfaces with an amazingly comprehensive feature set. Could they be the only EQ and compressor you'll ever need?

Dave Gamble's CV reads like a Who's Who of digital audio. His code has powered plug‑ins from the likes of Focusrite and Sonalksis, but for his latest plug‑ins, he's chosen to go it alone. EQuality and Compassion are, respectively, an equaliser and compressor, and are available in all the major plug‑in formats on Mac and PC. This includes VST3, which means that external side‑chaining is supported in Compassion.

The Universal Equaliser

Dave's goal in developing EQuality has been to create 'a great replacement for all your EQs”. In other words, it's designed to be of sufficiently high quality to be used as a master or bus EQ, yet with a low enough CPU load that you could also use it on every channel of a mix. A lofty goal, indeed!

Certainly, no‑one is likely to find EQuality lacking in the flexibility department. To its four fully parametric EQ bands are added low and high shelving equalisers (which can be switched to bell mode), plus one low-pass and two(!) high‑pass filters. The entire plug‑in can be run in one of five processing modes: the standard Digital, the superior Digital+, plus Minimum Phase, Analogue Phase and Linear Phase. Both conventional stereo and M/S operation are supported, and there are some unique bells and whistles too. The resonant frequency of the shelving equalisers can be separated from the turnover frequency, so that at high Q values you can position the resonant peak exactly as you want it. You can also freely adjust the amount of interaction between gain and Q values, to mimic the behaviour of some analogue designs whereby the bandwidth gets sharper as more boost or attentuation is applied.

The attention to detail extends to the user interface, which boasts a number of clever features. As expected, you can drag the EQ points around with the mouse, and you can also Ctrl‑click and Shift‑click to bypass them and adjust their bandwidth respectively. Metering is also informative and highly configurable. EQuality's metering is highly configurable.Less usually, there's a Range slider that lets you scale the response of every band simultaneously, so you can retain the overall 'shape' of your EQ curve while experimenting to decide how drastic you want it to be. Another neat touch, which I've not seen before in an EQ plug‑in, is the horizontal frequency-shift slider, which allows an existing curve to be moved up or down the frequency spectrum.

The curve itself is drawn very clearly, and you can switch in a detailed spectrum analyser if you want to see the effects of your work in real time. Alternatively, if you prefer not to be distracted by visuals and instead concentrate on how it sounds, you can switch off the graphical display entirely and just use the rotary controls.

My first-choice EQ plug‑in of late has been FabFilter's Pro‑Q, and in use, EQuality struck me as having a lot in common with that excellent equaliser. In both cases, much thought has gone into designing an interface that works well in a DAW environment, rather than mimicking some classic piece of analogue hardware; and in both cases, the results are a resounding success, although I don't think that EQuality's GUI quite approaches the slickness of FabFilter's offering. Here, all the EQ bands and their associated controls are always visible, which makes things a little busy by comparison, and because their respective colours don't quite match, I sometimes found myself losing track of which EQ 'blob' corresponded to which set of controls. Nevertheless, it's still a joy to use for the most part, and the Scale and Range sliders are great additions.

In sonic terms, meanwhile, I think it also bears out its maker's claims for it. The basic Digital mode is not quite as smooth as Pro‑Q's default mode, but is probably less CPU‑intensive, and definitely a step up from the EQs bundled with most DAWs. However, I found myself using it mainly in the other processing modes. Digital+ seems a little more focused than the basic mode, while Analogue Phase seems somehow 'softer' and kinder to the source material. On the master bus, I thought the extra CPU load of Linear Phase mode was well worth while, bringing a noticeable extra degree of clarity to the proceedings. I would certainly be very happy to use EQuality as my only EQ on a mix.

Sympathy For The Level

EQuality is undoubtedly one of the more comprehensive equaliser plug‑ins around, but Compassion makes it look positively Spartan. Dave Gamble has thrown the kitchen sink at this one, and followed it up with the dishwasher and tumble drier. So bristling is it with features, in fact, that even summarising them would take a lengthy couple of paragraphs.

In essence, Dave's aim has been to create a single compression 'engine' so flexible that it can be tweaked to behave like almost any hardware compressor, as well as doing a great deal that no hardware unit can. To take but a small example, many compressor plug‑ins let you adjust the extent to which the left and right side‑chain signals are summed, to control the degree of stereo linking, but Compassion goes several extra miles. To adjust the stereo linking, you move two dots around on an X‑Y graph, which allows you to set a separate L/R sum for each channel of the mix. You could even set one channel's side‑chain to be influenced only by the opposite channel's signal if you wished, an idea that raises particularly interesting possibilities in Mid/Side mode (which is, naturally, supported).

Likewise, side‑chain EQ is a common feature of dynamics plug‑ins, but not as implemented here. To mimic the behaviour of some analogue compressors, you can bleed noise into the side‑chain signal, either pre‑ or post‑EQ; you can also combine internal and external side‑chain signals. On top of that, there's a second pair of high- and low‑pass filters that sits in the signal path itself, and, optionally, the side‑chain path as well. You can even choose to have the compressor act only on the filtered signal, leaving the rest of the audio alone, enabling Compassion to be used as a dynamic equaliser or a sophisticated de‑esser.

The attack and release parameters, meanwhile, are almost absurdly configurable. You can specify a 'curve law' that modifies the 'shape' of the response to transients, decouple and reverse the order of the attack and release circuits, and introduce a Hold parameter to delay the onset of the release phase. There's also an adjustable auto‑release algorithm. Should the transients themselves be disobliging enough to escape the attention of the main compressor circuit, you can also engage a fully specified transient shaper and peak limiter, each of which has more parameters of its own than some dedicated plug‑ins do.

The behaviour of the threshold and ratio parameters can be tuned in yet more different ways, some tailored towards the possibility of mimicking typical analogue circuits, others offering advanced dynamic control. A variable knee control is joined by a Bleed parameter, which can help create a Dbx‑style 'over easy' effect, plus a Hysteresis parameter that offsets the threshold values for the attack and release circuits. You can specify a Ceiling, or maximum amount of gain reduction, and a Ceiling Curve that governs whether this operates as a 'brick wall' or as a gradual limit. A complementary Depth parameter specifies a maximum amount of gain reduction that will be applied when Compassion is used as a gate or expander.

Fabfilter pro-q torrent

Here, Compassion is serving as a dynamic EQ on a drum bus, side‑chained from the vocal track.By now, I doubt that anyone will be surprised to learn that Compassion can be used as a gate or expander, but, once again, its versatility is impressive. It can, in fact, simultaneously perform conventional expansion or gating, upward expansion (which increases the dynamic range of signals above the threshold) and upward compression (which squashes and makes louder the audio below the threshold, while leaving peaks untouched). The main Ratio control, meanwhile, runs from 1:1 at the leftmost extreme, through infinity:1 (hard limiting) at about two o'clock and then into negative compression, where the gain range of the signal is inverted. This is something I've only seen before on a few compressors, perhaps most famously the Eventide Omnipressor, and although you wouldn't want to use it every day, it can make for some interesting special effects on percussive sources. If there's one thing that's missing, it's the ability to set a different threshold level for the expander from that used by the main compressor. This can be a useful feature where, for example, you want to compress signal peaks while reducing low‑level noise, but leave the central part of the dynamic range alone.

Of course, no‑one would want to manually set every single Compassion parameter every time they used it, so as well as supporting conventional preset saving and loading, Compassion also incorporates what DMG call 'mods”: the ability to store a chosen subset of parameters. For example, if you've hit upon the perfect combination of behind‑the‑scenes tweakage to recreate an 1176 in every detail, you could store those tweaks as a mod, then simply use the Attack, Release and Threshold controls to set up your virtual vintage compressor for a particular track.

On The Surface

If that massive array of subtleties all sounds a bit intimidating — and it certainly did to me — it's a relief to learn, on first loading up the plug‑in, that you don't have to concern yourself with any of it if you don't want to. The basic Compassion screen simply shows the most important, conventional compression controls, along with a very distinctive graphical display. This, again, is slightly reminiscent of the scrolling display in FabFilter's Pro‑C compressor: the input waveform scrolls from right to left, while above and below it the amount of gain reduction is illustrated by the thickness of a coloured band that is alternately green or red, depending on whether the compressor is in its attack or release phase. The threshold level is shown by a white line, and you can choose to view the input or side‑chain waveform superimposed on the output waveform if you wish. It takes a while to learn how to get the best from such a display, and personally, I found I needed to choose a slower 'logging speed' in order to comprehend what was going on. Fortunately, it's joined by a very configurable and much more conventional bar‑graph meter, and you can switch it off if you want. The many extra controls for detailed configuration are accessed in an optional panel below the main window, where they are organised into a number of panes.

Compassion also features a well‑specified transient shaper and peak limiter.Attempting to describe the sound of Compassion is a bit like nailing the proverbial jelly to the wall, because it's designed to have any sound you want it to have. Its flexibility is illustrated by the supplied mods, which turn it into everything from a FET design to an optical compressor to a vari‑mu valve circuit, and much more besides. Even without tweaking, it delivered a creditable performance across the mix bus, imparting a smooth and slightly dark tone to a rock track — and I'm sure that, with tweaking, it could be made to respond in a hundred other ways. On instrumental tracks and vocals, I was particularly impressed by the lack of unpleasant side‑effects, even with very fast attack and release times. If you're simply after transparent dynamic control, Compassion will do that with aplomb; if you want something more characterful, all the tools are there, though figuring out how best to use them for yourself takes time. (Of course, unlike some dedicated emulations of specific pieces of analogue hardware, it won't reproduce the additional non‑linearities associated with transformers or valve output stages.)

The sheer flexibility of Compassion also means that it shines in problem‑solving roles where other compressors simply wouldn't work. For example, I was mixing a multitrack recording of a band that I'd made live, where drum spill on the vocal mic was proving a big problem. The drums sounded fine until I faded up the vocal, whereupon they acquired a nasty, trashy ring at 2kHz. I was able to deal with this to some extent by using Compassion as a dynamic equaliser on the drum bus, side‑chained from the vocal track. The vocal was fed into Compassion's side‑chain, where it was filtered; I then set up the main Compassion EQ to isolate the 2kHz region and only compress that. The result was that when automation lifted the vocal fader, and with it the 2kHz drum spill, the same frequency range was compressed on the drum bus itself: the results were far from perfect, but did seem to keep the overall tone of the drums a little more consistent.

Although it's very different in look and feel, the philosophy behind Compassion reminds me a little of McDSP's long‑established Compressor Bank plug‑in bundle. That, too, aims to use a single algorithm both to provide versatile dynamic control and to recreate the idiosyncrasies of hardware compressors. Compassion ups the ante even further in the features stakes, however, and is also more widely available than Compressor Bank, which is Mac‑only and doesn't support VST.

Quality‑wise, then, I would have no qualms at all about using Compassion as my only compressor, the more so since it can handle gating, expansion, dynamic EQ and transient shaping as well! On my system, however, I found that its impressive feature set brought with it a rather higher CPU load than most generic dynamics plug‑ins, so I gravitated towards using it only in the most important or challenging mix roles.

Overall, both EQuality and Compassion are up there with the best plug‑ins of their type I've tried, and as such are priced pretty keenly. If you like the idea of having one EQ or compressor to 'rule them all', rather than a number of different plug‑ins for different purposes, they fit the bill admirably.

Pros

  • EQuality is a nice‑sounding and very flexible EQ that can operate in CPU‑light Digital mode and a variety of others, including Linear Phase.
  • Compassion is extraordinarily powerful: quite possibly the most versatile dynamics plug‑in yet created!

Cons

  • Compassion's power brings with it a relatively high CPU load.

Summary

If EQuality and Compassion can't do what you want, you have a problem no EQ or compressor can solve!

information

EQuality £99.99; Compassion £149.99. Prices include VAT.
EQuality £99.99; Compassion £149.99.

Test Spec

  • Dell XPS laptop with 2GHz CPU and 4GB RAM, running Windows 7 Home Premium.
  • Tested with Steinberg Cubase 6.

Prohomemusic brings you the list of top 10 best EQ VST & AU plugins 2018. Equalizers are the most important tools to achieving tonal balance in audio production and engineering. Like I always say, we live in amazing times where you don’t have to break a bank to make music. DSP has come so far, we can now flawlessly do our audio processing tasks completely in the digital realm with amazing results. As a result of this; there are countless plugins released every year, but some stand out as unique and very useful. This in turn leads to their popularity with more people using and recommending them after being impressed by their efficiency.

After a painstaking research and first hand experience with most of these plugins, prohomemusic brings to you the top 10 best EQ VST & AU plugins in 2018.

Fabfilter Pro-Q2

Fabfilter is as fabulous as ever, and they showed that in this beautiful EQ offering. To start with, this plugin has the best interface ever in the EQ realm. The UI is so user friendly it makes you want to just ‘equalize’. The design is appealing so much I’m beginning to see lots of EQs around trying to copy the looks lately. Looks apart, Fabfilter’s plugins are known to sound as beautiful and effective as they look. This EQ is an ultimate EQ capable of meeting all your equalizing tasks day in day out. Nothing beats it at doing detailed surgical cuts and corrective EQing. It is as well very capable of delivering a handful amount of boosts without sounding unnatural. It is a feature packed plugin that will do every task that’s expected of a basic EQ and more.

With awesome features like separate Mono version, mid-size processing, linear phase mode, 24 bands, very accurate spectral graphic display, band soloing, low CPU usage and more, owning Pro Q-2 is a no-brainer. That’s after demoing it for yourself of course. It should be noted however, that this is a clean EQ without any coloring of any sort.

Price- $179

Official webpage: FabFilter Pro-Q 2

DMG Equillibrum

DMG is another DSP developer that puts out nothing but great processors. Though the company has three EQs in all including Equality and Equick, Equilibrum is their mega EQ. Unlike Pro-Q2 above which has floating controls for each band, Equillibrum displays the controls for all available bands at once at the bottom part of the UI. A cool thing about Equillibrum is that its interface and the visibility of these control parameters are highly customizable. You can entirely do away with the bottom placed controls by using just the band nodes. You can also choose which one suits you most out of its various metering options.

Aside from the UI flexibility it offers, it is so detailed and easy to work with due to the its numerous filter types, three different phase mode selections, unrivaled mid-size processing which makes it suitable for mastering e.t.c. To cap it all up, Equillibrum can deliver both clean and colored tone.

Price : £179

Official webpage: Equillibrum

Tokyo Dawn Labs TDR VOS SlickEQ (Gentleman’s Edition)

To the best of our knowledge, these titles are classified as 'abandonware' for having been discontinued by their publishers after Steve Job's public funeral declaring Mac OS 9 a 'Dead Operating System'. Additionally, once the StuffIt Expander app is open, check EDIT PREFERENCES INTERNET and 'use stuffit expander for all available types'Please Donate: If you feel you have benefited from this forum and you have the means, feel free to contribute $5, $10, or $15 dollars, Paypal:Disclaimer: Mac OS 9 Lives does not claim rights to any software on the site. Dmg downloadmacos 9-in-1 usb recovery-install disk After downloading, if the file does not automatically decode by double-clicking, we recommend opening StuffIt Expander and Selecting 'File' and 'Open' to decode the downloaded file. StuffIt Expander is included in every Mac OS 9 installation.

The free version of this amazing plugin was featured on our list of top 10 best free EQ plugins with download links. Should we remind you again that the plugin was birthed out of the collaborative efforts of three of the best DSP programmers in the industry? Yes! This plugin was made with contributions from Vlad Sound’s Vladislav Goncharov (of Molot and Limiter No.6 fame), plus Herbert Goldberg and Fabien Shiver, the geeks at VOS and TDL, so you know it is top notch. The Gentleman’s Edition of the plugin being the paid version, packs on board all the features of the highly rated free version which were highlighted in the article linked above and adds more useful ones.

With additional features like spectral graphic display, low-pass filter, the tilt EQ function, and more, SlickEQ GE makes equalizing a very flexible and easy task.

Price – €30

Official webpage: TDR VOS SlickEQ – Gentleman’s Edition

It’s an international affair when PSP Audio, the highly regarded polish DSP plugin developer decided to model one of America’s classic EQs – the Avedis E27. This product was actually endorsed by Avedis, and is some sort of collaborative project between the two companies. One prominent question is ‘does the plugin sound similar to, or as good as the original?’ Well, I don’t own the original to make comparisons with, but I’ve come across numerous owners of the hardware online who gushed about how good and close sounding it is to their hardware units.

Talking about the plugin features, PSP E27 has 3 filter bands, each one provides 16dB of cut or boost on nine different frequencies. These can be extended for more flexibility by switching on the x2 button, which offers a sum of six bands in all per channel. With its EQ matching features, the left and right channels of stereo signals can be linked to mirror the same settings on the two sides, or processed separately. There’s also a mono-stereo feature which applies slightly different settings under the hood to the left and right channels to give a broader stereo field to mono tracks. Plus lots of other features like, ‘PA11’ preamp module, non-linear characteristics, progressive Q, high pass filter, mid-Sides processing, 28 KHz boost button, e.t.c. PSP E27 is not only smooth and sweet sounding but fully featured.

The only important feature missing on the plugin is high cut filter. Included in the bundle is a simpler edition named E27se, which has a simplified single GUI with streamlined features. The E27se is handy for quick EQ tasks.

Price – $149

Official web page : PSP E27

Slate Digital VMR (FG-N)

Slate Digital is known to always come through when it comes to making effective premium looking and sounding audio effect plugins. The duo of Fabrice Gabriel and Steven Slate’s flair for precisely recreating hardware effects in the digital world is unrivaled. The Virtual Mix Rack is a revered plugins bundle that houses numerous great processors of all sorts, with a handful of EQs in there. The most widely used and praised ones being the FG-N(Neve) and FG-S(SSL). The spotlight here is on the FG-N, being the most loved EQ module among the lots.

This EQ is modeled after the classic Neve 1073 EQ, and it accurately delivers the character of the hardware it models. Slate FG-N nicely recreates the line saturation drive of the original hardware with the red knob in the section labeled ‘LINE’. With the subtle lovable color it imparts, this EQ often sounds good on various audio sources it is used on.

Price – Subscription based, check site

Official web page : VMR 2.0

UAD Manley Massive Passive

UAD can be likened to Apple Inc. of DSP developers’ world. Like Apple’s iPhones,UAD make great premium plugins, no doubt ; but people also have problems with the restrictions they tend to exert by sticking with hardware DSPs and dongles. In spite of all these, they still have huge followership and a plethora of great plugins. Also, they are very good at match-modeling classic hardwares, and Manley Massive Passive is one of those emulations. As indicated by the name, the UAD Manley Massive Passive EQ is modeled after the stereo tube hardware equalizer by Manley Labs, which is one of the revered widely used gears among pro level sound engineers. As expected of a UAD product, not only does it look like the the hardware but it sounds so close to the original.

The plugin, like the hardware is a stereo 4-band passive EQ, with parallel band configurations as a result of frequency overlap across its bands. This means if you boost the same frequencies in two different bands, the gain doesn’t get increased twice, but auto adjusted accordingly. Each of the bands can be switched to either cut or boost, and also be used on bell or shelf modes. It also has high and low-pass filters, a gain make-up stage and transformer-balanced outputs. Finally, it comes with a dedicated mastering version. A true masterpiece of an EQ by UAD it is.

Price – $299

Official webpage : MANLEY MASSIVE PASSIVE EQ

Eiosis AirEQ premium

The Eiosis brand is owned by Fabrice Gabriel, who is a partner and chief programmer at Slate Digital. Air EQ was first released in the early 2000s under the Eliosound brand. It got a total overhaul in a few years back with a fairly new, intuitive and highly configurable user interface. By default, the upper half of the UI window features a nice graphical display with a FFT-style frequency analysis. The plugin has a total of nine bands, including dedicated shelf and filter sections. One of its unique features is the character and strength controls dubbed ‘Water’, ‘Neutral’, and ‘Fire’ which are assignable to each band, thereby adding more to its flexibility.

The particularly special ‘Air’ and ‘Earth’ bands are a pair of dedicated, fixed-frequency, low and high shelving equaliser sections which can be toggled on or off. There are two bell responses available: the constant-Q and variable-Q bells for surgical cuts and boosts. However, the only downside to the plugin design is that the bands can only be adjusted using dedicated knobs and cannot be manipulated within the graphical display. But with all it’s unique features, coupled with ease of use, low CPU hit, zero latency processing and more, you can always turn to Eiosis Air EQ as your go-to EQ without being let down a bit.

Price – $149

Official webpage : AIREQ PREMIUM

Waves Scheps 73

Like the LA2A in the compressor plugins world, the Neve 1073 classic equalizer is the most modelled analog equalizer in the EQ plugins category. A handful of plugin developers have their version of the EQ out, and Waves being one of the biggest players had to deliver their own take on it. Of course you can bet they delivered accurately. To make this vision feasible, they teamed up with the veteran Grammy awards winning sound engineer – Andrew Scheps, whose personal EQ unit was particularly modelled.

Like the original hardware, the plugin is a three-band EQ. It has the high shelf, the low shelf, and a peaking mid band, each of which offers up to +/-15dB gain. The high band is fixed at 12kHz, the low band covers four frequencies which goes from 35Hz to 60, 110 and 20Hz respectively. While the mid-range has seven frequency settings that can be toggled from 0.36kHz, to 0.7, 1.6, 3.2, 4.8, 7.2 and 10kHz. The added 10kHz mid-range setting is one of Scheps’ customisations, the feature idea was borrowed from the Neve 1078 design. Finally, it has an 18dB/octave high-pass filter which goes from 5kHz to 80, 160, and 300Hz.

A very impressive feature on the EQ is the preamp section, which was modeled to emulate the hardware saturation and harmonic distortions with a drive knob to adjust to taste. The plugin comes in both mono and stereo versions. The stereo version allows switchable stereo, M/S and dual mono processing. With the link button disabled, the left and right parts of the stereo can be processed differently. Considering all these mentioned features and more, the Scheps 73 is arguably the best Neve 1073 modelled EQ plugin out there.

Price – $59

Official webpage : Scheps 73

Plugin alliance / Brainworx Maag EQ4

Brainworx in collaboration with Maag decided to release a digital version of the Maag EQ4 analog EQ which is famous for its smooth air band boosts, and they delivered it perfectly. The real catch here is the Air Band. Believe me when I say in my own experience, that I’ve never used any other plugin with as this much lush and open high boost. Maag EQ4 plugin delivers just the right kind of air, sparkle, and sheen to open things up nicely without getting honky or harsh. Don’t get carried away by the sweetness of the top end though, as this is not the only good thing about this plugin because it is actually an all-round sweetener. One of it’s striking quality is the ability to deliver a tight low end as well.

The Maag EQ4 plugin is actually a six-band EQ, and considering it is not a parametric EQ, that’s a lot of bands to work with. The availability of these much bands does not make working with the plugin complex, because all of these bands operate at a fixed frequency except for the Air band. All the bands filter types from the bottom which starts at 10Hz all the way to the top are all bells, except for the shelf at 2.5kHz. Finally the Air band sits at the extreme end with a knob which can be dialed from 5kHz to 10kHz, 20kHz, and 40kHz. With this EQ, little movement of the knobs makes so much difference because the bands are fairly wide, hence the amount of gain generated with little boosting is noticeable.

Price – $229

Official webpage : Maag Audio EQ4

Acustica Audio Ruby

When Acustica Audio came into the scene, they wanted to change the conventional approach to DSP programming and audio software plugins development. So they came with their own innovative technology which has been effective and evolving over the years. Their plugins are based on a cutting-edge non-linear Vectorial Volterra Kernels technology. Using this technology, their plugins are built on dynamically capturing samples of original hardware gears. This helps them recreate unprecedented sonic quality in the digital world that are very similar to the original hardwares down to the tiniest details and transient response. Employing this technology, Acustica Audio created the Ruby EQ which is an official endorsement and a faithful emulation of the D.W. Fearn VT-5 EQ.

The hardware VT-5 is a highly sought-after vacuum tube equalizer which are strictly handmade to perfection by Mr Fearn himself, hence the huge price of around $10000 USD. The original hardware equalizer uses passive LC circuitry with class-A triode vacuum tube stages for the input and output. The input transformer is made by Jensen. You can bet Acustica captured the sonic nuances of these components well in their plugin. The preamp Section recreates the sonic coloration of the original unit down to the unique harmonic distortion. Customary of them, most of their plug-ins come with a switch to turn on/off the preamp function. If you’ll prefer a clean signal processing, simply turn off the preamp on the plugin.

It also has an “Input Trim” knob with which you can adjust the internal gain control. The “Output Gain” control knob lets you match the original loudness of the audio after applying equalization. Like Maag EQ4, one striking feat this plugin pulls off better than most other out there is its ability to add air to vocals without getting sibilant.

Price – €235.00

Official webpage : ACQUA – Ruby

Bonus:

Waves SSL G-Equalizer

This is one of those classic plugins that have been around for long, but still maintain their good reputation and still get used by lots of professional mixers because they just work. Developed under license from Solid State Logic, the Waves SSL 4000 bundle actually contains three EQs in all. The EQ section on both the SSL E and SSL G channel strips- which can be used alone by bypassing the dynamics, and a stand alone EQ which is a more detailed version of the G channel EQ. The focus here however, is on the stand-alone G channel EQ.

The SSL-G EQ is a digital replication of the SSL G Series EQ292 which are known for their signature character and color. This stand-alone version of has four bands for more control. Though it looks similar to the E series EQ, it has its unique features like having a slightly different curve, and offering a greater gain change than the E-Series EQ. It also has a pre-boost dip and a pre-cut rise, plus a broader Q for overboard boosting and cutting. The analog button turns on the emulated signal noise of the hardware console, which can be turned off if not needed. A tested and trusted awesome plugin for analog coloring.

Price : $129

Official webpage: SSL G-Equalizer

Dmg Equality Vs Fabfilter Pro Q 3 V3 0 1 For Pc

There you have the list of top 10 best EQ VST & AU plugins 2018 people!. Note that the stated prices are the current prices as at when this article was written. If it were not a top ten list, these other other EQ plugins would have made the list (call them the worthy mentions) : Sonimus Burnley 73, Soundtoys Sie-Q, Brainworx BX2 digital, Soundradix SurferEQ, Flux Epure V3, Sonnox Oxford EQ, Kush Elektra, Elysia MusEQ, Waves Api 550, Acustica Audio Gold, and DMG Equality.

Dmg Equality Vs Fabfilter Pro Q 2

I hope this list will help in making your EQ plugin shopping decisions easier. For an insight into how to rightly use EQs, read Explaining the simple use of EQ in music mixing. If you are cash strapped at the moment but still need good third party EQs to mix with, then check the list of Top best free EQ VST plugins with download links for amazingly free highly effective EQ plugins. For more recommendations, read top best compressors VST plugins 2018. Happy music making!.

Fabfilter Pro Q Review

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