Whats Wrong With Stock Plugins? ReaEQ vs Pro Q3

[Music] hi and welcome back today I'm gonna compare the subtlety EQ to re EQ the stock EQ plug-in and repo okay I know that's not really a fair fight Pro q3 has a ton of extra advanced features it's got better ergonomics so for example you can select multiple bands and adjust them all together and I think most people would agree that the interface is more attractive and easier on the eyes but none of these extra features are essential for creating a good mix and you wouldn't get any of them on a console EQ the basic requirements are low in high shelves and parametric mid bands and high and low high school given that both these plugins are clean and don't try to model analog saturation or noise at all is there any difference when using these core essential features so here's my test setup I have a pink noise generator on channel one which I'm routing to an instance of pro q3 on channel 2 and also an instance of ree Q on channel 3 if I flipped the phase of one and then turn them both on together they know as you would expect and drop right off the meters so let's try a high-pass filter in both plugins set to a hundred Hertz that's a pretty good Knoll already though we still see signal on the meters and low frequency content on the analyzer but of course we need to match recuse bandwidth parameter to pro q threes Q parameter so let's see if I can get a better match I sure enough around 1.9 there's a perfect null again okay that's a good start so let's try a low shelf I've said both up with 12 DB of boost still at 100 Hertz that's nowhere near I know so let's tweak the bandwidth and there we go there's the know at exactly one okay so how about a bell but start with the low frequencies I'll stick with a hundred Hertz 12 DB boost for both I know it's tweak the bandwidth there we go perfect no at 1.9 the game just like the high-pass filter we're doing pretty well so far 1 kilohertz well nearly just peeping up on the meters let's see if I can tune that out by tweaking the bandwidth and that's the best I can do still that's a pretty good no and I doubt the difference would be audible okay let's try 10 kilohertz and there's quite a big difference there let's see if I can improve on that it gets better if I reduce the bandwidth but that's too far but no I can't get much of a nil going there at all so let's hop over to the plug-in doctor to see what's going on here's a 10k boost in pro q3 and i've zoomed the graph in plugin doctor so we can see the high frequencies in more detail save that as a reference compared to re equ doing the same amount of boost let's try tweaking the bandwidth you and I can get pretty close for the lower part of the curve you but the upper part of the curve ends up back at zero and Nyquist regardless of my bandwidth setting while the fabfilter version doesn't so this part of the curve won't match whatever I do so let's say I match the lower part of the curve where our ears are more sensitive is the difference up here actually audible the only way to tell that is to do a listening test I'm going to use a drum kit mix as cymbal crashes can be quite revealing but try to make sure YouTube is giving you a high bitrate stream if possible otherwise they'll probably sound like they're running through a guitar flanger pedal okay here's the drums with no EQ I'd like to do this blind can you hear the difference I hear a more open airy character to the pro to free version but it's remarkable how much harder it was to hear the difference when I did a proper blind test so what if I sweep the frequency higher still and we see that gradually it warps further and further out of shape as wherever it's set it still plummets right down to zero at the Nyquist limit at half the sample rate let's set it at 20 kilo Hertz and compare to pro q 3 which hasn't cramped narrower like REE Q and doesn't do a dive down to zero and Nyquist let's go back to the pink noise test as pro q3 boosting 20 kilohertz with a lovely smooth symmetrical curve and it's reeking with its ugly misshapen spike obviously they're not going to know and nor do they but what happens if I adjust the bandwidth to try to compensate for the cramping that's too far let's hold control to fine-tune and that's about as good as I can get it a couple of things to notice it's not much of a no and there's lots of signal not cancelling but the difference is mostly high-frequency content right at the top of the spectrum where our ears are less sensitive the different signal is similar in level to the difference at ten kilo Hertz actually slightly louder but because it's shifted higher up the spectrum it's likely to be much less audible so in practical terms I'd consider this a much better now than I achieved at 10 kilohertz I admit this surprised me a little proof is in the pudding there can we hear this difference let's run the same listening test again [Music] I'm not confident I could tell those apart which isn't what I expected I thought the 20 kilohertz test would be more revealing than the 10 kilohertz test as the cramping gets worse the closer you get to Nyquist but with the bandwidth compensated the opposite is true as the differences are now focused in the very highest frequencies that my aging ears no longer care about but the fabfilter plugin has another trick up its sleeve which I'll demonstrate in plug-in doctor by switching it to show phase shift instead of frequency response now when I boost a low frequency we see the phase shift happens both above and below the center frequency notice the nice symmetrical shape in fact the greatest faceshift coincides with steepest gradient on the frequency response while the actual target frequency is at zero phase is higher noticed that the phase always ends up at zero her Nyquist and when we get to the highest regions it becomes asymmetrical and cramps out of shape you if I set it to exactly 10k the face should be at zero at 10k but it isn't we can fix this by switching to natural phase mode and 10k is now at zero phase exactly as it should be and the phase shift is nicely symmetrical until we're well above 20 kilohertz where it still inevitably has to plunge down to zero and Nyquist other than that this stays nicely symmetrical wherever we move it like a good analog EQ if I set it to exactly ten key loads and compare zero latency with natural faith the difference seems pretty significant so let's try the pink noise test again this is the best Knoll I could get in zero latency mode so let's try natural phase and that's unexpected we're getting a much deeper null now let's try a bit lower or a bit higher that's probably still the least audible setting and that's way better than zero latency which is not what I expected I thought there would be more difference between them in natural phase mode not less let's pop back to plug in doctor to see what's going on the red trace is re EQ and we can see that the phase is cramped in a similar manner to the frequency response so the upper half is narrower than the lower half the green trace is pro q3 latency mode and we can see that whatever they've done to correct the frequency response in zero latency mode has caused a slight overall phase shift so the target frequency isn't at zero faith the blue trace is q3 in natural phase mode this does pass through zero at 10 kilohertz and stays nicely symmetrical for the top half as per the analog model but notice fit for frequencies at 10 kilohertz or below the phase shift from re EQ matches natural phase mode much more closely than zero latency mode with the differences are all concentrated right at the top which is why we get a much better null of course it's more conventional to use a high shelf when dealing with the highest octave so does the same apply there riku shelf slope does indeed get much steeper as i sweep it up through the highest octaves and yes it does cramp out of shape here's the comparison with broke u3 with both set to 12 kilo Hertz I can't get those slopes to match very well and the phase looks different too here's the pink noise test with 12 K shelves and pro-q three in zero latency mode and this is about the best Nullah I can get I can sweep the null up higher in frequency by increasing the bandwidth all our by reducing it which is probably less audible so let's try natural phase mode and there's much less of an L this time let's see if I can tune it any better with the bandwidth well I can get a deeper no at 12 K but whatever I do this is less of a no than I achieved in zero latency mode indicating more of a difference so can we hear the difference let's just say that the difference is unlikely to cost you your Gramp now don't get me wrong the fabfilter EQ is awesome and I use it so much I load it with a hot key the ergonomics really do help you to get results quicker which can sometimes mean better results to when the advanced features really can help you create better mixes if you can afford to buy it go ahead you won't regret it but in practical terms re EQ is just as clean and free of distortion and if you stick to the 12 DB slopes in pro q3 the results are almost the same for most of the frequency range the cramping at higher frequencies in re EQ is a real difference this used to be quite common in digitally eq's but it's a little disappointing these days however I was surprised how well I could tune out the difference by compensating the bandwidth when you're mixing you'll set this by here anyway so you'll probably tune out most of the difference instinctively without even being aware of it the difference also depends on sample rate I've been comparing at 48 kilo Hertz so you can expect the cramping to be marginally worse if you're working at 44.1 conversely if your project sample rate is 96 K all the cramping will be shifted up an octave to twice the frequency this doesn't entirely remove the problem but it probably makes it inaudible unless you have the ears of a dog but if you're working at the 44.1 or 48 and you're worried about the cramping there is a solution that won't cost you any money head over to tokyo dawn labs and downloads the free slicking eq plugin this is nicely free of cramping both with the shelves and the bells and even better the phase shift is also free of cramping just like natural phase mode in the fabfilter buggy if you use ryu q for surgical duties and slicky you4re high-frequency boosts you can be confident with what tools are not holding you back Santi when your choice of which frequencies to cut or boost is the only thing that really matters okay that's all for now thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Dan Worrall

Views: 84,861

Keywords: EQ, Pro-Q3, FabFilter, Reaper, ReaEQ, Cockos

Id: 3OoVnTO3AB4

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sullyj3]

Great content. The fact that he sounds like a golf commentator just adds to the appeal.

[u/Dudemanbro88]

Thanks for doing this!

[u/[deleted]]

I always use SlickEQ when boosting above 3-5k. Cool.

[u/chansy93]

tldr?