… about an hour ago.

Still feeling somewhat shellshocked. It’s a big deal for me! 🙂

Here’s where it’s at (click to enlarge):

Here are some of the ideas that eQuality is based on:

1) Software should remove the need for pointless manual tasks.
2) Information is king.
3) EQs can, and will, sound better than the current generation.

You get a huge graph; you might have noticed that. High-res spec analyser.
4 bands of mid. If you don’t need them, leave them switched off, and you don’t pay a CPU cost.
If you do need them, you’ll be really glad of them. 😉

Most shelves are useless. If you could move the shelf resonance to where you need it, you’d be winning right?
Guess what those %age knobs in the shelf columns do… 😉

By now, I think we probably all know that the difference between, say, a Neve and an SSL is the Gain-Q interaction.
Turns out there’s actually an equation that allows you to specify it. You’ll find the control for that on the bottom-left.

Tell me.. why can’t I just hit a button to compare linear/minimum/analogue phase against what the normal EQ sounds like?
Why do linear phase EQs cost so much more?
No reason. Click on “Digital” on the menu to pick how you want it. Use whichever sounds best.

Ever wondered if you’re overbaking your EQ, but don’t want to have to write down what your settings were and test scaling it back, or even reversing the EQ shape? There’s a fader to the right of the graph that lets you do that.
The unexpected benefit of this turns out to be that if you set your EQ range to, say, 3dB, you get real easy, precise control (for mastering, for instance), or you could set the range to 48db and do something nuts.

Why do you always have to instance another plugin to automate filters? Surely that’s an EQ task?
I quite agree. So you get adjustable slope/resonance filters high and low.
Also, I know a lot of people who always keep a HPF on (nearly) every channel.. it’d be a pain if that interfered with your filter automation… so you get two HPFs; one for creative use, one for keeping the channel clean.

Ever repitched a sample and found that your EQ sounds weird now? Please use the fader under the graph to shift the response left<->right to tune it back in. Saves a lot of time…

All these things might make you worry about CPU usage, but it uses a regular high-efficiency filter topology under the hood, so CPU usage is nice and low. This won’t hurt your channel counts.

What about the high-end response? Is it “cramped”?
This is a deep topic, and I might post something lengthy about it. If you’ve followed this in detail, you’ll know about Bilinear Transforms (which are crap) and the Orfanidis technique, which is much better (although not perfect), and is used in most “pro” EQs.
… but you might also be aware that there are some EQs (AirEQ, Digidesign EQ3, Focusrite d2, Focusrite Forte) which do something… else… which sounds even sweeter. I wrote Forte nearly a decade ago. Turns out you can go further still. I’m confident that you will be extremely pleased with the sound of eQuality.

However, no digital EQ can be perfect, using low-cpu topologies. There are cases (center frequencies above 19k, high Q) which just can’t be done digitally… It would have been really annoying if that was the end of the story. Rather than accept defeat to the maths, you’ll find that eQuality has “digital+” mode which patches in a VERY small FIR filter which eats up any error. In general usage, you won’t find a difference, but if you torture test eQuality, you’ll find that switching in the “digital+” mode will, for a very small CPU cost (about 3 bands worth), the error is gone, and you’re back in the world of lush analogue curves.

Also, do you find that you either open your EQ and automatically change a few settings before you even start using it? Or you have a preset that you always open on instancing? eQuality has a button to save the default state (it’s in setup).

I want to have eQuality in your hands by the end of January, which will give me about 4 weeks of beta. In a perfect world, we’d go for February, which will give me time to add in any suggestions you have.

A new UI is on the way too, so it will look as good as it sounds. 🙂

I’m going to link to this post from KVR and Gearslutz (or find someone to do it for me 😀 ). I need feedback! 😀

Oh, nearly forgot to mention… not only can you switch your shelves to be parametrics, if you need that, you can also switch your parametrics to be notches. When you actually need a Q=50 notch, not much else will do; so now you can have it. 🙂

OH! Also, it does M/S processing. Instance, and pick whether you want to process the Stereo image, or the Mid, the Side, the Left or Right channels. Instance two and have M on the left and S on the right of the screen; no clutter to the interface. 🙂

I’m probably forgetting something, but I think those are most of the key features.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Dave.

New Year, New Blog, New Company, New Products!

I’m back 😀

If you’re finding this site, you might remember me as Dave from Sonalksis Dev Blog, or if your memory is even better, you might remember me from the days when I worked at Focusrite/Novation. I left Sonalksis a couple of years ago with the intention of setting up my own small dev shop. I’ve been working freelance for a bunch of great companies in the meantime, to pay the bills to get something together that I can release… I set myself the deadline of 1/1/2010. I’ve pretty much made it.

I’ve been blogging sporadically on other sites in the meantime; you might have seen Harmony Box which was a fun collaboration between my friend Mike and I. You may even have stumbled onto the (deeply techy, and badly neglected) DMGSound Blog. I announced the plan there a while ago… but then DMGAudio.com came up as a domain, so I grabbed it and here we are!

In the next few days, I’m going to be shipping my first product to beta.
Those of you who know/remember me won’t find it particularly out of character that I’d very much like to get feedback on it from as many of you as possible, because together we can make it into what I want it to be- the finest EQ in the world.

Let’s cut to the chase. Meet eQuality:

Before I start to describe it, I should mention that I’ve also put together a small site where I can collect all the salient information.
We’ll do license files for copy protection (I’m working on building integrated installers too!), and you get a user area where you can log in and download your software whenever.

Should also mention that this UI is my… programmer art… (excepting the logo, by a talented friend of mine, who will be making this look pretty and a lot more professional!). Incidentally, when I say programmer art, what I mean is that the entire UI is generated using a realtime raytracing engine. 😉

So… how to go about building the finest EQ in the world?
I had a few ideas, and a lot of people have helped me with some other great ideas.
Let’s make that another post.

I’m back! 😀