Heel Audio Releases Free Ducking EQ for Mac

Heel Audio have released Duck EQ, a free equalizer plug-in for OSX that operates dynamically via the sidechain input.

Here's what they have to say about it:

"What is it good for?

Ducking has many applications in mixing and broadcast, especially for managing tracks with overlapping frequency content, like Bass and Kick Drum, Vocals and Electric Guitars etc.
DuckEQ’s integration of EQ means it can duck only specific frequency bands, as well as normal ‘broadband’ ducking. Apart from ducking, there are many other applications that DuckEQ can be used, for example instead of ducking a signal, one could apply gain to the EQ bands and “EQ-Gate” .

What’s the difference to using a compressor?
In many cases a Compressor with a SC input can do the job, however specialised duckers have more control over the gain reduction. For example, when ducking a guitar from vocal, a compressor will reduce the guitars more on loud words and less on quiet ones, which is the opposite of what is desired. A ducker reduces the gain the same amount every time."

Moog 10-Band Graphic EQ on eBay

Info at the listing...

Treating Your Drums Right

One of the easiest ways to bring the production quality up in your home studio recordings is to record each individual drum sound on its own track, thus allowing you to process each one individually. Of course, there's something to say for taking a less precise approach (read up on the recording of the drum track for Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" for a good example), but if a clean, punchy, and clear drum track is your aim, read on.

So, today's post will be about how best to effect each part of your drum track. Remember, at the end of the day, the only real rule is if you think it sounds good. If it sounds right, it is right. Rules were made to be broken.

Kick Drums

Unless you are making a style of music that depends on the more extreme ends of the bass spectrum, the first thing to do is to apply a highpass filter to your kick. Filter everything out below around 50Hz or so. This will clean up your low end significantly and give your mix more headroom by getting rid of frequencies most of your listeners won't hear on their systems anyway.

The next step I usually take is to add some compression. How you compress your kick really depends on the style of music you make. A good starting point, however, is to set your ratio to 4:1, set your threshold so its reducing your signal by about 6db, then set you attack and release to taste. If you make more hard-edged styles of music like French House or EBM, you might like to use a bit crusher (12-bits sounds great on kicks) or an overdrive on your kick. This essentially works like a limited and will add some extra harmonics that will help give your kick a harder edge.

You can use an additional EQ to emphasize different frequencies and further shape the tone of the sound. Try boosts between 60-80hz to add some clubby subs. Need some more smack to the attack? Try a boost somewhere between 1800hz-4000hz.

Kicks are generally kept pretty dry these days, but if you're going for a more retro sound, try adding a little gated reverb for some 80's flavor.

Cymbals

Again, I find it a good idea to begin the processing chain for cymbals like hi-hats and crashes with some subtractive EQ. Even though cymbals are generally very high-frequency sounds, you'd be surprised at how many errant low frequencies that are present in some of them. Filter these out with a highpass filter set to eliminate frequencies below 500hZ or so. If you need some extra air and crispness, try a slight boost in the region above 10kHz. Don't overdo it, just boost by a db or two.

Adding space to the track depends on the sound you're after. Consider adding a little room reverb with a 20% wet level to give your cymbals a more "live" sound.

If you're doing certain styles of dance music that requires chunky sounding cymbals, you might want to add a little bit of bit-crushing.

Snare

Begin yet again with some subtractive EQ, rolling off the frequencies below 100Hz or so. The "body" of a lot of snares is somewhere in the 200-300Hz range, so boosts or cuts to this region will generally help you shape how heavy a snare sounds. Boosts in the 3000-700Hz range will help add a little punch and brightness. Want to add some air and crispness? Boost in the 10kHz+ range. Keep boosts subtle. If you need to EQ too much, you might be better off finding a different snare.

Compression is a good choice next. Start with the same basic settings that I recommended for kicks and shape it until you have something you like the sound of. The recommendations about bit-crushers and overdrive apply here too.

Next up, try applying some reverb. To be current, you generally want something pretty short here, such as a room reverb. Keep the wet level around 20%. For a retro or dub sound, try using a spring reverb setting.

Toms

Apply the same general settings as you have applied to your snare, but allow more lower frequencies through, EQing it more like your kick drum. Compress as your snare and shape to taste.

These are some general hints to get you started processing your drum sounds individually. How you apply this to your own material will depend mostly on your own taste. One trick many producers like to use after producing all their individual drum parts is to send all of their drum sounds to a bus, and compressing the entire kit together by a small amount (try 2:1 ratio, and 2-3db reduction on your threshold). This gives the effect of "gluing" the individual elements together into a coherent sounding mix that sounds like it came from a single kit.

Anything you feel I've missed? Any valuable drum processing secrets you think your fellow Waveformless readers might benefit from? Share them in the comments!

PSP Releases Noble Q and Noble Qex

PSP has announced the release of NobleQ and NobleQex, both based on vintage passive EQ designs. Here is what they say about it:

"PSP NobleQ combines the most beloved features of classic passive program equalizers, but adds a wide range of frequency settings and cutting-edge functionality. To make this plug-in a more versatile tool we added several modern features such as an adjustable high pass filter, and the ability to switch high peak and shelf filters to Boost or Attenuation operation. PSP NobleQ sounds excellent either as a transparent or a color EQ.

PSP NobleQex is an extended version of the PSP NobleQ. It offers all the features of PSP NobleQ with an additional middle bell filter and adjustable low-shelf dip frequency shift. Download the demo and try it out today!

The fully operational 14 days demo (which doesn't require any hardware dongle) is available now on our download page.

Introductory offer!

Until 31st August 2011 you can buy PSP NobleQ at the special introductory price of $59* (15% off). Starting from 1st September 2011 regular price $69* will be applied. (*all prices exclude taxes)

You can buy PSP NobleQ at an even better price if you already own current version any of our processor plug-ins (the more PSP plug-ins you own, the better discount you get). To see your price, log-in to your account at our user area."

Get Your Freq On: Getting Started with EQ

Next to compression, equalization (or EQ, as it is more commonly called) is perhaps one of the toughest mixing concepts for most beginners to get their heads around. The concept is pretty simple to understand - you use controls to emphasize or attenuate specified frequencies in a sound, thus allowing you to alter the overall tonal balance of the sound. The bass and treble knobs on your car stereo are examples of a very crude equalizer. Where EQ can be difficult to grasp is in the actual practical application; not just the how, but the why. So today, I'm going to share some tips I hope beginners will find useful in getting them on the right track with this often-misunderstood effect.

• Get Your Hertz Sorted
As you may remember from your elementary school science class, a sound's frequency is measured in Hertz (abbreviated Hz). A Hertz measures the number of wave cycles per second in a sound. Thus lower frequencies, which have longer wavelengths, are found at the lower end of the scale, and higher frequencies which have shorter wavelengths and thus more cycles per second, are found at the high end. A human's hearing range is generally believed to be between 20Hz to 20,000Hz (aka 20k - 1k = 1,000 Hz). Your mixes will generally be in a much narrower range, though.

A good thing to do when you are starting out with EQ is to play around with an equalizer on an audio track just to see what boosts and cuts in different frequency ranges sound like. Just by doing this, you should start to get a good idea of basic frequency ranges - what boosts make a sound bassier, which make them brighter, etc. As time goes on, you should make an effort to learn more specific ranges and useful frequencies to improve your ability to hear what cuts or boosts need to be applied to a sound. For instance, you'll find the rumbly sub bass frequencies around 60Hz... a boost around 150Hz can help warm up a bass sound... a boost around 1.5k can make a vocal more intelligible, etc. There are no absolutes when it comes to EQ. Each application might require its own, unique solution. But if you take the time to learn some basics about the frequency ranges various instruments or sounds generally fall into, you'll be able to narrow in on the problem spots faster and more efficiently.

• Trim the Fat
Just about every sound under the sun contains a much wider range of frequencies than is typically needed in a piece of music. You might be playing a high register synth string patch, but if you look at the signal through an analyzer, you'll see that while most of the sound energy is in the upper range, there are probably a bunch low frequencies in there, too. This sounds great when you play it by itself, but when you place it in a mix, those low frequencies are suddenly put in competition with the low frequencies in your synth bass and your kick drum. Frequencies are very selfish. They don't like to share their space very much and if you have too many instruments inhabiting the same frequencies the result is audio mud. The solution here is to cut out the frequencies you don't need in each track so they are no longer clashing with those same frequencies in instruments that DO need them. Likewise, with your bass sound, you can probably cut some of the higher frequencies. While these EQed tracks will probably sound "wrong" when soloed, in a well-balanced arrangement, each instrument contributes to the over all tonal balance and everything sound full without being muddy. You'll note that you can have way more parts going on at once without it sounding bad if you practice subtractive EQing. Obviously you don't need (or want) to go overboard here. You're not trying to totally eliminate different tracks from having some of the same frequencies, you're just trying to minimize the overlap as much as practically possible.

• Never Boost When You Can Cut
All mixes have what is known as "Headroom". Headroom is basically a limit to the amount of signal in your mix (or individual track) before clipping and distortion occur. Any time you boost something in a mix, whether it is the actual track volume or making a boost in EQ (which boosts the volume of a frequency range and thus the volume of the track itself), you are putting yourself closer to that limit. Therefore, it is always preferable to make a cut instead of a boost when it comes to EQ. Not only are you giving the sounds more of their own space, but you're opening up room in your mix as a whole. Let's say you have a guitar and a vocal that are clashing. Instead of boosting 1.5k on your vocal to help bring out the midrange, try cutting that same range in the guitar track to create a 'hole' for the vocal to sit in. Finding the right places to cut holes and doing it transparently takes time and experience, but you'll end up with much cleaner, more open mixes if you get in the habit of utilizing this practice.

• The Eyes Have It
First and foremost, you should be making EQ adjustments using your ears. Remember the credo: if it sounds right, it is right. However, using visual aids such as frequency analyzers can be extremely helpful, especially if you are new to this and aren't yet familiar with the general frequency ranges different sounds occupy. Frequency analyzers represent the frequency content that makes up a sound in the form of a real-time graph. Frequencies that are in abundance are the higher points on the dancing line, while the ones that are more scarce are in the lower regions. This gives you a way to see the overall frequency picture of your sound and take an informed approach to applying EQ to achieve the end you are after. Some EQ plug-ins have built-in frequency analyzers, but there are several dedicated frequency analyzers out there as well.

• Not Everything Needs EQ
It's REALLY easy to go overboard when you are just starting out with EQ. Always stop yourself before you are about to EQ and ask yourself why you're doing it. If you don't have a specific answer, maybe you don't really need it. In fact, a well-arranged track may need very little EQ at all on its individual tracks. Always have a purpose in doing what you're doing. Don't EQ just to EQ.

Focusrite Releases New Compressors and EQ for Liquid Mix

I bought a Focusrite Liquid Mix last year and almost immediately it became one of the best things I ever bought for my studio. I've never owned any of the models of hardware compressor or EQs emulated on this device, so I can't say how faithful the recreations are, but I can say it sounds absolutely amazing and the controller makes dialing in settings a pure joy.

So I was happy to receive news in my mailbox announcing that Focusrite has released 21 new compressor emulations, and 1 new EQ, free to all existing Liquid Mix users. Here's what they had to say:

"The compression emulations are based on two compressors. The API 2500 Stereo Compressor (serial number 001475), provides feed-back or feed-forward options and variations on 'knee' and 'thrust'. The Millenia STT-1 (serial number 0-166), provides the sound of variable input stages, with valve or solid-state compression circuits. Finally, the EQ emulations are based on the original Mk1 Chandler Limited Edition EMI/Abbey Road Passive TG Channel. This uses the same circuit as the Abbey Road mastering console, providing the the signature Beatles sound."

Free EQ from Voxengo

Critically acclaimed company Voxengo have released an update to their Overtone GEQ equalizer. As opposed to EQs that are as sonically transparent as possible, Overtone GEQ is designed to harmonically color whatever it is applied to. The plug-in is available for both Windows and Mac in AU and VST formats.

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