Hello everyone,

So I had a rainy weekend and was bored to death. Listening to music I speculated that the potential of my hardware in not fully realized and since I had nothing else to do so I decided to test a few well known Parametric EQs.

EQ's I tested:
Acon Equalize
FabFilter Pro-Q 3
Maag eqRed
Initial Audio dynamic EQ
Slate Infinity EQ
Voxengo Prime & Gliss EQ
Sonible SmartEQ 2, 3
CraveEQ 1, 2
DMG Equick
ToneBoosters EQ4
TDR Nova GE
Softube Weiss EQ MP

In sonic performance Sonible SmartEQ2 was the winner with CraveEQ2 coming at a close 2nd. SmartEQ demanded high computing resources on the other hand CraveEQ2 was incredibly light.

While I have no complaints with other EQ's, they were ranging from good to alright, the biggest let down in audio quality was FabFilter Pro-Q 3. It has a very pleasing GUI, in fact the best GUI among all the ones tested and better workflow that goes with the GUI but Audio Quality was worse.

Given the hype of FabFilter, I decided to test it against a free EQ (Voxengo Marvel) and still Voxengo was the winner by quite a margin. FabFilter is the worst EQ in the market, people don't listen to the music with the eye, they do it with their ears so an eye candy GUI is pretty useless unless it also has a good sound Quality.

It's also a confirmation of the fact that majority of people use the appearance as the primary criteria for the judgement of character. Looks matter beyond anything else. No wonder humanity is dumb.

Well...enough about FF and back to the Original Topic, the quality of Sonible was expected but I was totally blown away by CraveEQ2. The richness, the depth, the transparency is nothing short of "wow" while being pretty much invisible on the CPU/GPU.

Everytime I Google "best parametric EQ of 20xx" I end with a list with FabFilter Pr-Q 3 ( the shittiest of all) at the top. Are these reviewers deaf and only judge with their eyes ?

Also, why this CraveEQ2 given it's phenomenal quality not better known ?

Unlike those "xx years of experience grammy winner reviewers" I don't have a blog so here I am.

Disclaimer:
I used two criteria for judging, audio quality and resource usage. While other factors matter too but they are secondary in my opinion. Also, whatever I posted above is my personal opinion and I respect different choices people make. What matters is competition which drives the innovation.

Thank you for reading and Good day.

 

Last edited: Aug 27, 2022

what about weiss EQ1 i'm downloading that also to check it

 

Please post just ONE audio example comparing different EQs using settings that result in same EQ curve, as different developers use different caculations for Q values and decramping algorithms.

And then please explain how you are able to judge "audio quality" by this example.

 

Same EQ curve, with different algorithms employed by each product will result in a different quality (same curve)

What you're talking about is a paradox.

I judged solely on my listening experience after tuning them to the best of my ability. Again, I judge the quality of audio with my ears and not my eyes but you're welcome to disregard my analysis and ignore the results.

 

What exactly is this "richness, the depth, the transparency" you're talking about? And how do you measure "audio quality"? Is there a specific "quality" unit to indicate the quality or a target value?
When comparing the different EQs, how exactly do fundamentally different phase modes, phase angles, and filter routing affect the result when judging "audio quality"?

 

Funnily enough, I've always been repelled by FabFilter products by their appearance. By the time I started mixing, it was everywhere around me in the real world and moreover everyone had only eyes and preaches for it on the internets.

It was solely a matter of visual taste. I know that FabFilter are known for their ergonomics and stuff, but I just found their designs ugly.
It wasn't matching my "sober" visual appeal for audio tools, with minimalistic designs and geometry, like for example among a ton, the Elka synthex controls layout, or vintage "clockwork" enventide rack series.
This led me to use Ozone Neutron suite, freshly released, which back then had this kind of "sober colors" aesthetic. And, in hindsight, those filters sounded quite good actually !

Anyway I'm curious to know your method and criteria to define the "audio quality" from a product to another.

In terms of audio yeah I'm this kind of guy hearing this digital veil when being bold with ff filters, but not everyone seem to feel it, and I never took the time to analyse the response of the plugin in detail compared to what I use. Really some people put Pro Q as an holy grail of audio processing while, to me, some way cheaper (or free) solutions just blows it away in terms of sonics. Maybe it's a package of ease of use and audio response ?...

Spoiler

Yeah Crave is fantastic, but it's no worse that few people know for know, one day a youtuber will make a video about it with bells and whistles and all the "bedroom sphere" will be found of it

 

Obviously, you can't deliver any example for different "quality". Just the same "you can't measure it, you have to hear it" talk we heard thousands of times. I'm developing DSP algorithms myself, so if your "analysis and results" are the next level all other developers are failing with, maybe we can build the game changing EQ everybody is craving for!

 

I'm curious if you did any experiments with proq3 (or others) with zero latency vs natural phase vs linear. opening up Weiss eq1 and proq3 my default pro is zero latency and Weiss isn't showing any latency on reaper but it does have oversampling x 3 on in the options, whether I did that or not I don't remember. I'm not disagreeing with your opinion at all btw, just wondering if perhaps something like a sneaky oversample option in the menu might have tilted the playing field unknowingly.

 

I find Fabfilter appearance very pleasing to the eye. But this in no way means other are bad, they are good in their own realm too. As for your query, I already said it, I tuned them to the best of my ability and judged the quality with my listening senses.

Thank you for the response, appreciated.

 

Incoming...

I made one - and it's sooo obvious [cough].

Wilco.

But I can ...

FabFilter Pro-Q 3 vs Crave EQ 2, three bells, each +4dB, matched in PluginDoctor. How many cuts (spoiler alert, between 1 and 10), where and which is which?

 

Other than your listening experience what "audio quality" is there to be delivered? You're just using vague arguments to make me feel stupid, it ain't working. What you are asking (demanding really) is a paradox and then spinning it "yeah heart it thousands of time" You will hear it billions of time and it won't change the fact that same curve on different EQ's will produce a different results because of the difference in algorithm.

Yeah you've heard the "same" can't measure, heard it "thousands of time". Can you deliver an example of different "audio quality" other than listening ?

You apparently have a severe reading disorder, go back to my original post and read the bottom part again. What I judged to better and worse is "my own personal opinion" and that "other people almost always have other opinions based on their experience" but that doesn't make me less entitled to my opinion.

The post seems to be aimed at slander rather than a honest discussion.

Ignored.

 

And which one will be more important at the moment of mixing 100+tracks?

Don't get me wrong, i have incidentally encountered a few EQs that beat Pro-Q3's ass sonically so if you say Smart is better then by all means, but sometimes you just need a swiss army knife EQ that can do what you need plus other things should the need arise AND you can easily access all those features.

As for this...

Yeah, the listener will not care about the GUI, but the producer/mixing engineer/whatever will. There was a discussion around here some time ago, regarding wether good looking plugins affect or not people's way of working, and apparently it does for most. Here:
https://audiosex.pro/threads/can-a-...ust-because-it-invites-you-to-do-stuff.63298/

edit: changed the link, since it was linking to my comment

Goddamit cat, did you have to go all epic to prove a point?

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2022

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Last edited: Jun 4, 2024

Thank you for the response. I matched the phases where I possibly could. Not all products have similar choices. But there was minimal difference between all the EQ's with the exception of Sonible Smart EQ/CraveEQ and Fabfilter. No matter, how you tune Fabfilter, the difference is huge.

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2022

Hello mk_96. Yeah, I'm in total agreement with you. Fabfilter is good for surgical operations and fast workflow. I in no way implied that it's useless, just that the sonic performance is inferior to Sonible/Crave.

Thank you for the link, I will give it a read.

 

With this thread I intended to know why Sonible/CraveEQ is not popular enough and why it doesn't show up on the list of "best EQ's of xxxx year" lists but it has gone way too off.

But since we are here, lets throw some more oil on the fire:

 

... and he proceed to compare Voxengo Marvel which is an original design Graphical Equalizer with fixed frequency to a Pro-Q3 without knowing that the curves almost impossible to match 100% due to Marvel's filter design. Of course they will sound different one to another, and the genius picked the one he liked and said it has better sound QUALITY. Nice.

Example of Voxengo Marvel curves, 3db at 200Hz + 7db at 5.02kHz, pay attention to the bells and the dip :

 

These comparisions always crack me up you have a sound, hopefullly you are experienced enough and you already know the outcome you’re after. Put a eq and tweak it until it sounds the way you want. On some eq’s is 4.3 dB with q 1.33 on some is 6db with q 1 etc. On some eq you will need to use an extra band etc. All that matters is the final outcome.
People that claim that one eq is better than other are people that dont have a vision and they just slap various eqs (with various default q and gain values) until they find somethig that works.

That’s why pro-q or mh cs are the best. Because they do what they’re designes to do and people with vision can make that tool work for them. They are not lazy and tweak the q, are not afraid to go into 20 dB boost/cut territory and generally they know exactly what sound they want to achieve.

so yeah, in theory your eq could be better than mine. But I know mine inside out so for me mine is way way better than yours

 

Didn't ever see an answer- was ProQ 3 set to zero latency or natural phase?

 

This cracks me up! It's good entertaining fodder for blog discussion. The only person on this topic making any sense is LXFSN. His statement is so true and correct. "All that matters is the final outcome" Anyways, I've worked and made my living as a successful career producer/engineer for 30 yrs now. I've worked with the best of the best artists, fellow engineers, and studios, known by all of you. The fact of the matter is, if you know what you're doing, the minuscule differences in these eq's is not going to make something sound better or worse. Sure some are easier on the CPU or the graphics are slicker, some can sound a little harsher or some less transparent, etc etc... You just have to know your tools and know how to use them. I had a friend many years ago who was a young up and coming engineer. He mixed using a Peavey AMR mixer and 10" Realistic speakers from Radio Shack, cheap DBX compressors etc. This guys mixes sounded unbelievable! Depth, clarity, punch! He went on to win 11+ Grammys for engineering.. Any guesses? Today that engineer uses mostly the Fab Q3 for EQing. He uses many others but I'd have to say that's definitely one of his main tools.
Guys, you can mix using ANYTHING if you know what you're doing. Now let me go check out all these EQ's listed above and scratch my head wondering which one's best... LOL