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This guy has exposed the massive plugin scam that audio companies have going on. In this video he proves that all EQ plugins on the market have exactly the same sound and you can use any random, even free eq plugin to get exactly the same result as any other EQ plugin. He also demonstrates that these "vintage eq" plugins are a fraud, they just have a vintage picture photoshopped on them, but the algorythm is exactly the same as in all other plugins. His conclusion is that you just need one single EQ plugin and master that. You don't need multiple eq's.
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05-26-2024 10:12 PM
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follow up video he addresses these comments and shows that those algorithms don't matter. They all sound the same.
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I have and use a lot of plugins and most of the were either free or bundled with my DAW (Reaper). I think there's a huge amount of mileage to be had with free plugins. That being said, regardless of the algohithms, not all EQ's will produce the same result. Some have features that others don't. Some have interfaces that allow much more detailed settings, some are combined with other features and some are much easier to use (an important feature in a market with so many non-professionals at the controls). That's why Reaper bundles about 6 EQ plugins with the DAW.
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The only things I plug in are the amp cord to the wall outlet and the 1/4” cable from the guitar to the amp. And it’s a cheapish Musician’s Gear cord.
Last edited by Doctor Jeff; 05-27-2024 at 02:07 PM.
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Interesting. These guys showed similar behavior with the chords used in pop tunes:
Originally Posted by Navdeep_Singh
How funny.
Tony
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I used to do some programming, and the hardest part of building an application, by far, is the user interface. Making is easy to use for people with lower levels of computer expertise is hard, hard, hard. The actual working is usually easy enough. There is an old saying that it's not possible to make something idiot-proof because the idiots are so clever. It takes hours of work, even for a simple program, to find and protect from, all the ways it can be crashed by users. But that is really probably the biggest difference between audio plugins, and perhaps the only one. While I have no experience at all with these, I think one probably only needs one plugin, and the best one is the one that they find easiest to use. That will vary by individual.
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Ain't that the truth!! About 20 yars ago, I designed and coded a program in Cold Fusion to enable online entry, evaluation, and dispensation of product requests in major medical centers. After installing and proving it at the university in which I worked, I went on to put it in about a dozen academic health centers around the country. It has about a half million lines of code, and every single data entry point is validated for format and content in the web client, at the server, and in the database before it can be entered. In the years that I maintained it myself before selling it to a large healthcare conglomerate, I had zero functional problems and never had to rewrite anything or even look into a complaint.....except once. Originally Posted by sgosnell
I got a call from IT at a major east coast university that my system must be broken because one user couldn't log in. I'd set it up to use the host's active directory for authentication and login (which, for those of you with no IT experience, is basically a database of employees etc that allows them to log into all of the programs on the enterprise network with their university usernames and passwords). I explained that if it worked for everyone else (and they have thousands of employees), there's a problem with that user's directory record. After going back and forth for a week, I finally got permission to browse the data files in their directory, and the problem jumped out at me. Some fool was apparently afraid that his personal email address would be used for spam or scam, so he did the web trick of using the word "dot" instead of putting a dot in his email address. How their system allowed that to get into an email field is beyond me. But their system would not authenticate him - and it was not just for my app, it was for every program on their network. The IT guys there (also not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree) had decided that my system broke this guy's access.
The rule applies to every program from Watson to Wampler - garbage in, garbage out!
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I don't think it's at all surprising that different digital eq's sound the same when set the same. IME, the difference between different plug-ins is in the interfaces and controls, and the usefulness of presets. Ditto for digital delay and compression. I also don't think people who've spent real time using these sorts of things are fooled by marketing or by clickbait anti-marketing.
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You know that part in the podcast where two men are arguing about how many EQ plugins are necessary? You won't believe this, but they are the same man.
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I thought about this a bit after my first response and I find it baffling why anyone would want to limit themselves to a single EQ plugin. There are so many different feature sets and available functions in different EQ plugins that it's almost inevitable that it will require more than one to do all the things you may want to do to your recordings. Why is that a problem worthy of debate?
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I agree about the user interface and instead went down into the OS kernel (embedded Linux, RTOS, VxWorks, etc.) and device drivers. To me, that stuff was much more interesting. This involved bringing up new board designs and porting the OS onto them. We usually started with a vendor demo board that featured the silicon the EEs wanted to use and then when the boards started to come in, I would port the low level code to it, get everything up and running, and then the application programmers would take over once they had an environment to work with. Originally Posted by sgosnell
Tony
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I bought a Universal Audio interface and soon realised after being sent the 100th “amazing deals on plug in x” or “half price bundles on your favourite amps”, that I had been turned into an investors withdrawal account.
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I saw the video and said to myself, if he doesn't do a null test then I won't believe him. Well, he did a null test and I do believe him.
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I would say the debate would be that if you can get the same results from different EQs then there is an advantage to just get very familiar with using only one provided it gives you all the control you want. I use the ReaEQ, it gives me all the control I want, I'm familiar with it, and it is very efficient on the CPU usage (and the GUI is very minimalist which suits me). Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
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I'm just getting my feet wet with modern day recording. Pre-sets are fantastic.
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ReaEq is my first choice as well but if I want noise reduction as well then I use ReaFir. I also have EQ's that also include compression. I also have one that provides controls that are configured like the controls on a traditional type of guitar amp. They all have a use. Originally Posted by fep
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Yeah, I participated rather heavily in a Gearslutz thread about this around 20 years ago when plugin designers were beginning to flood the market with the latest "recreations" of classic EQ modules.
Because I use this stuff professionally (both the real things and their software emulations) I was in a good position to comment on their differences. It's a super long discussion, way out side of the bounds of what this forum should be interested in, but here's my take (now as it was then):
Analogue EQ will be a complex amalgam of hundreds of non linear distortions, same far more subtle than others. Hence, a driven Neve 1072 module will sound different to Pultec, API, SSL etc. They all use totally different topographies and each have their own character. These non linearities are impossible to digitally model accurately, but this didn't stop plugin designers from launching their own "emulations" of these classic EQ's. Unfortunately, the only thing being modelled was that the GUI resembled the face plate of the original units.
Now, the fact that some people heard differences between these modellers was simply put down to a crude approximation of some fairly broad parameters that the original units may have possessed - things like the way the "Q" bandwidth would vary as you swept through a range of frequencies, the way the the high and/or low pass filter would interact with the other bands, and crucially, whether there was a "nipple" Q superimposed over the broader Q (the width of a frequency band).
It was shown that by using any DAW's generic EQ software you could in turn emulate these expensive emulations, by adjusting the Q, superimposing Q nipples and selecting certain kinds of filter slopes. But this was laborious and not much fun! So people decided that if they can get a nice looking GUI that had inbuilt moving Q's and nipples with sonically satisfying filters, they were happy to pay an inflated price for the convenience.
But no, they didn't, and still don't, sound like the analogue counterparts. No big deal, you can still make great music with them. Yeah, I can hear a 1% difference, and it means a lot to me personally, but if I play a mix done with real EQ vs one with plugins to people, I have to admit that most can't tell any difference, and if they can they can't decide if one is preferable over the other.
All of this means that any recent "advancements" in software emulations to get even closer to the real thing is kinda redundant to any professional users, but is a way for companies to keep issuing "must haves" to the poor crowd of home studio enthusiasts who spend way too much time and money keeping up with these fads in the hope they will help make their music sound better.
It never does.
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I like the stock effects in Ableton a lot; the 8 band EQ is great for most things I am doing. Sometimes I use a tilt shift eq to roll off high end and act like a tone knob.
The main reason to use a different EQ would probably be the UI and the ability to automate the controls within the DAW.
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All true, but as you know plugins have been used by top pros for many years now. Most that I know found an EQ, compressor etc that they liked years ago, and no need to look any farther for the latest and greatest. Originally Posted by princeplanet
I like to use my Neves and 1176's as much as possible, but sometimes having the ability after the recording is very useful. Digital compression in particular is very effective. Still not a Manley or 1176 though! They just bring a certain musical mustard that's not in the digital ones. That's why we still love the old gear.
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Originally Posted by Navdeep_Singh
While I get the point, and to a large part agree, some of these emulations (and the hardware itself) have a curve you would never come up with on a digital eq. For instance a Massive Passive is WEIRD. You would never come up with those setting thinking the knobs on the box do what they say, they don't, Not even close.
So, there is some merit if you're a "twist the knobs to find sounds you like" guy.
FWIW, I have a lot of these actual hardware boxes here, and when I do use a plugin, it's most often an accurate digital eq.
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Yes it's very suspect... most people are clueless in the first place about the analog gadgets those plugins are supposed to emulate. Which were likely never objectively tested to determine if the "legendary" reputation is justified. And buying one of those plugins once makes you regret it afterwards. It's a mess to recover them in case of a system change or reinstall, and you get spammed with marketing for eternity.
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Agree that most people are clueless about these analog classics, strongly disagree that they were never "objectively tested". From the 40's onwards, recorded history has thousands of examples of where certain pieces of equipment found massive popularity, quite often by accident. Engineers and consumers alike were drawn to certain types of outboard gear that created "magic" - in much the same way that some film cameras, or even film stock found favour through their own magical qualities. The "proof" is the long trail of failed recordings (or films for that matter) that lacked this magic, notwithstanding things like talent! Originally Posted by m_d
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I think concentrating on emulating analogue equipment with digital software, isn't the best use of software, it's very regressive thinking.
Software has the capacity to create a new world of new sounds for musicians to explore. Thankfully, some enlightened musicians are using this to their advantage.
As a Software Engineer, that's my general thinking about Digital Audio Software.
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I was completely unaware the history of that gear was so well documented. Originally Posted by princeplanet
Agree that most people are clueless about these analog classics, strongly disagree that they were never "objectively tested". From the 40's onwards, recorded history has thousands of examples of where certain pieces of equipment found massive popularity, quite often by accident. Engineers and consumers alike were drawn to certain types of outboard gear that created "magic" - in much the same way that some film cameras, or even film stock found favour through their own magical qualities. The "proof" is the long trail of failed recordings (or films for that matter) that lacked this magic, notwithstanding things like talent!
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Ha! Well it wasn't always so, up until the 60's and 70's, the good people at places like EMI, Abbey Road, Trident or Olympic studios (all in the UK) jealously guarded the secrets to the gear they made and maintained on site - job security. Each had teams of real engineers in white lab coats, all sworn to secrecy lest the opposition would learn how they were getting certain sounds or effects. Gradually the "secrets" leaked out and by the late 70's, I think, we entered the era of fetishising renowned bits of kit: Fairchild, Pultec, Neumann, Telefunken, Urei, Neve, API etc. Originally Posted by m_d
Every unit had a signature sound, and every studio was chasing these elusive sounds in order to compete, whether it was the Pultec push/pull trick, the 1176 "all buttons in" trick, the LA2A into the Urei trick, and hundreds more. Interestingly, it's some of these "tricks" that are hardest for software to authentically emulate. But as Guy says in the post above, modern plugins also have a whole slew of tricks of their own still waiting to be exploited...
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