Shocking results: 16 EQ plugins tested. Do they all sound the same?! (Part 2) 

See this update video for quantified results with a more robust methodology: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-h9OsUSXKiDg.html

I don't think people understand just how good we have it today compared to how it used to be back then. This is a good reality check.

I needed this 50 plugins ago. 🙃

When I started, I told myself, that I will only look for new plugins as soon as Im able to hear differences between plugins. Turns out I never had to look for a new eq, ableton stock eq does the job 90% of the time for me

Excellent and insightful. Love your enthusiasm... Keep it up!!

I'm just a hobbyist, but this is so nice to hear. I had the same sentiment for a while: If you hear a problem, and know what tool is suitable to fix it, then it doesn't really matter which exact tool you've got, you can get the result you want.

Been preaching this forever. Marketing brilliance from the plugin makers. I fell for it myself for a while. I have been recording/mixing/mastering since 1976, so I have lived the changes. Y’all just don’t know!

Hitting people where it hurts. Enjoying the honesty man. Thank you

I'm glad that at 26 years old I can still hear that high frequency noise lol. Nice video too.

Loving this type of content, nice roasting maaan. Thank you!

Ok hold on. 1. Yes you can get away with just using one EQ if you had to…you don’t need 20 EQ’s. 2. In the video he’s playing white noise and when listen to it’s Delta, you hear a muffled hiss at a lower volume…People, that “is” the difference (this is normal). If he was playing music, you’d hear the music’s delta. If it was 100% silent using multiple EQ tweets, then those 2 EQ’s would scientifically sound exactly the same. 3. All EQ’s do NOT have the same “Q” factors and curves which makes them different from one another which also makes them unique. 4. If you own an EQ that could replicate different Q’s and curves, you could replicate any EQ (it’s saturation is another story). 5. A seasoned engineer is not going to waste his or his client’s time trying to make a stock EQ (w/no saturation) sound like a Pultec using 20 steps when he could just use a Pultec plug-in(that he bought on sale) that could do the job in 4 knob turns (with its saturation included). “These are Facts”. Bottom line: -Yes you don’t need 20 EQ’s and the best EQ is the one you got. -If you don’t know why you’d use one EQ over another, don’t worry about it if you’re only a producer, do your thing. -If you’re a Mix and/or Mastering Engineer, you’ve been doing this a while and you already know. -My advice to buying plug-ins is to only buy what you need and know why you need it.✌🏾

I believe it was Dave Gamble of DMG who said something like "All EQs sound the same except for the make-up amplifiers" and advocates for Clean EQs followed by a saturation plug if you so desire.

We've all fallen into the plugin rabbit-hole. They're leading us up the primrose path. The most important aspects of a track will always be the writing and musicianship/lyrical genuis, followed by the production/arrangement.

Thanks for showing what I have always suspected.

This is awesome, thank you!

As an EQ designer who doesn't believe in the marketing, I'm deeply familiar with all the points you raise here. I also fully endorse null testing, and you're doing it right. One thing that might help you out is the difference between parallel and serial band topologies. Things like a Sontec or Massenburg EQ have parallel bands, so when you engage them they sum differently to a series EQ. Likely the issues canceling the Curve Bender stem from that, though I confess to not having checked the schematics. I don't know if your preferred EQ offers a parallel mode, but it's not too hard to add. Regarding the issue of particular things having interesting shapes and engineers preferring them, I'd draw your attention to the "SSL knob-colour wars". Engineers moving from studio to studio would get very used to things like Q tightening as they increased gain. Then going to a different room with a different coloured knob, the channel EQ behaved differently. If you're a gigging mix engineer (not that such a job really exists any more) and you're expecting your board to work one way, and suddenly you're faced with one that works differently, you feel hamstrung and slowed down. So I do believe that for people who are very used to a piece of kit working a certain way, there's value in them being able to continue to do so. If you've learned one EQ deeply, you will likely be faster with that EQ than with one that works differently. For me this has meant needing to be able to emulate all the subtle and varying weird shapes and offering them in one place. Phase cancellation in the mids and low end is, indeed, something to take for granted. The thing that drew me to EQ as a problem was the issue of getting the high end right. I refer you back to the "cramping" "warping" wars of the 2010s. You'll definitely find phase cancel content up near nyquist between some of these EQs. This is much less of an issue nowadays than it used to be, thankfully. But the 90s and 2000s were PLAGUED with EQs that warped at the top end. Bells were unsymmetric at high frequencies. This did make life a bit miserable. Using a second band to correct for it was not unusual, and in those days when you didn't have so many bands to play with, that was bad. That's something that contributed to the notion of digital sounding "cold" or "sterile" - the top end wasn't where you expected it to be! All the best with your endeavours. It's nice to see someone doing some science :)

Priceless ! You got a subscriber

So glad to see a "no-bs" followup video!

I love how you approach non-sense comments with facts and science. Thanks for the content!

I f*cking laughed my ass off. This is as entertaining as enlightening. Well done mate!

I just tested the Iron plug in you recommended on some drums. Holy cow, what an amazing plug in.

Oh this is lovely, good job!

Thanks for this video. I feel like something like this would be pretty interesting with synths, filters and effects as well.

Subscribed. I like the format

Doing gods work, thank you

Well done, very well done

Would absolutely love more content on transformers and amplifiers! nice one.

Guess you've inspired me to test out more plugins if they are worth using. I specifically only bought EQs with tasty saturation, but then again sometimes I might have made the mistake of hearing with my eyes :)

Good stuff. I was the one who commented on having the quick curves handy for Pultecs, bax, etc. As a rebuttal, I didn't say they're used randomly. They're used when needed and with purpose, so you misconstrued the comment. I do, however, know what you're saying, which is basically that you need 1 good eq to handle everything. That's true. However, that's like saying that you only need 1 good knife to cut all your food. Yes, a good chef's knife will handle pretty much everything, but if you have a variety of knives, they are built to perform specific functions. Both get the job done. That's my point. On another token, thanks for the null tests. Hopefully I'm able to resell all my other non-specific EQs now before people see this video ;)

3:16 Dan Worral recently made a video with some Softube plugin, showing that they were using a FIR filter for oversampling. If that Curve Bender has any modeled saturation maybe they're using the same OS filter and that would explain the phase weirdness. Great video btw!

Right on the money, dude!

Well done. Got to love your guts and the truth of cold hard scientific evidence. 👏👏

Keep going! This is such valuable content. Would love to see a similar video for compressors debunking the “vintage”/“warm” marketing hype around so many offerings.

Free Reaper repositories FTW💪

Great video, and I must admit, I have been sold a couple of times by slick marketing. I just signed up for the pre-order for your course. I feel relatively confident in my EQ ability, but I feel like there’s something that I could learn from you. Looking forward to the course launch. 👍🏻👍🏻

Good job!

PART TWO For the first point, we need to answer the question if your input signal is able to probe the entire signal space relevant to audio signals and equalisers. If the system under investigation is completely linear, which also excludes any kind of quantisation errors that are always present in digital realisations, then you can correctly argue that white noise statistically probes the input space in a way that creates a complete picture of the system’s processing. But as discussed earlier, actual linear system implementations do differ in their quantisation handling, which won’t be detectable with this method. Even if you decide to ignore these effects on the signal outcome because you argue that they only make an audible difference (we’ll come to the meaning of that later) in certain pathological scenarios, your conclusion is still invalidated by the fact that you did not look at this case. But the main interest here is really the performance of modelled non-linear equalisers, so let’s focus on those. With non-linearity in place, you can no longer argue that white noise is probing your system sufficiently because the important step of decomposing into a sinusoidal basis does not commute with non-linear systems in general. In fact, there is no way to exhaustingly sample the input space of a non-linear processor and therefore any conclusion that a system is not deviating from linearity based on observation of a finite number of inputs and outputs is invalid in a strict sense. That is, unless you make certain assumptions about the kind of nonlinearity to expect, which allows you to look in the right places. So, does the white noise signal you are using look in some of the right places for the kind of non-linearity that is to be expected in EQs? Unfortunately, no. The nonlinearities of an EQ typically are in the pre or post stages or in the resonant feedback loop of the filters. Common to all these locations is that the (smooth) nonlinearity is tuned such that it shows at high amplitudes, usually at around -6 to 0 dBfs in a digital realisation. Your white noise signal peaks at around -6 dBfs and appears to follow an approximately Gaussian sample distribution, which is consistent with the rather low RMS level of -16 dBfs. The RMS level is equivalent to the expected amplitude that is driving the nonlinearity. A fairly typical memoryless distortion using a hyperbolic tangent comes with a power series expansion that has a cubic dominating non-linear term with a coefficient of 1/3 or -9.5dB. That means you would expect distortion products to appear roughly below - 3*16 - 9.5 dBfs = 57.5 dBfs. Your metering only goes to -24 dBfs and you never show the noise floor of your null-test, so your result is inconclusive, at best. Had you tested at an RMS level of -6 dB instead, we could have seen and heard the first distortion effects at -27.5 dBfs, which would have made a great difference in terms of audibility. Another way to clearly expose non-linearity is to make sure the gain loop is driven at a high level. That would require both a reasonable input gain and a filter setting that produces a significant feedback path gain. Such settings come with high Q and high band gain. You have avoided both in your tests. If you consider non-linearities with memory, which you should, then using a wide-band stationary signal like your noise signal can actually prevent the internal state of the non-linear system from ever getting into the region of significant nonlinearity. For example, a number of nonlinear circuits only reacts to transients. Others only react to strongly coherent signals like tones. You’ve eliminated both these possible results by your choice of using white noise. Let’s get to the point of perception. You asserted that small deltas are inaudible. And you’re right for your noise signal. A small difference signal does not change the perception so that both results would sound the same. The problem is that this conclusion does not generalise. To understand the significance to perception we need to look at the phenomenon of auditory masking. We can hear a quieter signal component only if it is not being masked by a louder signal component. The level difference for which the quieter signal is still audible follows from the masking relationship of the two signals, which depends on both distance in frequency and in time. Your noise signal masks everything, both in time and in frequency, such that any difference less than roughly 6dB below the noise level cannot be perceived. That is a pretty poor choice for trying to argue about a perceivable difference. A much better choice would have been using a severely band-limited signal, like for example critical band noise at different frequencies, and use that to see if there are any difference components outside of the masking volume of the test signal. Just for comparison, narrow band noise at around 1kHz allows for the perception of signal components at below 500 Hz at a level of more than 80dB below the primary stimulus level, or alternatively for the perception of components above 4 kHz at a level of more than 40dB below the primary stimulus level. That’s a lot more than what you have demonstrated. A linear EQ would only generate quantisation artefacts outside of the band, which you have also not looked at. A non-linear EQ may produce signal components that are making an audible difference and are being perceived as pleasant. You have not ruled out the existence of these components in any way using your methodology. The third and final concern regards your choice of system samples. The question here is, have you tried to maximise the difference between the EQs you have matched and thereby attempted to falsify your hypothesis? Good science must always try to falsify, otherwise you don’t proof anything apart from your confirmation bias. I’m trying to be perfectly fair here, but it doesn’t look like you didn’t really try very hard to challenge your hypothesis. Throughout your demonstration you have used single bands at moderate settings. You avoided high gains, high Qs, high center frequencies. From what I explained above, it is obvious that you have steered clear of band interactions like you have in alternative non-serial topologies, you have avoided filter warping due to poorly designed filters without compensation for response distortion or response aliasing, you have avoided non-linear effects. This is already a much too long response, so let me come to my conclusion. Your methods were only superficially scientific, despite your claims. Your strong conclusion and accusations have no foundation in what you have shown. I do not say that you conclusion is wrong, but you certainly have failed to prove it. To be fair, there are black sheep in the plugin industry, just like everywhere. However, your generalisation is false and just as unfair as suggesting you just did your video to manipulate people into buying your classes. Which of course is not true. So, if you do science, you have to go all the way. There’s no such thing as a little rigour. And if you don’t have the necessary insight, then I would suggest you do some research first and read a selection of the plentiful papers that deal with modelling of non-linear analog circuits. If you ever intend to do a follow-up video that corrects your mistakes and tries to arrive at a conclusion that is not agenda driven, then please get in touch. I’m more than willing to work out a scientific protocol that would actually try verify your hypothesis.

Nice vid! As a noob with to many plugins, this is golden👍🏻

Fascinating video! Those null tests were really interesting. It makes me wonder about Acustica Audio's EQ plugins since they're based on sampling rather than algorithms. Do you think they would null out the same way? Curious to see the results if you have the time and energy!

“Old metal box though.” 😂 I still love the Pultec.

Excellent comparison. We are bombarded by companies to buy and we don’t do any tests to see what we are buying. I was buying a lot of plugins and I was doing it more because of an itch to buy and not really learning how to use my plugins

I will say that I am hearing some noise differences in the delta null results of a few of the EQs. But is that enough to mean anything at all? Who knows at this point. I’ve been mixing in Nashville for 30 years and never thought to challenge these EQ plugins with null tests. Mainly because I assumed they each had unique curves and inherent tones due to the modeled circuitry. But I have tested “True Peak limiters with null tests to see if they were truly clipped peaks without overshooting with digital distortion. I’ve been too occupied turning out mixes to put time into null-testing the massive pile of EQs I’ve been using. 😂 Thanks for your boldness to challenge the ears of even seasoned engineers along the entire plugin industry. I like challenges. That closing metaphor with you banging on the guitar made me laugh out loud. 😂 You have a new subscriber with an open mind. You’re never too old to hear fresh and new ideas, perspectives, and challenges that step outside popular narratives. Cheers!

It was always funny to me how you'd hear someone say that one company's 0's and 1's were "warmer" or "more open" than another's lol.

Ooooooh I love you for this!!

In the back of my mind I always believed those "vintage" eq emulations were just a standard eq with those vintage eq curves dialed in but the GUI convinced me that It was real emulation that had mimicked all of the internal components. I've foolishly spent thousands chasing "that" sound when all I really needed was a stock eq & a saturation plugin.

You deserve subs for speaking your opinion without fear and its also a unique take that's worth listening to. Always give every sides a fair chance in a trial lol

good points - thats why i only use the fab filter proQ pretty much for eq and if I want something more ill use my Analog Empress Tube EQ or one of my other analong units for enhancement. Ive used digital for saturation but there is always something missing with digital and i use the tru iron ( sounds the best) but usually have to use multiple plugins - its just not the same with high quality analog units sorry if you think it is :)

Does this apply to hardware mastering EQ's too?

can you do null tests between a proQ3 and some hardware eq's?

Very informative! I want to know if the same applies to compressor and preamp emulations as well.

I learned 2 things from this video. 1. I have “Golden Ears”. 2. Yea…I like the GUI basically. I’m aware ReaEQ can probably suffice 😅

I love that you own that multicoloured zylophone.

I like to use Fl studios EQ1 and EQ2 basicly they are the same but 1 does not have a visual monitor for the sound that saves screen area and makes you listen with your ears and other times i like to see the frequencies

I’ve always thought this to be the case with eq. However I mix better with something like an SSL channel strip because I can’t see the eq visually. I know this is a me issue and I could just not turn on the visual on new eq’s. Same with a Pultec I haven’t got a fucking clue what the curve is, but sometimes I know that +5 on the sub then attenuating by 5 is going to sound great. I can’t be assed to look up what it’s doing then replicate it on another eq.

The delta varied a bit there, some nulled really well, some not so much. There was def some difference in some of them. I largely agree, except I would say you talk about EQing stuff surgically, but sometimes we use it for flavour and just having nice curves at a knob is nice to have. I've got multiple desk EQ plugins, and sometimes I just get a slightly better sound from one or another on a source.

Fab filter eqs are super easy to use though and i love how you can make bands dynamic. I now mainly only ever use dynamic eq which i wouldnt have done b4 using it. I think most analog eqs add some komd of colour, not sure if distortion would show up in your graph? I have an actuall neve 1073 and for some reason the eq on it sounds alot different to just using a standard plugin eq

I use analog style EQs more for tone shaping Then use a proper EQ when I wanna be more surgical

Thank you for the head's up about True Iron.

phew he didn't use my magic eq, so clearly i'm still safe to call it warm and detailed.

Man..thank u so gawd damn much!!! You are a hero now, no mistaking it

what about the UAD and Acustica Audio ones?

This all figures. I’ve gathered several different EQs from various plugin packages over the years, and only ever found myself using Ozone EQ for flexibility, the DAW for convenience, or one of the Overloud EQs that allows you to saturate specific bands (sometimes nice, sometimes lousy). I feel bad for the plug-in manufacturers because they covered most of the useful ground they could over a decade ago. I wonder if people like the vintage-style ones because they wouldn’t normally bother to mess with bandwidths, so just end up wider, more pleasant sounding curves, quickly achievable with a broad brush and less opportunity to over-correct?

Cool video :D HiFi guys are on the top of the voodoo pyramid. Is the same true for compressors?

I ❤ everything about this video 😃 I agree with all of it.

A lot of plugin developers won’t be happy with this, when Andrew Schepps designed a plugin for Waves they found that it didn’t match with the emulated hardware but on a 40 grand spectrum analyzer it did looked exactly the same but it sounded different. They ended up putting a high pass filter on 3 Hz and a low pass filter on 25 kHz and it matched. The filters were emulating the transformers 😉🤫🫡 Still I’m going to buy an analog equalizer for around 2 grand because I know it’s going to sound better than a plugin, maybe it’s the tube circuit and the transformers who cares.

Thank you so much for making this. Snake oil in the audio industry is so normalized it drives me insane.

when it comes to eqs, i always said this but people were like: nah

brilliant

Why does my external EQ sound different than emulation. it's a WA73eq. I know it's not much I rather focus on it's strength rather then it's weakness I'm happy with it. Anyways it feels to have more depth or is that a miss conception?

I've got so many questions since I'm in no way or shape a professional in this field. I can basically hear the delta in every one of the tests you did, is this because of the randomness of white noise? or because the curves are mathematically different? Also, when it comes to EQ plugins that mimic harmonic distortion, let's say Acustica Audio, who are know for their Hyper 3 sampling technology, would you also say that's a gimmick? I've tried different EQ's on my mixbus yet there's some that boost and cut more "musically" even at extreme settings. Is this psychological? or does the harmonic distortion emulation play a part in this? I have no scientific data or curve measurement to back any of this.

Can you hear the 'noise approaching 20KHz'?

Q3 and UAD pultec is all I use...aaaand sometimes SSL console strip

Science! Love it! 💛

Which reaper theme are you using?

Agree with everything except I think having some EQs for quick go-to "colors" can be useful. Pultec, Maag EQ4 (I use Luftikus, which is free), 1073 high end are about all I ever need. Just one/two knobs usually gets it pretty close.

I mean if it helps me get the job done, then whats the problem, you still have them and use them here and there. Like you can recreate a curve in any dynamic EQ, thats pretty known but if I have an EQ that can help me get there quicker than just wasting my time finessing Pro Q3, then Ill opt for that EQ

Yeah! I finally know it. This explain why most of the time I only use daw stock eq instead of these famous eqs. I try to add these eqs and get confuse why they add odd "vintage/warmth" to the sound or they not did the eq curve that normal eq does, that's not what I expect them to do.They makes me work more to fix the "problem" that they create. I know most people like these famous eqs, but it just doesn't work for me.

I picked a particular channel strip to work with because I find it easy for me to use. My favorite one is the Chanev which happens to be totally free, but it crashes a lot. I'm switching channel strips currently because I don't want to keep paying Wavs updates . The only thing I'm concerned about in making a new choice? tada - how easy is it for me to use lol

This channel is brilliant. 😃 Like debunking conspiracy theories, but better. 😁

9:08 😂☠️☠️ I've been thinking the same thing. There are days I'll play around trying something new. But when the vision is clear, just get the job done.

Exactly right. All plugin developers have are algorithms, not hardware. They all have access to the same ones, except for developers who use convolution and volterra vector kernels, or Neural Amp Modeller

What about compressors???

Quality content, havent seen such a nice video in a while

I pretty much agree but i am not sure about „some“ EQs that mimic specific behaviour from an analog counterpart to speed up the workflow. When i first put a trial version of the UAD Manley Massive Passive on an insert slot that high shelf was magic. It put a sweet shine on the top end i couldn’t achieve with other EQs without getting harsh. Yes, it could maybe be reproduced with Pro-Q3 (my go-to EQ) but absolutely don‘t know how 😂 For saturation i am totally with you … no need in EQs since there are Top Saturation plug-ins available.

Have to agree on the ST Bender , can never use that on Master Bus , but their Limiter lives on the Master and does what no other Limiter Comp can do.

Thank you for doing Gods work

You are brilliant. I use Aquatica Audio Salt and some Plugin Alliance analog models like the Amek 200, Amek 9099, and Knif Soma, among others. I also use Pro Q3. Actually, the analog models sound better than Pro Q3 when I boost. Pro Q3 is best for surgical cuts, but if you boost it above 6 dB, it introduces an artificial tone in the high frequencies. Try this: there are a few analog model EQs that you can boost even over 10 dB, and they still sound natural. Test this.

Are inductors really linear? Magnetic core materials could make them behave like transformers??

I'll never be the same after watching this video...

Thanks for doing this. Several of these didn’t null nearly as well as I expected. Definitely heard substantial hiss / noise on a few after attempted null. In terms of being scientific, I would say that leaving audible noise behind means that you haven’t demonstrated that these are equivalent. Equivalent would mean: there’s no audible difference. What you’ve demonstrated is most literally an audible difference.

to me this sounds like: "if you're decorating a cake don't use different piping tools, just use the basic one and you can shape it." if you have to do work to make an eq sound like another then why not just save time and energy and use that eq. Also, doesn't the fact that you can make one eq sound like another mean they objectively do not sound the same? only half way thru the video tho so maybe this gets addressed. but as a producer i don't find that this is less confusing Edit: finished the whole video, while I agree with you, I don't see it as a reason not to use a analog modeled eq if it has a sound you like

Good video 👌🎵, but I do find the coloring on the amek 200 by P.A. to sound obviously nice compared with my stock options in Bitwig and Ableton, I think if you pushed the high end enough you would find some differences between certain eq’s

Great video with excellent information. Thank you!

3:58 um my mother in law, who has zero experience with any music production anything and who currently has a cold and is therefore stuffy and unable to hear well and who is listening on my old iPhone, can CLEARLY hear the difference. I think you might need new speakers if you think that all of these null.

inexplicable phase shift in high end some plugins have might be be from minimum phase oversampling.

can you do a video on saturators next? theres a million of them

every time you swap the phase I hear a different noise is not this a proof that they sound different? a small difference indeed but none of them cancel another entirely. Am I wrong? thanks

Brilliant

I think limitations are the one true difference, the “pre-chosen” curves are in a way a design choice. The artistic decisions we make while applying some EQ are influenced by this. Plugins today give us all of the options but none of the limitations, 1000 tracks sound great but I guess we thrive when our brain needs to make 4 tracks sound like a full song. Just my humble opinion 😅

bravo to every single point here! Is there a cours in german?