What Type Of EQ Should I Use? 

I want a pultec EQ that talks to me, and tells me how well I am doing at mixing.

I've made music using computers since the late 90s. I've used probably hundreds of EQs. After some 300 unfinished songs, I can conclude that it doesn't matter what EQ I use, every song I make sounds like shit regardless.

You had me at: "This implies time travel and is the work of the devil"

I love your metaphor about practicing with a metronome, one of the joys of music production is that it is extremely technical in theory but always an art in practice.

Would be great to see you mixing a song from start to finish.

Dan, I can't thank you enough man. I am a multimedia artist so I live in tutorial / technical discussion purgatory. Every once in a while, there is a beacon of absolute succinctness and uncompromising neutrality and consideration in terms of fairness to opinions/uses/styles. Just a person who understands the fabric of technicality and its threshold and elasticity in creative practical application. As far as sound goes, you are probably the reigning champion. So cheers for all the hard work you put into teaching.

My jaw dropped when I saw that eq matching the pultec. I guess I'm using pultec style eq because there is no way I'll have the courage to make a curve that intense with a pro-Q type eq. I'm trying hard these days not to look at the eq graph. Thanks Dan

2:51 I also cut my teeth on cheap mixers in the mid-nineties. At the time I was still in awe of the notion that music could travel down a wire. I used to drool over things then that today would seem hilariously quaint. Unlimited channels of multi-band, fully-parametric EQ was a luxury beyond my wildest dreams, and the closest equivalents of the day were many strata beyond my reach. Fast-forward nearly thirty years and the most meager of commodity stock EQ plugins is orders magnitude more powerful and flexible than anything I could have imagined in high school. We live in an age of wonders. Every time I find myself swayed by the latest marketing craze I breathe deeply, glance over at my old Mackie 1604 VLZ leaning against the wall and remind myself that I already have it all.

Wow..Ive been involved in music tech from the 80's, seen hardware and plug ins come and go..etc.. Dan, I am not worthy of the amazing , informative, no BS approach you give to all us music minions..... I actually thought I knew what preringing was, how wrong I was.......... You really are the Anchor of audio truth ...Many others just are a stench in stagnant waters... Hats off to you sir.. As for Metronomes , I consider a loop as a more complicated metronome, a feel.......The advantages are sublime...... But yes, I never use it in a mix, after all, it was just a metronome....

"This implies time travel and is the work of the devil." - Dan Worrall

Personally, I am more and more just using simple console type EQ like SSL or Neve emulations, not because of the “legendary tone” or some famous people recorded/mixed with them (i don’t give a shit about that), but because of the limitations and the lack of visuals force me to listen and be creative instead of staring at a frequency graph and EQ curves and wondering if that “looks” right. Only for some very specific tasks (dynamic or sum/difference EQ) I reach for TB_Equalizer or Nova. (And I rarely ever use a pultec style EQ. I know about the “pultec” trickof course, but I can rarely make it work somehow, especially not on kicks. A bit better on snares, but more often than not I’ll take it of the channel again…)

“Effect precedes cause. This implies time travel and is the work of the devil.” 🤣🤣

The segment on creating crossover filters is glorious!

“…this implies time travel, and is the work of the devil” 🤣

I found myself disagreeing with the white sea studio channel opinions quite often, there always seemed to be some holes or contradictions in his scientific explanations and justifications, but the final nail in the coffin for my trust of that channel came when he said he didn't like the top end of Nova eq and I realised either his set up or ears were either off, or simply don't align with mine. Fabian is one of today's best audio coders and to my ears Nova's high frequency behaviour is up there with the absolute best paid or free.

Hahaha, I love those comments about linear phase... "this implies time travel, and is the work of the devil." 😂

This RU-vid channel is a heaven send. I use it all the time. As soon as I think I have a good understanding of audio, I come here and watch one of Dan's videos. This reminds me that I know almost nothing about audio. Thanks Dan! Cheers.

Agreed, once you have the ear training, you stop thinking about the tools, use whatever you like. let me just say this, I'm 200 million streams in across several genres under several acts all using 99% free vsts and stock plugs of ableton. my main income is split equally between streaming revenue and ghost writing / producing. If you're spending more than minutes on any forum arguing the differences of preference between things like eq or compression quality then you've already wasted that time not making actual music for a living. It really doesn't matter enough (any more) to translate to real world success. By all means have your opinions and arguments, but admit in that context that it is personal subjective preference, not an absolute or demonstrable fact.

I have to say, Spectre at the end of your chain adds that special eq color and magic that I haven't been able to get with any other plugin. It's incredible and it sounds absolutely phenomenal. It's really low latency so you can track with it as well. It gives you that sound that inspires great performances. Plus it's dead simple to use.

Please take a look at Kirchhoff-EQ by Three-Body Technology. it's new and it has some very unique and competitive features.

What's brilliant about Dan's videos is that they present a technical guide to the intricacies of music production, especially with concepts like phasing or compression. But then he weaves in the philosophical side of production in every example, making you question if all the technical stuff really matters in the end, if what goes into your ears sounds the way you want it to.

You should use whatever EQ you have to hand, it'll be fine, it's just not that important...IMHO ;)

Thank you Dan. After your last video on EQ I started getting a ton of questions from people I know about EQ Phase and which kind of EQ I use in mastering. Didn't understand why the sudden interest until a friend told me about your video. Very glad you followed up to simplify things and remind people to just focus on the result and not so deeply on the tools in the heat of the mix (or master in my case). I think people get a little too caught up thinking there's a BEST solution for every EQ choice, and often the simplest method is the most effective. Keep up the great work.

What music credits do you have Dan? Where can we find them? Do you have a link to share?? I'm curious that I can't find anything about you and your work as a mixer. Please reply.

Text-To-Speech is getting better and better! Thanks for your super helpful tutorials!

I'm hearing the buttermaker... It's beeping. My butter is ready

Great insight on the Linear Phase-behaviour! Sure, you can mimic (almost) everything in EQs like the ProQ3 - but unless you're explicitly trying to: you won't. To me it's very much about workflow and intuitivity. I'll use an EQ that does the pultec thing, because it lets me get to places I'd never get with my regular EQ in no time. When it comes to dynamic EQ mid/side options are very important to me. Nova only does that when you load 2 instances - which just isn't handy. So color me surprised that it was primarily set up to be a dynamic eq. Good video!

Thanks great vid as usual Dan! Regarding the section on rolling your own crossover filters. I've found that Waves L3 Multi-maximizer seems to do a great job of this by just soloing bands. Have you ever tested that? Very quick and no messing around with the slopes. It nulls with pink noise (original vs. re-combined crossover) even if using all 5 bands. Also it has a lot less latency than Pro-Q 3 in Linear phase mode. Only 3538 samples of delay vs. ProQ's 5184 samples. I'll use the different band solo'd for my parallel drums, bass and vocal busses (for example for bass or drums I'll solo 80Hz and below band, MV2 that to all hell, and blend it back in parallel). I don't do any processing with the L3 (limiting, or dither), just use it as a crossover by solo-ing the bands.

Hello and thanks for all your incredible content, today I would like to ask you what you think of SPLIT EQ? I’ve been using it a lot and it makes wonder, but sometime I have the feeling that in some case it could make the mix dull or rumbly and I cannot pin point the cause of this…. Sorry for the sudden question and I wish you a great day

every upload from you is goated - thank you

" . . . that implies time travel, which is the work of the devil . . ." LOL!! I think that is the first joke I have heard in your videos. Or was it . . .?

I’m always learning new things from you. Thank you ❤

The nonchalant way of demonstrating the plugin on screen by talking through it... so slick

For me the Bettermaker Pultec vs Fabfilter Pro-Q3 test was shocking. Is there really a difference? Does the Pultec sound a bit less exact - a bit less crisp, a bit more forgiving? Is it perhaps a tiny amount of saturation I'm hearing? Or can other people not hear any difference?

Interesting. Choosing to be that one happy person may help more than one may think. Love the OCD style approach and the metronome practice metaphor.

This isn't a shot directly at you Dan, but why does every video made by people who have tutorials on various plugins, how to use Audacity, what mic to buy, etc, have relatively poor sound quality in their RU-vid videos? They ALL sound over-compressed, metallic, canny, boxy, etc. Literally every one of them. I've been trying to work out the best audio chain (with Audacity) since November, 2021, and the more I try to find the right answers, the further away I get from anything sounding normal; never mind "good" quality. Everyone does something differently, and there's so much disinformation as to how to use these plugins properly. It's a joke. The best takeaway I've heard - coming from you in another video - is to how to have a strategy. For the love of G, I'd just like to have an okay baseline with my audio, and get it to sound normal on RU-vid. Is that too much to ask?

As a software developer I am only beginning to get into the tools and mechanics of audio plugin programming but it occurs to me especially from this video and a few others that one potential solution to finding the right EQ or really any other processor for a specific rather than general purpose might be to have plugins available on a preset basis rather than categorized on brand or type of processor. I see some engineers complain that they have too many plugins but that they bought specific plugins outside of the stock plugins because they had something special. Remembering what that special thing is when you are looking at a list of 10 compressors or EQ plugins I think is too much. If instead you could have a category for snare, kick, guitar, mastering, bus, stems, rock, jazz, vocals, whatever you could find a plugin that fits. Even if the preset was not really a preset but just the default, it would remind you that a specific plugin is good on adding sheen to a vocal or beef to a kick drum. In that case it wouldn't matter how many plugins you had you could find the right one that had something special for what you are thinking about at the time. You could still go right to the UAD LA2A if that's what you want but if you are thinking of a sound color in general and just want to get that it might be better to go by preset. That may be available in some individual plugins but this would be for all. I don't know if this would be at the VST/AU level, the framework level (like Juice) or the DAW level at this point but I think it would be a boost for productivity and creativity.

Lovely! I agree with your conclusion too! I have self-debunked my perception of the differences between EQ plugins with Plugin Doctor. I still keep some of my go-to Kush plugins around because they are fast and familiar. But for anyone looking to buy some color EQ plugins these days, I'd probably steer them towards the free Ignite Amps Pultec, TDR, and Analog Obsessions plugins. As you said, its more about the interface and workflow. I personally don't think this is worth being repetitively duped out of hundreds of dollars for all the latest "must-have" analog emulations. Save your money for something that will give you a clear advantage :) On the nerd side, Kirchhoff is said to use a gradient of linear phase and minimum phase in the "Mixed Phase Mode" depending on the band frequency.

5:55 So there I was, trying to pick an EQ plug in, and accidentally summoned Lucifer.

Use a summed oscilloscope on all tracks with low end material when messing with phase shift it’s much easier to see the lineup. Getting things perfectly in phase by ear is just no

Why does the pro q3 pultec trick emulation have reverb? That can’t be to do with the plug-in itself, can it?

I wasn't too big of a fan of the original IK tape machines, but the TASCAM/TEAC ones are fabulous! The A-3340S is especially tasty.

To me the waves SSLEQ adds a papery quality to high mid boosts. Is it saturation?

"Reality is minimum phase" - Dan Worrall,2022. 🙌

Would love your thoughts on Kirchhoff EQ.

Very interesting. Any good sources to be able to understand this video from 5:00 onward?

Hello Y'all

“This implies time travel. And is the work of the devil.”

Linear phase is the work of the devil! Hear, hear, good people! 🤣

This video has made me realise what everybody I know has known for years - I'm an idiot.

You can get a linear phase filter without a FFT - the sole requirement is that its impulse response is symmetric or antisymmetric. But then it requires this “time travel” and the latency to process “future” samples to affect the current one.

Cans of worms ? You open them for a living. Respect !

did you phase rotate your voice? Or like allpass filter it?

Dan is seriously carrying future generations engineers on his shoulders

"The Pultec would never dream of judging your life choices" 😅 ... I spit my coffee on that one!

The only use I've come across for linear phase EQ is parallel processing, particularly on a drum bus. Once I start boosting the highs and lows, I get a weird phasey sound. Switch to linear phase, problem solved.

Anything Dan Worrall will do just fine. What? Oh.. YESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

So, use Linear Phase for metal music. Got it.

Skill is king. You can get a better mix with a stock parametric EQ and tube saturator if you know what you’re doing, than someone with dynamic and passive parametric EQ’s who don’t know what to listen for.

Seems you have learned how to get the best out of eq‘s from experience of having to use „restrictive“ eq‘s in analog and early digital desks, the same experience as me, the classic being high pass on Yamaha desks, the slope being so slight that to really get the „pop“ out of a mic you needed to run it up to 200Hz, then it sounded really thin so then use the bass parametric to put the bass/low mid back in the signal, basically having to use two eq function to achieve one goal, and then restricting further eq moves because you’ve „lost“ one parametric, and we won’t even talk about early 80#s desks with three band eq, lower two being „semi-parametric“ and NO highpass……yup the people these days have no idea what we had to work with back in the 70 & 80‘s, fondly remember my first Soundcraft 800b, boy was I in heaven, but then came my first Midas, could not believe what a quality was achievable, yeah the good old days……..NOT! And don’t start me on tape machine maintenance and alignment, so much time disappeared there….

"Time travel is the work of the devil." 😂😭

"this implies time travel and is the work of the devil" :D:D:D nice one

The shade - haha. "I'm one of those normal people..."

Super interesting video, interested in the crossover filter parts, what are some practical uses in mixing?

I just fell over with the “time travel” & “work of the devil” comments. You, sir, are awesome. Keep it up

Do a video on “classic XXX applications” like the pulltec on bass drum thing you did here. Or the 1176 on snare etc...

...this implies time travel, and is the work of the Devil..LOL, i died right there !! 😂 No one makes as entertaining videos as Dan... and bloody damn elegant as well!

Work of the devil 😂 Great video 🔥

You and I are maybe the same age Dan, may I pose one question? Why in this age of complete access to online music , philosophy, art and history do people seem to be creating less than WE did when we had little to NO resources? I think its a rhetorical question but it frustrates me . . Take care and thank you for all your work in the library of mespatania.

hi DAN always in point ... thanks so much for your time .. when you are time free ... please can chek this eq __? Kirchhoff-EQ thanks

Could you try the VOXENGO overtone g EQ and the marvel eq I use those all the time so I would like to know if technically they are good or they have all of the problems he could have in an EQ VST thx

What type of EQ should I use? The kind that work would be good to start with. Then. There's really only 2 to choose of. FIR-EQ and IIR-EQ That's all I need. That's all you need. Everything else is just a comic book looking interface. Which is your favorite comic book interface? And does it make you feel that it's real? Because it's not. Fooled you! For most things I like the,, well-known, regular stock, phase variable EQ. But for those pesky situations. Where the variable phase EQ just won't work. This is where the, linear phase EQ. Can work miracles! It is so different. For instance. I have done a lot of audio for video. I was given this documentary. With people being interviewed. And here was this couple. They put the lavalier microphone on him. They figured they would pick her up from the camcorder microphone, 6 feet away. NOT! Her microphone track was completely unusable. It sounded like she was in the bathroom. It sounded like he was whispering sweet nothings into your ear. Ugh! Gotta fix this abomination. No regular normal equalization. From any equalizer. Would do the trick. It just would not. It was around this time. Back in 2008. I had just gotten this linear phase EQ software plug-in. What this did. Was allow me to take his lavalier Mike on his chest. Adjust the frequencies of resonance on her. To provide for her some chest resonance. And a closer more intimate higher frequency sounds to her voice. And you can hear the lavalier microphone on her chest. And it's not there. It's on him 3 feet away. And only the Linear Phase EQ could do this. It was beyond remarkable. Later. For fun. I took a bunch of my rock 'n' roll tracks. And I mixed an album I had done recently. But now only with these linear phase equalizers. When I finished. The sound was remarkable. It was so horrible I could barely listen to it. Linear phase EQ. Was not the thing to use on everything. As doing what I did with the variable phase equalizers. With the linear phase. Yielded the most bizarre sound I had ever heard. What the hell is this? This sounds like crap! I'll never use this allows equalizer again! Except to make some serious corrections and/or match resonances. To provide a consistent character of sound. And so it is surgical. Not universal. All the other equalizers just make different sounding phase distortions. Pick the one you like for the instrument you want. For the vocal, you want. And use the linear phase EQ. Only to fix problem items and acoustic aberrations. I am just not into the cartoon interface thing. You don't have that equipment. You never had that equipment. You've never used that equipment. You don't, owned that equipment. So your plug-ins don't need to, look like that equipment. Since you have no intimacy. With the original equipment. They are now trying to emulate, imitate and counterfeit. Do I care? No I don't care. Why not? I'm retired now. I don't have to care. RemyRAD

Another way to do crossovers with minimum phase filters is to just use a lowpass, set it at the crossover frequency, that's your low band, duplicate it and invert the phase of it, and add it to the original signal, and you get the high band. The idea is you're subtracting all the low frequency information from the original signal, leaving all the high frequencies that weren't cut by the lowpass. You'd probably want to use metaplugin or something similar. I honestly don't know how it performs in terms of metrics, I've never measured it. But I think that's how crossovers are done typically with minimum phase filters.

Cant figure out how to join the channel membership. There is usually a button somewhere but i cant find it. Maybe i need to be on the computer? I can see all your community posts. Am i already a member already then?

on the which audio is running in this mix question, i think that you started with the Pultec, and swapped to Fab mid way. just my ears so who knows really, i more than likely convinced my self there was a difference when i could see the change rather than hear it

Hello Dan, can you please make a video about the DMG Audio EQuilibrium and MAAT EQOrange and why they are so pricey.

I automatically "thumbs up" on Dan's videos before I've even watched them. I haven't "un-thumbs up" one yet as it's highly unlikely Dan would drop a real clanger.

"but adding the same signal to itself usually doubles" - this is just not something I can understand without more learnings from ya.

13:57 ...well done, Dan. You've stumped *me* of all people. I cannot tell if that's Spencer, Cider, or Lady Parsec.

really great video, so indepth :) What is the music you play in the background, its really apt

You won the internet today with your 'work of the devil' comment. It was the perfect dry read. I'm still chuckling as I write this.

Pre ringing is the work of the devil

i'd love for you to make a video on "how to learn", as stupid as it sound, i bet you have practical ways to learn something on our own. you know way too much and i bet you have insight on this somehow

Do analog EQs create saturation harmonics from boosted frequencies or does it affect the whole signal?

Lovely. Listened to the whole thing. It was like someone explaining the offside rule to a ferret.

Time travel is the work of the devi!l. I just woke up the dog laughing.

"Which one are you hearing right now?" (in the mix) -> The Pultec!

Can I ask if anyone knows the reason why on his additional kick EQ curve, he's got a big attenuation at 75hz?

5:53 this is the funniest thing ive ever heard in my life

This guy puts the engineer in audio engineer. That wasn't funny cus it's no joke, one of the smartest and most elegant technical music Production content on the entire web, and it's all available for free here on RU-vid what a blast! Thanks for your content dude you're truly a wizard!

I think the pro q3 is the one we are hearing in the mix. The is a bit more click to the drums with it in solo. Listening on the train tho so maybe I’m off.

That time travel is the work of the devil 😂

Great video. To answer to question in terms of base plugin use… I think a good set of eq would be the following: -1 parametric eq -1 m/s capable eq -1 dynamic eq -1-3 colorful eq This is more than enough to have a great selection. Further would be, if it’s to your liking. -1 resonance suppression eq like gullfoss or soothe2 I personally haven’t used a resonance suppression eq but they seem to do “something nice” to vocals once you’ve finished your vocal chain. A little bit of some ai like cleaning. Anyone have experience with res suppression eq?

Dan, what`s your opinion on dual-mono mode in Slick EQ? Is it something you would use instead of Stereo? As I understand it lets EQ-ing a bit differently L and R channels, like in Brainworx consoles with Analog Mode on, right?

The time travel devilish linear phase shit got me laughing hard here dude This setting really makes my system looks like it is trying to summon the devil himself hahahha cpu melts

Can you make a video about Multiband compression and potential issues with multiband crossovers ?

"is the work of the Devil." hee hee. Awesome.

I am returning from this iceberg trip to day traders nfts and other imaginary scams affecting the lives of thousands. I missed this warm zone of youtube where real knowledge is shared and the gatekeeper dan plays by sharing his ideas and experience.

The thing about the crossover filters made my day! Thank you Dan 😙

I love how the bettermaker does not judge me. That's why its my favorite.