The reasoning behind this is to allow increased portability of your presets across all the host applications, while also providing a consistent and versatile interface. Sonnox Oxford plug-ins come equipped with their own onboard Preset Manager, which is displayed at the top of the plug-in window. A dynamic EQ with no gain / Q dependency will tend to sound over-processed or harsh as more gain cut/boost is applied. This gain / Q dependency is highly important for a dynamic EQ, where the gain is modulated dynamically. Also many of the more popular outboard EQs have this dependency to some extent. This EQ most resembles the older and well-loved Neve types, their modern derivatives and the later SSL G Series. Therefore EQs of this type are often dubbed as ‘more musical sounding’. Turning the Gain control seems to produce the effect that the ear is expecting, without needing to adjust the Q control too often. The gentler Q curve also lends itself better to overall EQ fills and more subtle corrections in instrument and vocal sources. This provides the EQ with a softer characteristic as EQ is progressively applied and since the effective bandwidth is increased for low gain settings, it sounds louder and more impressive when used at moderate settings. This style of EQ has a moderate amount of gain / Q dependency whereby the Q increases as gain gets further from 0dB. The Oxford Dynamic EQ provides gain / Q dependency which matches the R3 EQ's Type 3 response. Tech Notes Gain-Q Dependencyįilters with some amount of gain / Q dependency are sometimes referred to as 'proportional Q filters'. Set the output gain of the plug-in to avoid clipping or match the dry and processed signal levels. Set how slowly the band recovers to the Offset Gain. The Oxford Dynamic EQ combines the benefits of dynamic EQ with the Oxford EQ's Type 3 gain / Q dependency, giving you the best of both! EQ Controls Of course, this is highly undesirable if the gain is being modulated dynamically! See Gain-Q Dependency for details. When using an EQ which does not have this gain / Q dependent response, gain changes often require Q changes to maintain the desired effect. This is similar to the proportional Q response or gain / Q dependency of many well loved analogue EQ processors. As a boost or cut increases, the width reduces. Some multi-band processors get around the phase response issue, but are still left with a problem - the bands cannot be overlapped! This can pose significant problems when a combination of gentle character modification and precise correction is required.īut Multi-band processors do have an advantage over most dynamic EQs. If steeper filters are used to provide greater precision, phase shift at the crossover points increases. Multi-band processors typically afford less precise frequency adjustment than a parametric equaliser. The band-limiting can be achieved using linear-phase filters, however these incur high latency and can degrade transient response at lower frequencies. When the band-limited signals are combined to reconstruct the input signal, a static phase shift is present at their cross-over point. This reconstruction approach has some downsides: Static phase shift Multi-band compressor/expanders apply their gain reduction directly to each filtered signal, then combine them to reconstruct the original wide-band input signal. Each path is filtered to restrict its frequency range, then sent into a compressor or expander.Ī dynamic EQ applies the gain reduction/expansion to the gain parameter of a parametric equaliser which processes the original input signal. They both split the input signal into multiple parallel paths. Multi-band compressors/expanders and dynamic EQs work in a similar way. Typical multi-band dynamics processors work to some extent, but with inconvenient downsides. Automation is only convenient when the spectral changes occur over a long period of time, and aren't repetitive. The two most common solutions are automation and multi-band dynamics processing. This is often undesirable! For example, a presence boost which was appropriate during one section of a performance may become harsh during another section. However, the equalisation applied is usually static - it remains the same over time. Equalisation is the audio engineer's most widely used processing tool.