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I was thinking that. We are in danger of forgetting that a great song is better than a great production. Ideally you need both but a great song will carry a less than fantastic production. IMHO.
ReaEQ is so underrated. It's always been my favourite EQ, and ReaComp is my favourite compressor. Despite their less attractive UI, they are actually super easy to use and way quicker to use. They are small, like, they have a physically small UI. All the info you need is right next to one another. Other plugins you gotta navigate more. Sounds like a small thing, but when you spend hours in those windows, it adds up. Takes no time at all to dial in the settings you want. ProQ is nice too though, I use that for dynamic EQ.
Honestly, I totally agree! Downloaded "ReEQ" (Reapers fancy version of ReaEQ as a JS plugin" and TDR Nova the other day and I would TOTALLY rather use the VST ReaEQ. So fast, so simple. Not sure what everyone's problem with it is...
I totally agree with you. Reaper has got some excellent stock plugins! They all look like a rainy Monday morning, but they sound so good. They don't color the sound, either.
I just recently switched from Pro Tools to Reaper and strangely enough, I'm one of the few that don't own Pro Q3, so this was HUGELY encouraging for me! Thanks so much!
Such wow. Amazing. I never thought the difference was so minimal. So many people starting our think you need great gear, or if not, great plugins, but ReaEQ is free, can be downloaded as a VST and is indistinguishable from paid EQs in most instances. This is going into my favorites. Also, your delivery reminds me of Scott (I think) from Image-Line, who does the voiceovers for every FL Studio video. Awesome.
FYI - Maybe someone has already noted this or maybe I'm just a day late to the party, but the issue Dan describes above in ReaEQ has been fixed. Now when you move a band to be centered on say 15khz, it does not stub off at 20khz, but instead rolls off gently and steadily like ProQ3 does somewhere well above 20khz. Same for High Shelf. But my project was set at 96k sample rate. Many thanks to the team at Reaper for making a great product for an even better price. And many thanks Dan for all your hard work. We're all better for it.
makes sense, eq cramping generally isn't an issue at samplerates higher than 48khz because the nyquist limit is a lot higher. nothing was fixed (at least until reaper's internal oversampling was introduced), it's just that this particular eq behaviour doesn't affect your workflow
11:57 - This reminds me of the good old days of tuning amplifiers and filters for my pirate radio setup. Looks similar to the output on the RF spectrum analyser, but instead I'd be trying to get nulls on the harmonics while getting maximum amplification on the fundamental frequency.
Whats Wrong With Stock Plugins? Nothing! People just like to spend a shitload of money thinking it's gonna get better. It's not the plugins, it's your ears.
Agreed. I think Dan's assessment that the advanced features and workflow improvements are the only significant difference is completely fair. It's not in the sound, not in this case. And if you have the ears and experience to use either EQ well, you'll get good results with the free one. Conversely if you don't. the expensive EQ won't save you...
DSP developer here. Not only are most filters used in these plugins trivial (they can be implemented in minutes), min phase and linear phase filters are defined by the magnitude of the frequency response (= the curve you see in parametric EQs). Same frequency response = same filter. Mathematically.
I can actually hear differences between mixes that use stock ableton EQ's vs ProQ. Generally for the most part everything sounds much more in phase, and you have way more control over the curves to get things sitting just right.
Glad to have found your channel, you've opened my eyes to eq. I was aware that it does cause phase shifting, and when I asked a recording engineer why that is he shrugged his shoulders. I really thought the pro q at 20khz sounded like the reaper plugin did at 10khz. It had that hot sound like I would normally expect anything to sound boosting that high.
Brill as usual Dan, keep me coming. I have learnt more from DW videos than any other source. Relatively complex subjects explained with incredible clarity and ease.
Well Done! While I allways have many instances of ReaEQ doing good work, I was so glad to see the TDR VOS SlickEQ which I love and use often. Be great to see the free SlickEQ with the Molot and Limiter6 by Vladislav Goncharov vs Ozone8 on the Dan Worrall test track. Can’t believe I just found this channel. With this content I think you should have 100k or more subs easily.
Very reassuring. Thank you Dan. As a relative newbie: I tried other DAWS and always return to Reaper but also appreciate the ergonomics and intuitive use of fab filter (though recognise I have much to learn about both even after a few years of exploring)
I am an electrical engineer so I do understand what is going on but I still watch to hear him talk, and he does have a gift for presenting potentially complicated subjects in a clear manner. He is the Bob Ross of audio.
1:13 another question is, how come the pink noise on pro q3 look like it's getting louder with higher frequencies and reaper looks the opposite? Is there something different about how they display incoming signal?
Hats off. Good comparison. I've used both ReaEQ and Pro-Q2/3 on dialogue mixes. Fine, and scalable GUI on both, but it's the sonic and usability features that had me mostly shifting to ProQ3. Bandwidth on parametric bands are a god send, as are dynamic EQ and an excellent analyzer. The stellar automatabillity of Fabfilter products are the plus as ReaEQ only has three automatable parameters per band. I mostly use ReaEQ on individual clips now. Once did a memory usage test (5000 items with a ReaEQ instance on them) and averaged out the RAM hit to 142 kB per instance. 7384 instances per GB :) . The tools all have their place.
This is exactly what I've been looking for! It's been so difficult just to find a clear explanation of why I would need Fabfilter, besides "bro, you just gotta use Fabfilter...blah blah." Thank you for the free science experiment! Would you ever consider doing another one comparing TDR Nova to Fabfilter?
Revisiting this video as I’m starting to check out Reaper. I have an RME interface and while changing the sample rate in the usb settings from 44.1, 48, and 96Khz, I can see the change in cramping and phase in real-time on ReaEQ. Of course Reaper now has the oversampling option for plugins so it can be all done in-house. Very cool
Fantastic video! I'm kind of happy to have it affirmed to me that SlickEQ really IS that good. I considered the possibility that it was just placebo for a long time, but I always gravitated towards that plugin specifically for high shelf boosting, because it just has ... something that I haven't found in many other plugins.
It is easy to match the two curves (or any curve) in the current ReaEQ. You leave your last band curve matching the beginning and simply add a high shelf that can be adjusted to any desired level.
There's an audible difference with ReaEQ in the high end; almost like a resonance or a ringing sort of sound above 12kHz that ProQ doesn't have.. But I was pleasantly surprised how close each test sounded. Goes to show it's not the kitchen but the chef. Great video!
8:57 I leaned in. I squinted. I grimaced. I pressed my ear flaps out. No matter how I contorted my face I couldn't hear any difference. I miss my teenage hearing. What a difference three decades makes.
This was super clarifying and useful. Thank you. I wonder, as a reaper user, if you had tried the ReEq, which is supposed to even more mimic proQ. I hear lots of differences between Rea Eq and Re Eq, and I don't really have the sufficient knowledge to understand what's what. I've noticed though that if I high-pass with Re Eq using the hard slope, it sounds totally different from when I do the same With Rea EQ
Great comparison. I've never been able to spot a difference between the two, but I do tend to work at 96khz. In this video, the ReaEQ samples sounded a bit more grainy, or gritty to me. Like a recording would after downsampling from a high sample rate to a lower one with weak anti-aliasing. Anyway, for some reason I get better results by using less precise EQs with 3 or 4 fixed bands and hidden curves, because it makes me listen with my ears more instead of looking at a graph and second guessing myself.
7:17 Just for fun, put a brickwall low-pass, set near Nyquist, in series with the Pro Q3 and see if you can't get better cancellation. The ReaEQ looks like it has a steep output filter to prevent aliasing (so the high end is - always - going to look like that). I've seen this in hardware on a Audio Precision test set - if the 20kHz brickwall filter is engaged, you get a very different high end result, as you'd expect. Sorry if this has been brought up before.
That kind of filter would indicate internal oversampling, which would have fixed the cramping. But there's no brick wall filter, no oversampling. It's just normal digital filter cramping.
6:10 I'm listening to the blind test on my Neumann KH310 - the difference was very much obvious right away. It very much reflected the curve difference as shown in the graph just before the test. I did hear a major difference and yes, the B sample was much brighter on top than the A sample.
At the end of the day only two things matter. 1. You get the sound you’re looking for. 2. You waste the least time getting it. I would argue that the more expensive plug-ins I have purchased have helped with both things, but more so with #2. Good design should only be concerned with accomplishing those two things.
Heard all AB with closed eyes, rechecked than with opened eyes. Same result. Used cheap Sennheiser HP. Yes there is a clearly audible difference. But not a game changer difference. I don't like Q3 too much when boosted over around 2db, especially not in low and highs. Great video. Thank you.
I imagine you could also solve the cramping by adding a high shelf in addition to the bell curve or even a another bell with a wider bandwidth set higher and less gain
without reference it's sometimes hard to hear when something's bad. logic's stock EQ gets terrible phasing issues in the low end when you add or subtract something in the high end, at least that's what I hear
Best line of the video I love Pro-Q so much I load it with a hot key! Bravo Dan , I am the same way with my favorite EQ DDMF's IIEQ Pro which I load with a hot key!!!
i can't speak for fab filter but i've found, for example, using the stock eq in pro tools versus certain waves eqs, that the phase is more coherent and the cumulative effect of this is very noticeable.
Interesting video. Im proud of myself for hearing the differences on the EQ's on the blind test and also guessing which was which at the first try. I used headphones tho not really confident i would do it easily on any monitors (been using this headphones for years)
In all of the blind tests here I was asking myself does the A or B sound more pleasant to me, and in each of them the one that seemed more pleasant turned out to be Pro-Q3. I don't know exactly what makes the cramped EQ curves sound worse than non-cramped ones, but it seems that they do sound worse.
My fridge is whirring but B always sounds darker in my mixcube which is -10dB at 10kHz last time I measured it. Maybe the phase discrepancy you showed accounts for this. Thanks for the tdr tip.
Another brilliant video by Dan! FabFilter is known for how well they handle frequencies at the extremes, particularly Nyquist. They have almost a Baxandall sound. I can't help but wonder how many other EQs aside from TDR's are as good. I could tell a difference with the exception of the high shelf, but it was negligible. However, I was able to tell the difference between ProTools' included EQ and Pro-Q² very easily in a blind test between analog, FF, and PT, so it seems reasonable to assume that ReaEQ is far superior to Avid's, because I didn't even have to try to hear the difference.
Hey wonderfull, I'm glad to see your own channel. Best audio video maker of all time... since Camel audio in +-2007. Why haven't you told me you had your youtube channel before...!?
you need to hit that "add band" button and change it high shelf type to get the high end curve to not be placed at zero on reaEQ. What is the point of this test?
He's just seeing if there are flaws in the free program's features that prevent it from doing what the other does. By making them work the same on opposite ways, he finds out if there are discrepancies (things that don't zero out). It's not perfect and doesn't really ask if the other features are worth the price, but does tell you that the free tools at least do the minimum of what you'd need for...free. In other words, testing if Pro-Q is necessary or just really nice to have. Looks like the latter, though that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it if you want it and can afford it.
@@girhen This was like explaining iq tests to people. Don't pay any attention to him. He's just trolling. And if he's not, oh well, his question said enough.
Good video, and the cramping you were taking about could be solved by a band+high shelf for the high frequency band comparison and reducing the gain for the high shelf comparison, as reaEQ band gain goes down to 0 at the project sample rate and the high shelf mantains the gain at the sampling frequency, both of which cause the different shape, of which you can get rid of that way
great rundown, I've been on reaper for years and use reaeq for all my corrective EQing. It's crazy to think that based on the fabfilter model just the stock EQ is worth more than cockos charges for the whole DAW. Lol. Great vid man, really dug it. Great
Dan - great video as always, I love the careful, level-headed analysis that you do. You'd probably by quite interested in reading the manual for the LSP Parametric EQ, as being an open source project the authors have no qualms talking about their DSP algorithm. In particular they talk about the pros and cons of Bilinear Transform vs Matched Z Transform. The former leads to the distorted bell curve seen in ReaEQ and many others, but the latter results in aliasing. LSP Parametric EQ offers both modes (and more), so I tried it and can confirm it's possible to create quite audible aliasing, at least with contrived situations. I wonder if the Fabfilter EQ does the same without oversampling?
Hi Mark. I've no inside information on how pro-q3 works internally, but I've always assumed that the cramping in zero latency mode is essentially just corrected with extra filtering, hence the extra phase shift. There's no oversampling btw, common misconception. Natural phase mode just eliminates the extra phase shift: my guess is the corrective filtering is linear phase in that case. I could be very wrong, but certainly there's no aliasing, it stays squeaky clean regardless of the mode.
great video Dan. I've wondered about this but didn't know how to test it. I need to try it with the Ozone 8 EQ because I never seem to get what I expect from it.
@@matthijsblomjous3671 what I'm referring to is that people tend to think that because it is not very harsh, it is sutile and most people don't listen to sutile
Wow, that was super-interesting! Thanks! I recently bought Pro Q3 after having used ReaEQ as my go-to, and was wondering what the actual difference was. I definitely felt some difference, but just couldn't quantify it.
Reading through the comments I didn't see anyone saying that audible differences. But I could definitely hear a difference. After doing the first blind test I would know how each EQ sound, and the other 2 blind test were obvious to me. Not the most scientific words but this is how I would describe it: the ReaEQ sounds like it's boosting the "room" (or air around the drum kit) and the Fabfilter sounded more "focused" (or in your face). Not that one sounded better than the other. Just an observation! But, loved the video SO interesting!
Hey man, I am a big fan but i could hear some air being chopped by ReaEQ at 20khz whereas Pro Q's version was more prominent. I don't know if that is after conversion by youtube but even after conversion it seems to be making a little difference in terms of air which clearly gets reflected in my Consumer speaker.
ReaQ also has INFINITE BANDS. You're not limited to how many the manufacturer decided you should have for that price range All bands can be set to notch, bell, high, low and bandpass, high and low shelf. You can also get ReaQ for free for any other DAW using the ReaPlugs installer. ReaQ does that because it's not a "color" EQ, and has no intention to sound like a hardware eq unit, which has physical constraints and limitations.
Dan, for years, I have seen endless praise from older generation of sound engineers for legendary MDWEQ6 equalizer created by George Massenburg. I will not quote the praises that can be read on the internet, but there are tons of them and every user insists that it is better than any other EQ available on the market. The manufacturer's website states "Introducing MDWEQ6 with unprecedented clarity, smoothness, accuracy and excellent high-frequency response providing an unparalleled tool for serious audio production." You have made many videos on this topic, I have seen them all... which makes me wonder exactly what kind of uniqueness we are dealing with in this case.
Great video Dan as always. I wonder about time domain differences like transient smearing, post ringing things of that nature which seem to be very different form EQ to EQ. Is there a way to measure those differences? I'm not sure you'd hear them with noise as a source.
Hi Dan! What are your thoughts on bx_console Focusrite SC? I wanted to compare ReaEQ and bx_console Focusrite SC, in the same way as you compared ReaEQ and Pro Q3, but even with all buttons turned off, there is some color/filtering thing programmed into the EQ by Brainworx and even with all bands flat in both plugins, the null test just wouldn't work... Otherwise I find bx_console Focusrite SC to be very clear and good sounding plugin, but I'm kinda puzzled but this failed null test
@@DanWorrall Ah so that's why in the equalizer it inevitably goes to zero at 24kHz (in a 48kHz project) and that mark is just referred to as Nyquist? Thanks for your answer!
In the first few blind comparisons I definitely preferred the fabfilter because it felt brighter and livelier to me, though I generally am not a fan of bright sound, it was in a pleasant way. On the last comparison I think I leaned towards Reaeq for similar reasons, though I'm curious what it is about the differences that appealed to me more on the last one. Either way, I did feel like they were all definitely different, but I don't think it would make a difference to 98 percent of audiences which are so desensitized to hearing 128 kbps streams being overprocessed to compensate through mass marketed speakers, so it really just comes down to what it's worth to you.
Do you mean the cramping? No it doesn't oversample. I've never asked the developers, but I assume they use extra filtering to correct the basic response.
@@DanWorrall Sorry yeah, that was a poor choice of words. I meant the distortion (of the frequency and phase response), so yeah the cramping. I would have thought that no amount of extra filtering would help since presumably that would struggle as it approaches the Nyquist frequency too. I know next to nothing about digital filter design though, so I'm probably wrong. As a user of Reaper and frequent user of ReaEQ this was a very helpful video! I'm quite glad to find out that ReaEQ didn't fare all that badly considering how much I've used it.
Try adding a high shelf to your bell... I haven't tried it (I probably should) but I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to null that against Fabfilter in zero latency mode.
To me the biggest drawback of reaeq is that you can't adjust the slope on lowpass and higpass bands. In Proq you can have anything from 6db to 96 and even a brickwall slope. These slope settings actually matter when mix bass frequencys. Usually you have one sub bass which you lowpass somewhere at 100hz and the bass on top which you highpass somewhere at 100hz. Which reaeq I could not really create nice sounding crossovers with that
Maybe I am misunderstanding what's going on here... I understand that you are comparing the quality of each filter and showed that ReaEQ essentially has the same quality as Pro Q3... But, you are also mainly comparing how they do it, right? So if they don't null at some points it's simply because they did their math differently not because one is more quality than the other. Like around @15:03 you are comparing the high shelf filter, they both boost the frequencies as you'd expect, they just don't do it exactly the same. Am I understanding that correctly? Btw, this is exactly what I was looking for when I was looking around for details of why I'd want to buy third-party plugins. Please keep doing this. This is awesome.
Pro-Q3 behaves as you'd expect (assuming your expectations are the same behaviour as a theoretically perfect analogue EQ) but ReaEQ doesn't due to the cramping. That's a real difference, but a minor one in most cases.
To analogue, or the theoretically perfect response, depending how you want to look at it. Ideally the bells will remain symmetrical, and the slopes will be the same steepness, regardless of the frequency.
I was surprised I could tell the difference between the signals pretty confidently.. even on my phone's speaker.. loving the videos, awesome channel. I would say this is the gamer's Nexus of music production, really in depth and scientific content. Would love to see something like daw benchmarks.
it's interesting how the phase of ReaEQ's bell is kind of a mix of Pro Q3's natural phase and zero latency. Like it passes through the frequency like Pro Q3's natural phase, but it also cramps up to the nyquist like zero latency
There is a difference just barely noticeable enough so that I managed to guess both times (for the third one I only heard some difference but forgot which one should sound narrower) which one is Pro-Q and which is ReqEQ. But it is SO subtle, this can never be destructive for the listener. Never. My relatively fresh and sensitive ears notice audibly narrower band, around 10% of difference between plugins. Again, it's so subtle I needed at least 3 cycles of A-B comparison to make a decision, and that's probably thanks to the fact I mix metal most of the time, it requires catching those "bell shaped peaks that scream too much".
from what it looks like that zero latency decramped EQ is at the cost of a cramped phase response, while fully decramped EQ is at the cost of latency, although i've seen that zero latency cramped EQ also somewhat cramped the phase response although not as significant as the decramped one. I feel like i want to imagine a project triangle of EQ design which consist of Frequency response, Phase shift, and Latency. But looking further it's a lot more nuanced subject than a "project triangle" could lay on.
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"the difference is unlikely to cost you your grammy" LOL excellent video :)
🤷🏾♂️😂😂😂 why take the risk 😂😂
I was thinking that. We are in danger of forgetting that a great song is better than a great production. Ideally you need both but a great song will carry a less than fantastic production. IMHO.
Lovely! So glad you're putting out more material! Get so excited everytime I see 'Dan Worrall has uploaded a video'! Thanks a lot!
ReaEQ is so underrated. It's always been my favourite EQ, and ReaComp is my favourite compressor. Despite their less attractive UI, they are actually super easy to use and way quicker to use. They are small, like, they have a physically small UI. All the info you need is right next to one another. Other plugins you gotta navigate more. Sounds like a small thing, but when you spend hours in those windows, it adds up. Takes no time at all to dial in the settings you want. ProQ is nice too though, I use that for dynamic EQ.
Honestly, I totally agree! Downloaded "ReEQ" (Reapers fancy version of ReaEQ as a JS plugin" and TDR Nova the other day and I would TOTALLY rather use the VST ReaEQ. So fast, so simple. Not sure what everyone's problem with it is...
I totally agree with you. Reaper has got some excellent stock plugins! They all look like a rainy Monday morning, but they sound so good. They don't color the sound, either.
@@vegardyrnes1793lol "rainy Monday morning" 😂
EXACTLY!
I think both their UIs are cute
I just recently switched from Pro Tools to Reaper and strangely enough, I'm one of the few that don't own Pro Q3, so this was HUGELY encouraging for me! Thanks so much!
Such wow. Amazing. I never thought the difference was so minimal. So many people starting our think you need great gear, or if not, great plugins, but ReaEQ is free, can be downloaded as a VST and is indistinguishable from paid EQs in most instances. This is going into my favorites.
Also, your delivery reminds me of Scott (I think) from Image-Line, who does the voiceovers for every FL Studio video. Awesome.
Phenomenal video mate. Keep up the great work!
Tl;dr: Use ‘Natural Phase’ mode in Pro-Q when working above 5khz. (See: 10:00)
Nice to see someone testing plugins scientifically. I'm sure in a lot of instances we think plugins sound better because they look nice.
like nexus? cost an arm and doing nothing better
FYI - Maybe someone has already noted this or maybe I'm just a day late to the party, but the issue Dan describes above in ReaEQ has been fixed. Now when you move a band to be centered on say 15khz, it does not stub off at 20khz, but instead rolls off gently and steadily like ProQ3 does somewhere well above 20khz. Same for High Shelf. But my project was set at 96k sample rate. Many thanks to the team at Reaper for making a great product for an even better price. And many thanks Dan for all your hard work. We're all better for it.
Thx for this update 👍🏼
makes sense, eq cramping generally isn't an issue at samplerates higher than 48khz because the nyquist limit is a lot higher. nothing was fixed (at least until reaper's internal oversampling was introduced), it's just that this particular eq behaviour doesn't affect your workflow
I missed the original comment, sorry. Yes, cramping is only an issue at 44.1 or 48k samplerates.
11:57 - This reminds me of the good old days of tuning amplifiers and filters for my pirate radio setup. Looks similar to the output on the RF spectrum analyser, but instead I'd be trying to get nulls on the harmonics while getting maximum amplification on the fundamental frequency.
There is not many people who knows their stuff and you're definitely one of them! Thanks for sharing, great work!
Whats Wrong With Stock Plugins? Nothing! People just like to spend a shitload of money thinking it's gonna get better. It's not the plugins, it's your ears.
Agreed. I think Dan's assessment that the advanced features and workflow improvements are the only significant difference is completely fair. It's not in the sound, not in this case. And if you have the ears and experience to use either EQ well, you'll get good results with the free one. Conversely if you don't. the expensive EQ won't save you...
DSP developer here. Not only are most filters used in these plugins trivial (they can be implemented in minutes), min phase and linear phase filters are defined by the magnitude of the frequency response (= the curve you see in parametric EQs).
Same frequency response = same filter. Mathematically.
@Jingo McFeirson But have you tried ReaEQ? You can download it from the Cockos site for free in VST format.
I can actually hear differences between mixes that use stock ableton EQ's vs ProQ. Generally for the most part everything sounds much more in phase, and you have way more control over the curves to get things sitting just right.
@@mitch150 Unless you can prove that either of those EQs is broken I call BS on that claim.
Glad to have found your channel, you've opened my eyes to eq. I was aware that it does cause phase shifting, and when I asked a recording engineer why that is he shrugged his shoulders. I really thought the pro q at 20khz sounded like the reaper plugin did at 10khz. It had that hot sound like I would normally expect anything to sound boosting that high.
Brill as usual Dan, keep me coming. I have learnt more from DW videos than any other source. Relatively complex subjects explained with incredible clarity and ease.
Well Done! While I allways have many instances of ReaEQ doing good work, I was so glad to see the TDR VOS SlickEQ which I love and use often. Be great to see the free SlickEQ with the Molot and Limiter6 by Vladislav Goncharov vs Ozone8 on the Dan Worrall test track. Can’t believe I just found this channel. With this content I think you should have 100k or more subs easily.
Very reassuring. Thank you Dan. As a relative newbie: I tried other DAWS and always return to Reaper but also appreciate the ergonomics and intuitive use of fab filter (though recognise I have much to learn about both even after a few years of exploring)
Idk what’s going on. I just watch to hear him talk
lol Low Key Asmr
@@JamilLeslie loool quite the opposite but yh
he acts like this is so easy
I am an electrical engineer so I do understand what is going on but I still watch to hear him talk, and he does have a gift for presenting potentially complicated subjects in a clear manner. He is the Bob Ross of audio.
1:13 another question is, how come the pink noise on pro q3 look like it's getting louder with higher frequencies and reaper looks the opposite? Is there something different about how they display incoming signal?
A great and scientific comparative test.
Hats off. Good comparison. I've used both ReaEQ and Pro-Q2/3 on dialogue mixes. Fine, and scalable GUI on both, but it's the sonic and usability features that had me mostly shifting to ProQ3. Bandwidth on parametric bands are a god send, as are dynamic EQ and an excellent analyzer. The stellar automatabillity of Fabfilter products are the plus as ReaEQ only has three automatable parameters per band. I mostly use ReaEQ on individual clips now. Once did a memory usage test (5000 items with a ReaEQ instance on them) and averaged out the RAM hit to 142 kB per instance. 7384 instances per GB :) . The tools all have their place.
Hats off, I hope that every person starting out in audio gets to see your videos. Staggering amount of mythbusting!
This is exactly what I've been looking for! It's been so difficult just to find a clear explanation of why I would need Fabfilter, besides "bro, you just gotta use Fabfilter...blah blah." Thank you for the free science experiment! Would you ever consider doing another one comparing TDR Nova to Fabfilter?
Revisiting this video as I’m starting to check out Reaper. I have an RME interface and while changing the sample rate in the usb settings from 44.1, 48, and 96Khz, I can see the change in cramping and phase in real-time on ReaEQ. Of course Reaper now has the oversampling option for plugins so it can be all done in-house. Very cool
Fantastic video! I'm kind of happy to have it affirmed to me that SlickEQ really IS that good. I considered the possibility that it was just placebo for a long time, but I always gravitated towards that plugin specifically for high shelf boosting, because it just has ... something that I haven't found in many other plugins.
It is easy to match the two curves (or any curve) in the current ReaEQ. You leave your last band curve matching the beginning and simply add a high shelf that can be adjusted to any desired level.
There's an audible difference with ReaEQ in the high end; almost like a resonance or a ringing sort of sound above 12kHz that ProQ doesn't have.. But I was pleasantly surprised how close each test sounded. Goes to show it's not the kitchen but the chef. Great video!
I was not expecting such a concrete video! Will subscribe and check the rest of your videos out.
Listening to pink noise for 20 minutes... What happened to my life? :o
music got shit
8:57 I leaned in. I squinted. I grimaced. I pressed my ear flaps out. No matter how I contorted my face I couldn't hear any difference. I miss my teenage hearing. What a difference three decades makes.
For home recordings I’ll keep the stock, $180 seems like a waste of money but it was a truly informative video
This was super clarifying and useful. Thank you. I wonder, as a reaper user, if you had tried the ReEq, which is supposed to even more mimic proQ. I hear lots of differences between Rea Eq and Re Eq, and I don't really have the sufficient knowledge to understand what's what. I've noticed though that if I high-pass with Re Eq using the hard slope, it sounds totally different from when I do the same With Rea EQ
Great comparison. I've never been able to spot a difference between the two, but I do tend to work at 96khz. In this video, the ReaEQ samples sounded a bit more grainy, or gritty to me. Like a recording would after downsampling from a high sample rate to a lower one with weak anti-aliasing.
Anyway, for some reason I get better results by using less precise EQs with 3 or 4 fixed bands and hidden curves, because it makes me listen with my ears more instead of looking at a graph and second guessing myself.
7:17 Just for fun, put a brickwall low-pass, set near Nyquist, in series with the Pro Q3 and see if you can't get better cancellation. The ReaEQ looks like it has a steep output filter to prevent aliasing (so the high end is - always - going to look like that). I've seen this in hardware on a Audio Precision test set - if the 20kHz brickwall filter is engaged, you get a very different high end result, as you'd expect. Sorry if this has been brought up before.
That kind of filter would indicate internal oversampling, which would have fixed the cramping. But there's no brick wall filter, no oversampling. It's just normal digital filter cramping.
Very nice video. Thank you.
6:10
I'm listening to the blind test on my Neumann KH310 - the difference was very much obvious right away. It very much reflected the curve difference as shown in the graph just before the test. I did hear a major difference and yes, the B sample was much brighter on top than the A sample.
Great video!
At the end of the day only two things matter.
1. You get the sound you’re looking for.
2. You waste the least time getting it.
I would argue that the more expensive plug-ins I have purchased have helped with both things, but more so with #2. Good design should only be concerned with accomplishing those two things.
Heard all AB with closed eyes, rechecked than with opened eyes. Same result. Used cheap Sennheiser HP. Yes there is a clearly audible difference. But not a game changer difference. I don't like Q3 too much when boosted over around 2db, especially not in low and highs. Great video. Thank you.
Another EXCELLENT video, Dan! Thanks again!
I imagine you could also solve the cramping by adding a high shelf in addition to the bell curve or even a another bell with a wider bandwidth set higher and less gain
Your control test of using a null was such a great idea. Great vid.
I mostly use stock plugins in Logic.
I’ve never had someone say “you know the sound of your EQ just isn’t good enough”
without reference it's sometimes hard to hear when something's bad. logic's stock EQ gets terrible phasing issues in the low end when you add or subtract something in the high end, at least that's what I hear
Best line of the video I love Pro-Q so much I load it with a hot key! Bravo Dan , I am the same way with my favorite EQ DDMF's IIEQ Pro which I load with a hot key!!!
Was just thinking DDMF's IIEQ Pro deserves a mention - only just got it
I would love to see a full mix of Ableton EQ8 replaced by Fab Filter Pro-Q 3. Are the benefits cumulative? Has anyone tried this already?
Ableton can be just as good but Fab has better filter slopes and the change is noticeable to me.
i can't speak for fab filter but i've found, for example, using the stock eq in pro tools versus certain waves eqs, that the phase is more coherent and the cumulative effect of this is very noticeable.
the newest version of eq 8 is better than fab filter to me, but older versions had a lot of artifacting and it was hard to do high and low passing
Great video. I hope you keep doing these!
Love your content! Kind of scientific and rational approach and that helps!
Interesting video. Im proud of myself for hearing the differences on the EQ's on the blind test and also guessing which was which at the first try. I used headphones tho not really confident i would do it easily on any monitors (been using this headphones for years)
In all of the blind tests here I was asking myself does the A or B sound more pleasant to me, and in each of them the one that seemed more pleasant turned out to be Pro-Q3. I don't know exactly what makes the cramped EQ curves sound worse than non-cramped ones, but it seems that they do sound worse.
How do they compare today? ;) More stock Reaper plugins comparisons! Realimit?
Does anyone know how to load reacomp into plugindoctor ? It says it can't load this format
Just amazing. So glad I found you, you knowledgeable, no bs man!
I prefer Pro Q3 for mid side processing. Its very handy for that. How is Pro Q3 compared to the EQ in iZotope Neutron 3?
My fridge is whirring but B always sounds darker in my mixcube which is -10dB at 10kHz last time I measured it. Maybe the phase discrepancy you showed accounts for this. Thanks for the tdr tip.
Another brilliant video by Dan! FabFilter is known for how well they handle frequencies at the extremes, particularly Nyquist. They have almost a Baxandall sound. I can't help but wonder how many other EQs aside from TDR's are as good. I could tell a difference with the exception of the high shelf, but it was negligible. However, I was able to tell the difference between ProTools' included EQ and Pro-Q² very easily in a blind test between analog, FF, and PT, so it seems reasonable to assume that ReaEQ is far superior to Avid's, because I didn't even have to try to hear the difference.
Hey wonderfull, I'm glad to see your own channel. Best audio video maker of all time... since Camel audio in +-2007. Why haven't you told me you had your youtube channel before...!?
you need to hit that "add band" button and change it high shelf type to get the high end curve to not be placed at zero on reaEQ. What is the point of this test?
He's just seeing if there are flaws in the free program's features that prevent it from doing what the other does. By making them work the same on opposite ways, he finds out if there are discrepancies (things that don't zero out). It's not perfect and doesn't really ask if the other features are worth the price, but does tell you that the free tools at least do the minimum of what you'd need for...free.
In other words, testing if Pro-Q is necessary or just really nice to have. Looks like the latter, though that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it if you want it and can afford it.
@@girhen This was like explaining iq tests to people. Don't pay any attention to him. He's just trolling. And if he's not, oh well, his question said enough.
Good video, and the cramping you were taking about could be solved by a band+high shelf for the high frequency band comparison and reducing the gain for the high shelf comparison, as reaEQ band gain goes down to 0 at the project sample rate and the high shelf mantains the gain at the sampling frequency, both of which cause the different shape, of which you can get rid of that way
You sound like the dude who narrated Thomas the Tank engine. I love it. Great video also!
Haha I just remember that was Ringo wasn't it? What voice was I thinking of then, I wonder?
Ringo was the original narrator but I think he was replaced later on.
@@mikosoft with Alec baldwin
Who is this Nyquist and what does he want from our mixes? ☺
He's a demon who takes half of your sample rate as an energy source for his soul, and lets you use just the other half for your signal.
@@nikkomakinen6582 that's nasty
@@nikkomakinen6582 That is suprisingly accurate
@@nikkomakinen6582 Dead from this.
He's the guy who was having his wicked way with Christine Keeler-Hertz
great rundown, I've been on reaper for years and use reaeq for all my corrective EQing. It's crazy to think that based on the fabfilter model just the stock EQ is worth more than cockos charges for the whole DAW. Lol.
Great vid man, really dug it.
Great
Dan - great video as always, I love the careful, level-headed analysis that you do. You'd probably by quite interested in reading the manual for the LSP Parametric EQ, as being an open source project the authors have no qualms talking about their DSP algorithm. In particular they talk about the pros and cons of Bilinear Transform vs Matched Z Transform. The former leads to the distorted bell curve seen in ReaEQ and many others, but the latter results in aliasing. LSP Parametric EQ offers both modes (and more), so I tried it and can confirm it's possible to create quite audible aliasing, at least with contrived situations. I wonder if the Fabfilter EQ does the same without oversampling?
Hi Mark. I've no inside information on how pro-q3 works internally, but I've always assumed that the cramping in zero latency mode is essentially just corrected with extra filtering, hence the extra phase shift. There's no oversampling btw, common misconception. Natural phase mode just eliminates the extra phase shift: my guess is the corrective filtering is linear phase in that case. I could be very wrong, but certainly there's no aliasing, it stays squeaky clean regardless of the mode.
* when I say "linear phase corrective filter" what I probably actually mean is "FIR corrective filter" as its probably correcting phase as well.
I would love to see a similar comparison with Toneboosters EQ4 which I'm considering getting.
Thank you so so so much! Your channel is a real goldmine
What a fantastic video I learnt a lot with this
great video Dan. I've wondered about this but didn't know how to test it. I need to try it with the Ozone 8 EQ because I never seem to get what I expect from it.
ozone 8's EQ is one of the worst imo
Ozone 8 EQ is for mastering...
@@felipemorayta7424 that's not an excuse for it being a bad EQ
@@matthijsblomjous3671 what I'm referring to is that people tend to think that because it is not very harsh, it is sutile and most people don't listen to sutile
@@felipemorayta7424 that makes more sense
Wow, that was super-interesting! Thanks! I recently bought Pro Q3 after having used ReaEQ as my go-to, and was wondering what the actual difference was. I definitely felt some difference, but just couldn't quantify it.
are these parametic e.qs constant Q filters.???
Reading through the comments I didn't see anyone saying that audible differences. But I could definitely hear a difference. After doing the first blind test I would know how each EQ sound, and the other 2 blind test were obvious to me. Not the most scientific words but this is how I would describe it: the ReaEQ sounds like it's boosting the "room" (or air around the drum kit) and the Fabfilter sounded more "focused" (or in your face). Not that one sounded better than the other. Just an observation! But, loved the video SO interesting!
Hey man, I am a big fan but i could hear some air being chopped by ReaEQ at 20khz whereas Pro Q's version was more prominent. I don't know if that is after conversion by youtube but even after conversion it seems to be making a little difference in terms of air which clearly gets reflected in my Consumer speaker.
Extremely thorough. Thanks for the free method at the end!
ReaQ also has INFINITE BANDS. You're not limited to how many the manufacturer decided you should have for that price range All bands can be set to notch, bell, high, low and bandpass, high and low shelf. You can also get ReaQ for free for any other DAW using the ReaPlugs installer. ReaQ does that because it's not a "color" EQ, and has no intention to sound like a hardware eq unit, which has physical constraints and limitations.
it's so hard to tell the difference with an isolated track, probably more difficult in the mix.
Dan, for years, I have seen endless praise from older generation of sound engineers for legendary MDWEQ6 equalizer created by George Massenburg. I will not quote the praises that can be read on the internet, but there are tons of them and every user insists that it is better than any other EQ available on the market. The manufacturer's website states "Introducing MDWEQ6 with unprecedented clarity, smoothness, accuracy and excellent high-frequency response providing an unparalleled tool for serious audio production." You have made many videos on this topic, I have seen them all... which makes me wonder exactly what kind of uniqueness we are dealing with in this case.
Yeah. It's got "equal sensitivity coefficients" apparently. Whatever that means. I'll add it to my list... ;)
Great video Dan as always. I wonder about time domain differences like transient smearing, post ringing things of that nature which seem to be very different form EQ to EQ. Is there a way to measure those differences? I'm not sure you'd hear them with noise as a source.
What if you added a high-shelf node above the 10k bell on REAEQ to phase match with pro-Q3?
Could you do a video with cubase stock eq vs iZotope?
Can you compare PSP MasterQ2 to FabFilter ProQ3?
So how do they not get affected by the niquist limit in pro-3?
How does what not get affected? Sorry, I don't understand your question...
Hi Dan! What are your thoughts on bx_console Focusrite SC? I wanted to compare ReaEQ and bx_console Focusrite SC, in the same way as you compared ReaEQ and Pro Q3, but even with all buttons turned off, there is some color/filtering thing programmed into the EQ by Brainworx and even with all bands flat in both plugins, the null test just wouldn't work... Otherwise I find bx_console Focusrite SC to be very clear and good sounding plugin, but I'm kinda puzzled but this failed null test
I picked FabFilter on all 3 of the blind tests. The difference was obvious. Not bad for a 55 year old!
What does he mean when a frequency is „at nyquist“? I googled Nyquist but that was way to technical for me.
Nyquist = half the samplerate. It's the upper limit for digital audio: 48KHz samplerate can't represent any frequencies higher than 24KHz.
@@DanWorrall Ah so that's why in the equalizer it inevitably goes to zero at 24kHz (in a 48kHz project) and that mark is just referred to as Nyquist? Thanks for your answer!
What about Pro-Q against Cubase EQs?
Where does one find Pink Noise?
Reaper comes with a JS pink noise generator.
@@DanWorrall Plugin? What folder do I find it? THX!!
In the first few blind comparisons I definitely preferred the fabfilter because it felt brighter and livelier to me, though I generally am not a fan of bright sound, it was in a pleasant way. On the last comparison I think I leaned towards Reaeq for similar reasons, though I'm curious what it is about the differences that appealed to me more on the last one. Either way, I did feel like they were all definitely different, but I don't think it would make a difference to 98 percent of audiences which are so desensitized to hearing 128 kbps streams being overprocessed to compensate through mass marketed speakers, so it really just comes down to what it's worth to you.
Great test Dan, I now better understand as to why FF exceed the 20Hz 20kHz ranges.
That was really interesting. I wonder how the Pro-Q3 avoids that problem? Perhaps it's oversampling to move the distortion above Nyquist?
Do you mean the cramping? No it doesn't oversample. I've never asked the developers, but I assume they use extra filtering to correct the basic response.
@@DanWorrall Sorry yeah, that was a poor choice of words. I meant the distortion (of the frequency and phase response), so yeah the cramping. I would have thought that no amount of extra filtering would help since presumably that would struggle as it approaches the Nyquist frequency too. I know next to nothing about digital filter design though, so I'm probably wrong.
As a user of Reaper and frequent user of ReaEQ this was a very helpful video! I'm quite glad to find out that ReaEQ didn't fare all that badly considering how much I've used it.
Try adding a high shelf to your bell... I haven't tried it (I probably should) but I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to null that against Fabfilter in zero latency mode.
To me the biggest drawback of reaeq is that you can't adjust the slope on lowpass and higpass bands. In Proq you can have anything from 6db to 96 and even a brickwall slope. These slope settings actually matter when mix bass frequencys. Usually you have one sub bass which you lowpass somewhere at 100hz and the bass on top which you highpass somewhere at 100hz. Which reaeq I could not really create nice sounding crossovers with that
Maybe I am misunderstanding what's going on here... I understand that you are comparing the quality of each filter and showed that ReaEQ essentially has the same quality as Pro Q3... But, you are also mainly comparing how they do it, right? So if they don't null at some points it's simply because they did their math differently not because one is more quality than the other. Like around @15:03 you are comparing the high shelf filter, they both boost the frequencies as you'd expect, they just don't do it exactly the same. Am I understanding that correctly?
Btw, this is exactly what I was looking for when I was looking around for details of why I'd want to buy third-party plugins. Please keep doing this. This is awesome.
Pro-Q3 behaves as you'd expect (assuming your expectations are the same behaviour as a theoretically perfect analogue EQ) but ReaEQ doesn't due to the cramping. That's a real difference, but a minor one in most cases.
@@DanWorrall ohhh, I see. You're comparing it to analogue. Got it. So Pro Q works identically to analogue, but Rea-q almost does. Thank you!
To analogue, or the theoretically perfect response, depending how you want to look at it. Ideally the bells will remain symmetrical, and the slopes will be the same steepness, regardless of the frequency.
@@DanWorrall Gotcha. Thanks so much for doing these videos. Looking forward to the others.
I was surprised I could tell the difference between the signals pretty confidently.. even on my phone's speaker.. loving the videos, awesome channel. I would say this is the gamer's Nexus of music production, really in depth and scientific content. Would love to see something like daw benchmarks.
If Reaper ads dynamic EQ points to ReaEQ and then EQ matching to ReaFir, it's gameover. There is a JS EQ matching plugin, but it's just okay.
it's interesting how the phase of ReaEQ's bell is kind of a mix of Pro Q3's natural phase and zero latency. Like it passes through the frequency like Pro Q3's natural phase, but it also cramps up to the nyquist like zero latency
One thing Ive noticed on Pro Q is that is the frequency spectrum is 20-30 hz lower than some of the of the other Eq's like waves SSL.
5:15 Now I see why I hear/feel a difference between reaeq and the other equalizers and I thought I was going crazy but I was actually right.
Brother w
Which is best pro q or rea q
Pro-Q is better, otherwise Fabfilter would have no business model. But only you can decide if the difference is worth the money to you.
Great demo Dan! This video convinced me to stick with ReaEQ for surgical problems. For shelving high freq, i'd certainly grab pultec anyway.
You're aware that a Pultec high boost is a bell not a shelf?
@@DanWorrall I'm aware that Pultec use different curves for Boost/Attenuate.
Thank you for the information, it can help a lot!
If we use high sample rates can we also use over sampling to help reduce fold back sounds or does high sample rates help by its own lol
how did you get the original fabfilter dude/narrator/voice? what's his name? how can I contact and book him?
He's called Dan Worrall ;)
Add me as a contact on TH-cam. th-cam.com/users/add_contact?c=kqGyXzI0kfGJn6y-iVS_LqN4yjJ7SA
lol this is his youtube channel.
whaaat!? really??? so cool, I love his voice!
There is a difference just barely noticeable enough so that I managed to guess both times (for the third one I only heard some difference but forgot which one should sound narrower) which one is Pro-Q and which is ReqEQ.
But it is SO subtle, this can never be destructive for the listener. Never.
My relatively fresh and sensitive ears notice audibly narrower band, around 10% of difference between plugins. Again, it's so subtle I needed at least 3 cycles of A-B comparison to make a decision, and that's probably thanks to the fact I mix metal most of the time, it requires catching those "bell shaped peaks that scream too much".
from what it looks like that zero latency decramped EQ is at the cost of a cramped phase response, while fully decramped EQ is at the cost of latency, although i've seen that zero latency cramped EQ also somewhat cramped the phase response although not as significant as the decramped one.
I feel like i want to imagine a project triangle of EQ design which consist of Frequency response, Phase shift, and Latency. But looking further it's a lot more nuanced subject than a "project triangle" could lay on.