Ged Leitch wrote on Fri, 11 August 2006 18:41 |
... is Q metric discontinued? hows the sound?
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In my oppinion it sounds great, allows some very precise adjustmentes in 0.5 dB steps and doesn't seem to damage untouched frequencies in any way.
The Q settings go from very wide to extremely narrow bands, narrower than on most recent plugins and the frequency is correctly displayed in its panel.
Some time ago (years ago, that is) i made some detailed tests and concluded that when applied with all gains set to 0dB there was no change in the resulting wave.
One of the characteristics that i like most is the independent Stereo switching in each frequency band allowing the user to perform equalization settings on one channel of the Stereo field only. Simple as this may seem it's a feature not present on most actual software EQs, even those named "
Mastering" plugins.
It's a feature even harder to find in software compressors, but that is a different subject.
I have conducted some tests recently, with
VST Plugin Analyser and was glad to see that the frequency response extends up to 20KHz or beyond, and that Phase and Harmonic Distortion have normal values, even acceptable for far more recent Plugins.
Frequency Response analysis with the same analyser has presented values that are more correct with what you set on the virtual knobs in the user interface than those of URS's
Fulltec and
A Mix plugins to wich i had Qmetric compared.
Qmetrics "ShowCurve" function opens a new window with a graphic display that makes it easier to see what is happening with your equalization settings, frequency response wise. This curve display is almost an exact replica of what you'll see with the
VST Plugin Analyser.
The most similar results when compared with more recent EQ plugins were obtained with PSP's
MasterQ. Here the frequency response settings were set the same way and the numerical results with
VST Plugin Analyser were the same except for the Group Delay results wich were incomparably more correct in Qmetric than on PSP's Equalizer (unless i'm reading something wrong here).
These recent tests were done with the lower quality settings in Qmetric. There's an option for "Double Sampling" and "Max Quality" that i didn't use in the tests though i opt for those settings when equalizing with Qmetric.
Technically (mathematically) the results are impressive.
Soundwise, it pleases me a lot and i've been using it since its release more than 8 years ago.
I won't say that it
emulates analog EQ or that it
sounds digital because i believe those are philosofical considerations, not technical.
Steinberg's Qmetric is, in my oppinion, a very usable and effective tool for equalisation.
Though it's been discontinued it's still worth the search for one. It came bundled with early Cubase versions and, i believe, was available as a stand-alone .dll as well.
It works as both a VST or DirectX plugin.