Product Reviews by KVR Members

A lot has already been said about this amazing EQ, as there are currently ten reviews already here on KVR. For me, it's not a surprise so many people are raving about this plugin, as I believe this one is unique in both sound and handling.

Let's start with some basic information. SplineEQ is a linear phase equalizer plugin. This means that it does not change the phase of a sound, and as a result, gives a more natural sound. All this comes with a price however, because a little bit of latency will be introduced. As I'm using this EQ mostly as a master EQ and a few instances during mixing, I'm not complaining about this latency, I'm more than happy to pay this "price" and get an amazingly good and natural sounding EQ for it in return.

An unique approach
When we look at EQ plugins like Sonnox EQ, DMG Audio EQuality or Duende X-EQ, we talk about parametric EQ's. This type of EQ is what most people are very familiar with. They often have a fixed amount of bands that include high and low pass filters, high and low shelving filters and bell filters. When you take a look at EQ plugin like the Waves API 560 or Voxengo Marvel GEQ, you will easily see they are different, and these are known as graphic EQ's.

When we take a look at SplineEQ, we will find it's not exactly a parametric or graphic EQ as we have come to known in the last few decades. So what is it? Well, it's more a parametric EQ than it's a graphic EQ, that's for sure, but you won't find the high and low pass filters, shelving filters or bell filters in this plugin. SplinEQ uses a very unique approach to making curves and it's called Bézier splines. SplineEQ gives you the ability to design your own curves. The retail version ships with up to 60 bands so your imagination is the limiting factor here. This way of shaping a sound might take a few minutes to grasp, but once you understand how it works, you will probably love it as much as I do.

An unique sound
This EQ being unique in the way it's working, that is something that we have established so far, but I have not said anything about the sound. Ladies and Gentleman, that's because I wanted to save the best for last. This EQ sounds amazingly transparent. You will not find any analog buttons, hidden tube emulations or anything like that in this plugin. The only thing this EQ is doing for you, is shaping the sound with a transparency that is breathtaking. Adding a few db's and cutting a few db's with a standard digital EQ often result in a sound that somehow sounds like it's been altered. It's like you hear that there is an EQ on top of the sound. With SplineEQ, it's like the sound has been changed from within, and the result sounds as natural as it sounded before. Of course there is a limit to this transparency and we hopefully all understand that boosting 30dB around 5Khz on a full mix will most likely give a very unpleasing result, but this has nothing to do with the EQ plugin, and all to do with the person behind the knobs doing something very weird.

SplineEQ in use
During the mixing process I do use SplineEQ when a sound needs fixing, or in other words, when my normal go-to mixing eq's don't have the precision to fix a problem. For example, a kick drum that is recorded without a lot of body/low energy. With SplineEQ I have managed to make a kick sound powerful and punchy again by adding and cutting more than a handful of dB's at some critical frequencies while sounding totally natural at the same time. The difference between the kick drum with and without EQ was nothing short of a miracle. I asked some friends to listen to the difference and they couldn't believe at first that this was the same recording with just some help from an EQ. Countless of times I used the help of a transient designer and compressor together with different eq's to fix this type of bad, lifeless recordings, but with SplineEQ, I managed to fix it quicker and better without the need for other tools.

Another example of a recording that needed to be fixed was a lead vocal that was recorded in a very tiny room with a crappy microphone and no room treatment at all. I was able to remove a lot of the resonating (boxy) sound of the room without destroying the rest of the sound. Again, the end result sounded very natural and the difference compared to the original sound was stunning. I tried a lot of other EQ's to do the same, and although I was able to get very pleasing results with another one of my favorite clean EQ's, in the end, I preferred SplineEQ. I don't like mixing bad recorded songs, but SplineEQ makes my life a bit easier when the client has no intention of delivering a better recording.

When mastering, I love clean/transparent EQ's and this is where SplineEQ shines! It's probably not a surprise that it has become my favorite mastering EQ. When I'm mastering a track I always (try to) respect the mixer engineer, so I always try to keep the character of the track the same, while at the same time, making it translate as good as possible on many different devices. With SplineEQ, I can fix certain frequencies with an incredible precision. I have been able to master tracks with this plugin that normally would have needed a new mix. Having said that, I still prefer a new mix that doesn't need this kind of fixing, but sometimes there is no money/time and SplineEQ can really save the day.

Conclusion
In my opinion, SplineEQ is an amazing plugin. The way you can shape the curves and the way it stays transparent even when boosting or cutting a pretty high amount of dB's, is both unique and impressive. I'm confident that this EQ will find it's way to most of my future mixing projects and all my future mastering projects, just like it has done for the last couple of months.

For $19 this EQ is a steal. To be totally honest, I don't know what the developer must have been thinking when deciding to sell this plugin for so little money. In my opinion, it's on par with the very best there is on offer in the digital domain.

Introduction
When you hear the name, or look at it's GUI, it's not difficult to understand that this EQ is based on the Dangerous BAX EQ, an EQ that is famous for it's very musical sounding EQ curves.

Is this BaxterEQ a perfect digital copy of the Dangerous BAX EQ? The answer is No, it's not, but that's also not the intention of Bootsy to make you believe it is a perfect copy. So, does it sound any good than? The answer is YES!

Specs
So, what does the BaxterEQ offer you, what makes it sound so good? Let's take a look at some of the specs:

Two Baxandall shelving filters: a LF @ 74, 84, 98, 116, 131, 166, 230 and 361 Hz and a HF @ 1.6, 1.8, 2.1, 2.4, 3.4, 4.8, 7.1, 11 and 18 kHz.

And two 2-pole Butterworth filters: a LC @ 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 43 and 54 Hz and a HC @ 7.5, 9, 11.1, 12.6, 16, 21, 28 and 40 kHz.

On top of this, you can run this dual channel EQ in either Stereo or Mid/Side.

In use
Because of the nature of this EQ, it can not be surgical at all, so for mixing duties, you will probably find a full parametric EQ to be more favorable. But on the mix buss and in mastering duties, this EQ will really show it's strength. Use the smooth as silk sounding 2-pole Butterworth filters to remove some of the low rumble and harshness and at the same time, use the two Baxandall shelving filters to add some bottom and air to your mix. Because the two shelving filters have a range from -5dB to +5dB, you hardly can go wrong here. Whatever you do, you will find out that it sounds not artificial at all, but very musical pleasing. This is all thanks to the wonderful Baxandall shelving filters that have been digitally recreated by Bootsy.

It might sound a bit limited, only having a low shelf and a high shelf filter, and this might give you the idea it's only useful if you want to alter the tone of the low and high frequencies. But when you take a closer look at the frequency choices you have, it becomes clear that you can do more than that! You could for example boost the high shelf 5dB on 2.1Khz and at the same time cut at 12.6 Khz or 16Khz for example, to really push the mid frequencies more to the front of the mix, without having to worry about added high frequencies.

The ability to run this plugin in Mid/Side mode is a very nice bonus. This makes it possible to alter the stereo imaging in a very pleasing way, to really bring your mix more to life!

Conclusion
This plugin has the famous ability to make your mixes sound finished, thanks to its fantastic sounding digital recreated Baxandall curves. And the good part: it's completely free! Isn't Bootsy amazing? Unfortunately, MAC users have to look elsewhere, since this plugin comes only in a 32bit VST plugin for Windows.

This plugin is highly recommended!

Charlatan is a free Virtual Analog synthesiser VSTi that is 100% coded in C++ and has native 64bit support. At the time of writing, not many free synths share these two facts.

A first look at Charlatan might give you the impression that it's a very simple synthesizer, but once you start using it, you will soon discover that you can make some very interesting and impressive sounds with it.

When you take a look at oscillator 1, your first concern might be that you don't see a SAW wave. No worries, you can make a SAW wave with the Shape knob. When you select the Triangle waveform and turn the shape knob fully clockwise, you will have a very nice sounding SAW wave at your disposal. Now select the SAW waveform in Oscillator 2 and detune them both slightly. This is where you find out what sets this plugin apart from many many other free synthesizer plugins. It actually sounds amazing! Not digital at all, but it really gives you that sound you might recognize from real hardware synthesizers or other great software synthesizer plugins, often costing a lot of money.

This synthesizer plugin can be very versatile, you can make some fantastic sounding bass sounds with it, but it can also make some very convincing electric piano sounds, leads, pads, strings and percussion sounds. Actually, the sky is the limit, or should we say, your programming skills is the limit!

We made a soundbank for Charlatan and you can download it from here: http://www.kvraudio.com/product/charlatan-by-blaukraut-engineering/downloads

If you are interested to hear Charlatan in action, take a listen to this track that is made with 21 instanced of Charlatan using presets from our soundbank: http://soundcloud.com/solidtrax/solidtrax-charlatan-21

Thanks to BlauKraut Engineering for sharing this great plugin with us for free!