5 Dynamic EQs You Should Check Out in 2021
In this article, Julian looks at dynamic EQ’s and chooses 5 to highlight, though he stretches the category a little beyond what many would think of as a dynamic EQ.
The audio equivalent of keyhole surgery, dynamic EQ is one of those problem-solving processors which can be used so precisely that I sometimes wonder how we managed without it.
It’s not something I use every day, but it’s the “right” way to deal with a whole category of issues that can be very difficult to deal with in any other way when they do occur. Examples being taming harshness when a singer moves into a different register, dealing with body resonances on acoustic guitars and side-chaining a cut in the bass from the kick to manage the bottom end.
Everybody has a dynamic EQ in their DAW. The humble de-esser sort of qualifies. Anyone who has ever set up de-essing using analogue equipment will know how by inserting an EQ with a boost at the frequency at which the offending esses occur into the side chain of a compressor you can make the compressor only attenuate when an ess occurs. Although this is similar to a dynamic EQ, it’s not quite the same because when the offending frequency occurs the entire full-range signal gets attenuated.
De-essers with a split-band function are much closer to a dynamic EQ because in this case, they attenuate only the top end of the signal in response to the filter in the side chain, which is focused in on the ess. This is effectively a dynamic high-shelf EQ. The difference between this and a full-fat dynamic EQ is just the additional flexibility offered by a proper dynamic equaliser.
Before we look at the 5 Dynamic EQs we have chosen to highlight, there is one issue we need to address.
What Is The Difference Between A Dynamic EQ And A Multiband Compressor?
While they both do very similar jobs, they do them in significantly different ways. A dynamic equaliser has extremely flexible filters and it is, of course, possible to use a dynamic equaliser as a conventional static EQ.
A multiband compressor would make a very poor EQ., with the most significant difference being that a multiband compressor uses a series of crossover filters to split the spectrum up into separate bands. The phase shifts or additional latency introduced by crossover filters is present even when no compression is occurring. A dynamic EQ that isn’t cutting or boosting the signal doesn’t affect the sound at all.
For a more complete exploration of the differences read this article.
With that point addressed, let’s look at 5 different dynamic EQs…
TDR Nova - Free Dynamic EQ
If you don’t have a dynamic EQ there is absolutely no excuse for not having one as Nova from Tokyo Dawn Records is free and is just as good as some paid-for plugins. It’s a very flexible static 4 band EQ with high and low cut filter, you just enable the dynamic features to get up to 4 bands of dynamic EQ.
There’s a lot to like here, including being able to re-order EQ bands if you drag a node past one of its neighbours. But the best thing about this powerhouse of a plugin is that somehow it’s completely free!
Sonnox Oxford Dynamic EQ - Impeccable Sound
Sonnox do the details properly, It’s why the pale blue of the Oxford suite of plugins have been favoured by professionals for as long as they have been available. Something which isn’t at all obvious is that if an EQ band’s gain is changing during a mix, the filter needs to be designed to not change the sound in any unintended way. Designers of static EQ’s don’t have to worry about this as they are not specifically designed to have their settings change during playback.
The key to making sure the filter sounds as transparent as possible when being used dynamically is to make sure the Q/gain dependency is correctly setup. To hear this EQ in use check out our review.
Fabfilter Pro Q3 - Does Everything
Pro Q3 has redefined what we can expect from a premium EQ plugin and while it doesn’t present itself as a dynamic EQ, if you need a band of dynamic EQ you can enable that feature in this plugin.
Of course, it doesn’t end there. Taking the ubiquitous spectrum analyser display behind the EQ curve concept one stage further is Spectrum Grab, where you can build a cumulative Spectrum trace and grab the peak you’re interested in to create an EQ node. hold Alt and it can be dynamic. Add to that features such as EQ Match and auto gain and you have a standard-setting EQ.
Soothe2 - Nothing Else Does This
We’re getting away from conventional dynamic equalisers here, in fact, Oeksound refers to Soothe 2 as a “dynamic resonance suppressor” and draw a distinction between Soothe2 and Multiband compressors and dynamic EQs. However, this plugin dynamically reduces frequencies based on their level. It does the same job as I usually use a conventional dynamic EQ, so I’d argue that it qualifies for inclusion on this list.
The difference between Soothe2 and conventional dynamic EQ’s is that Soothe2 makes the majority of the processing decisions with the user being left with controls that steer the processing without getting into the granular details. Exactly how it decides what it classes as a “resonance” is something of a mystery but it doesn’t matter when the decisions it makes are as good as they are. This works and nothing does exactly what this does.
To learn more about Soothe2 check out these two articles…
Gullfoss - Mysterious Magic
The last entrant in this list gets even further from the conventional approach to dynamic EQ. Gullfoss goes even deeper into AI-driven magical processes, which threaten to be better at mixing than you!
Gullfoss is named after a waterfall, and we all know waterfalls sound nice, and exactly how it does what it does is one of those questions which is best answered with “don’t ask”.
It definitely does work though and the controls are principally based around Recover, which dials in more of the good stuff, and Tame, which reduces the not so good.
Recently updated to expand the range to three versions, in addition to the original version, there is now Gullfoss Master, which improves processing but incurs a greater CPU hit, and Gullfoss Live, which offers lower latency. Find out more about Gullfoss check out our review.
What About You?
What is your favourite Dynamic EQ? There are some big hitters which we haven’t included here. Should we have featured Ozone or AE600? If you think so, what is it about them that makes you prefer them? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.