These two tools from Finland promise previously unachievable ways to shape the spectral and transient content of sounds, but what do the controls mean? We take a look…
The evolution of plugins has more recently seen solutions that blur the lines between dynamics processing and EQ. Although these new ways of working have expanded the technical and creative possibilities available to us, they inevitably have brought new learning curves as well. A good example of this is understanding the difference between two closely related processes; multiband compression and dynamic EQ. Understanding this difference is necessary even down to choosing which one to actually use!
Oeksound soothe2 and spiff are two unique products that also exist in another place where we need to understand what they are doing, in order to know where and how to apply them. Essentially, these problem solvers are two flavours of dynamic EQ across two plugins where a single one would be overridingly complex.
soothe2
Oeksound describe soothe2 as a “dynamic resonance suppressor”, and it’s helpful to think of it as their take on an intelligent dynamic EQ. It is intended as a utility to tame bumps that may only periodically reach ‘problem’ levels in the same way that a conventional dynamic EQ can help, effectively giving you compressor-style time and threshold controls to control the amount of cut at specific bands. Soothe2 adds full range functionality to the original’s mid and high range of operation making it effective across a wide range of content, with new Soft and Hard modes added.
The large graph allows control of the weighting of soothe2’s operation rather than having the ‘grab’ breakpoints for boost and cut found in other plugins. For example, a big peak on the graph at 4kHz actually means that more cut is happening there. The graph also shows a reduction plot as well, which shows exactly what soothe2 is doing to the sound.
Mode Soft mode is “smarter” for transparency with fewer artifacts, while the latter allows more intervention from the user to completely transform sounds.
Depth Adjusts the overall amount of the reduction - more depth leads to deeper cuts.
Sharpness Controls the width (or Q) of the individual cuts.
Selectivity Changes what kind of cuts to make, i.e. whether to focus less on overall resonances (less selectivity) or to focus just on individual resonances (more selectivity)
Speed Attack and Release control the rate of onset for cuts and recovery from them. They are not calibrated in ms because their values depend on the content.
Delta Is the key to understanding what Soothe2 is doing, this lets you hear just the part of the signal being affected. Highly recommended if you want to really understand and get the most out of Soothe2.
Other controls on this deep plugin include those for Stereo or Mid Side operation, offline render settings, mix, and sampling quality.
spiff
Transient control comes in the form of spiff, described by Oeksound as “an adaptive transient tool that cuts or boosts only the frequencies that make up the transient material, keeping the rest of the audio signal intact”. In this respect, it can also be thought of as a dynamic EQ because it is not compressing or expanding the transient portion of the signal; it is instead applying momentary EQ to fast events only. It was developed for use with voice, finding many friends in post, but with usefulness extending to any source.
Again, the large graph allows control of the weighting of Spiff’s operation as opposed to having the ‘grab’ breakpoints for boost and cut. As with soothe2, the graph also shows a reduction plot as well, which shows exactly what is happening to the sound.
Cut or Boost Modes allow Spiff to accentuate or de-emphasize transients. For example, a drum loop could be made to sound more or less ‘close-miked’ at the transient frequencies.
Sensitivity Covers transient detection. Higher values return greater transient detection or the converse for lower values. In Cut mode, Oeksound recommend using lower values in conjunction with the Delta control.
Sharpness Is a bandwidth control for each separate cut or boost that spiff performs. Lower values sound more natural on percussive material (like drums), while higher values work well on harmonic material with a wide frequency range, like piano, for example
Decay Refers to the time it takes for a cut or boost to recover back to its starting point, with high values taking longer. When set to 0, only the very short part of the transient is adjusted. Increasing decay applies more processing to the tail after the initial transient. For most practical use cases, values lower than 5 produce the most natural results. Values higher than 5 are recommended by Oeksound as useful for creative abuse…
Decay lf/hf (low frequency / high frequency) Used to adjust the relative difference in decay time between low and high frequencies. Oeksound say values lower than 5 tend to sound the most transparent.
Delta Is the key to understanding what Spiff is doing, and lets you hear just the part of the signal being affected. Again, highly recommended.
Other controls include those for Stereo or Mid Side operation, Resolution, Oversample, and Phase Mode (linear or minimum).
Getting The Most Out
For both plugins, there are two big factors in demystifying and getting the most out of soothe2 and spiff. The first is understanding that their graph breakpoints show what they are responding to- not what they are actually doing to the sound. Both plugin graphs also have a superimposed overlay which does show exactly what is happening to the sound. The second is using the Delta button- it really is key. Once you’ve got those down you can solve some big problems or make really drastic creative changes for the better.