Plugin Boutique releases "Scaler EQ" - Intro Sale up to 24% OFF / Rent to own

[Solidos]

https://www.pluginboutique.com/deals/show?sale_id=14753

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/16-EQ/11473-Scaler-EQ

Intro Sale: 14 Nov - 05 Dec

Prices from $49

Following on from the award-winning Scaler music theory plugin, Scaler EQ offers a remarkable new way to EQ with musicality and colour.

By enhancing only note frequencies in key with your song, and reducing only note frequencies that aren’t, Scaler EQ can provide a new spin on working with cuts and boosts, increasing the tonality behind your music and providing new harmonic avenues.

And for when you just want a regular, fully-featured, modern EQ, Scaler EQ has you covered with its familiar workflow, large choice of band types, mid/side operation, dynamic bands and stereo enhancement. You can easily apply classic mixing and mastering techniques used by professionals, with an extra optional musical edge.

What can Scaler EQ be used for?

• Music Production: Ideal for musicians and producers looking to enhance the musicality of their tracks by ensuring all instruments are in harmony with the chosen scale.
• Audio Editing: Simplify EQ processes by targeting and cleaning up frequency bands to remove audio that doesn’t belong and enhance audio naturally present with the chosen scale.
• Audio Engineering: Dynamically soothe audio by suppressing in-harmonic frequencies or expanding harmonic frequencies using dynamic compression and expansion.
• Mastering: Place on your master channel to broaden your stereo width, focus your bass and enhance your mix.
• DJing: DJs can use it to ensure that the tracks they mix are in harmony by detecting the key and scale whilst balancing the mix of each track.

[Brian Lawler]

I have been looking/waiting for an EQ that could work this way for a long time.  Are there any competing EQ's that can tune by scale like this?  I have wondered if some "sound goodizer" plugs might be working in a similar way, but conceal what's under the hood.

 

 

 

[lawajava]

Stunning!  User friendly!  Sounds great!

(Unless it’s not CPU friendly, or not as effective as described).

Edited November 15, 2023 by lawajava

[Sander Verstraten]

Live stream, showcasing the EQ:

 

[dubdisciple]

Interesting concept 

[Brian Walton]

1 minute ago, dubdisciple said:

Interesting concept 

Idea has been around for years, just never seen anyone actually attempt to implement it in an easy and intuitive way.  

There have been some options that treat things statically or dynamically (to an extent) but following based on key (instead of just a note or something of that nature, hasn't been intrinsic in the functionality of anything I've seen though I've seen people ask for it over the years.

Wish this one was a bit cheaper to make it a no-brainer with all the other super power EQs I have.  At $50, might give it a demo then wait.

Also super curious about the CPU hit.  Some other heavy hitters are pretty light on the resources - kirchhoff eq, toneboosters EQ4, Melda MAutodynamicEQ, etc  I'm going to be a little surprised if this is competitive to Kirchhoff's consumption.

[bluzdog]

This is why I bought H-EQ.  I like this concept.

[Brian Walton]

27 minutes ago, bluzdog said:

This is why I bought H-EQ.  I like this concept.

This has been around for a while, but too rich for me - so never tried it

 

https://www.soundradix.com/products/surfer-eq/

[mettelus]

I find this one very interesting. I use MCharacter a lot, but it is really only suited for monophonic material and lacks some of the processing capabilities of this one, especially the dynamic EQ aspect and working on polyphonic material. Whereas MCharacter can address specific harmonics (more suited to tweak timbre), this appears more focused on the harmonics series of the key (broader application), but for practical purposes they would complement each other nicely. As I think on this a little more, I do not think either can really do what the other does.

[Brian Walton]

3 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

Idea has been around for years, just never seen anyone actually attempt to implement it in an easy and intuitive way.  

There have been some options that treat things statically or dynamically (to an extent) but following based on key (instead of just a note or something of that nature, hasn't been intrinsic in the functionality of anything I've seen though I've seen people ask for it over the years.

Wish this one was a bit cheaper to make it a no-brainer with all the other super power EQs I have.  At $50, might give it a demo then wait.

Also super curious about the CPU hit.  Some other heavy hitters are pretty light on the resources - kirchhoff eq, toneboosters EQ4, Melda MAutodynamicEQ, etc  I'm going to be a little surprised if this is competitive to Kirchhoff's consumption.

Started demo.  Pulled it into Gig Performer to look at CPU usage in a more isolated environment than a DAW.

Getting 4-5% CPU usage compared to MAutoDynamicEQ and Kirchhoff (both of those hover between 0-1%)...Measured with MNoiseGenerator going through them as Melda plugins are smart enough to bypass when nothing is being played.

 

Amex EQ200 is around 9% CPU usage.

Also white noise in the Demo is quite frequent and annoying - given the demo seems to say 29 days left in the trial, honestly that seems really poor.  If the trial is unlimited time, then it is at least more forgivable.  

Edited November 15, 2023 by Brian Walton

[bluzdog]

4 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

This has been around for a while, but too rich for me - so never tried it

 

https://www.soundradix.com/products/surfer-eq/

I forgot about that one. I have Surfer EQ 2 Boogie. It's Surfer Eq's little brother.

[mettelus]

Quick feedback on this guy.  I picked this up and been playing around with it and it is more dependent on the material. After testing with a few songs that were a bit too complex, I backed off and focused on the remastered "Seven Bridges Road." Because the tonal information is very discrete, the power added to those frequencies is not significant until you hit around +6dB, and over +12dB it begins inserting a phasing/reverb effect. For the vocals themselves it wasn't a massive difference (traditional EQ would work), but it did add definition to the bass vocal (that caught me off guard) and was significant in making the guitar crisper.

As I was playing with it, I realized dynamic key mapping would be useful to select the notes in the key to follow the chord progression. Although they are exposed, I was not able to find the key switches to toggle them. I sent a quick message to Plugin Boutique to see if this can be done now or if it is actually a feature request. Because this is set to all notes in the key (by default) with no active means to adjust that (that I could find), it is a bit limited in what I would want to use it for.

[Side Note: If you open a VST3 in DaVinci Resolve, it shows all the parameters exposed to the host (even if a DAW doesn't show them), which can be helpful to understand which parameters are exposed (even if you cannot make an articulation map for them... yet).]

[lawajava]

Thanks @mettelus !  That’s helpful.

[El Diablo]

Is this one of those BS made up plugins?

Edited November 15, 2023 by El Diablo

[mettelus]

I forgot to follow up on this. PB came back saying that they weren't sure of dynamic keyswitches and referred me to their forum. This thread has basically what I had asked about:

"As for scale switching, we are looking at solutions for this as a priority. We have conceived ‘link’ buttons you can assign keys and scales to and automate between but receiving midi input is also on the cards but may require further work."

In addition to my request (to better follow chord progressions or melody lines), this one specifically asked about key changes, which is even more critical. Right now, Scaler EQ cannot address either dynamically on its own.

[PhonoBrainer]

5 hours ago, mettelus said:

I forgot to follow up on this. PB came back saying that they weren't sure of dynamic keyswitches and referred me to their forum. This thread has basically what I had asked about:

"As for scale switching, we are looking at solutions for this as a priority. We have conceived ‘link’ buttons you can assign keys and scales to and automate between but receiving midi input is also on the cards but may require further work."

In addition to my request (to better follow chord progressions or melody lines), this one specifically asked about key changes, which is even more critical. Right now, Scaler EQ cannot address either dynamically on its own.

In other words, scaler EQ works great as long as your entire song stays in the same key, or the same chord?

[mettelus]

1 hour ago, PhonoBrainer said:

In other words, scaler EQ works great as long as your entire song stays in the same key, or the same chord?

Pretty much. Once a key is selected you can select/deselect notes from the entire scale (with a mouse), but once the transport is in motion that is not an option, and changing the key itself is a no go at that point. While you could sort of get around this with chopping a song into sections and/or creating a custom controller linkage to it, it would still be incredibly clunky. There is a lot of functionality embedded in many DAWs that would allow more refinement that Scaler EQ cannot take advantage of (yet), so the advantage of it is not significant over other methods already available.