Brian Walton

The market for VSTs are either musicians or producers/engineers. AI created music seems like a different audience. There are a lot of creatives out there that simply like to create things themself and to have control over creating it. While the same people will enjoy messing around with AI or even as inspiration/starting point - there are enough people that want to make something that there is a market for it. The real drop in VST prices is driven by the fact most people already have more than they need to create and manipulate sounds. Thus the value one sees in a new EQ or Compressor that doesn't really do anything different. The majority of the market also isn't fundamentally making a profit on their creation.

Toneboosters pro EQ offers some special stuff with some band types that are lacking in Fab Filter, and Sonible had already started that sort of journey years ago with the proximity EQ and others. I've always thought all of them lacked the all in one instance adjustment view that this might be adding. I got claro mostly for that type of view.

It can run in the MSF-Player which is free, not sure why it would need to be totally standalone VST. You don't need the paid SE or Full MSF for it. I think that was the point that it can be purchased as a pack OR you get it with a much larger product.

Not included in MAX all the signature collections are a separate purchase. Don't have total studio but 99% sure it would not be included there either.

$6K per guitar I don't think so.

While this set doesn't appeal to me 25 tone models is 35+ hours of work/time easily if you are tweaking and testing plus advanced capture process. Plus the studio time cost and gear used to profile it add up and start making the cost seem more reasonable. I'm sure the artist also needed to be paid or get a percentage of sales. It also isn't exactly a preset in the traditional sense. You cannot replicate the tone and the feel of these by tweaking the knobs of things that it comes with. It is adding tones that don't exist with the stock unit. This one is too expensive for the value I see in it, but when they get around to profiling some legitimate holy Grails like the dumble pack the cost isn't as crazy.

Confirmed you don't need the visual feedback and there is also an alternate view if you don't want to see where your adjustment curves are (and yes you can tweak the settings in the 2nd view by click and drag

I'll have to check on it, but I'm pretty sure you can turn the different visualizations off and that certainly isn't a driver for using an EQ like this for me. While I have tons of "hardware" based EQ including the EQ81, etc - they are terribly inefficient from a work flow perspective. It doesn't have anything to do with these things having surgical options. Grab a frequency and adjust the Q with the same motion (by holding down a modifier or scroll wheel on your mouse) vs. having to adjust different knobs controlling those on the hardware looking ones. Coloration aspects I can understand but frankly, most real world EQs that are high end don't tend to have a ton of coloration on them despite what plugin makers push. I expect the PRO eq will eventually get a saturation module given EQ4 had some of that from what I remember. If I had a hardware controller that is mapped to a hardware EQ plugin it would be different as you can grab both knobs at once (or use just one as needed) for quick adjustments. I also don't like "surgical eq" I want broad strokes and still find a TB Pro eq better at that.

Be sure to look at the ToneBoosters Pro one, it is different than the "v4" and just came out a couple months ago that most people know about.

Good combo of UI, Features, Workflow, Sound quality and CPU consumption (and reasonable authorization system). Most consider this to be the standard by which all other EQs of its type are measured by. That said, to my point above - I personally think at half the sale price of this the ToneBoosters PRO is every bit a worthy rival and ticks those boxes as well.

My post wasn't about which is best. The point being that even at an upgrade price - there are alternatives that one might consider looking at. The ToneBoosters pro being one of them that many don't know about (never posted here because those products don't go on sale). Kirchhoff has an annoying UI, IMO but sounds great. At the revised price, the TB4 Pro is 1/2 the price of this basically.

Toneboosters Pro EQ is less than the upgrade price here and certainly worth a look. Certainly has some features FabFilter doesn't and has a great UI (unlike Kirchhoff)

Yes, phone spell checked incorrectly! Pulsars is good too but I'll take the no limit authorization system on computers you personally own over ilok every time at a similar price point.

Authority Echorec. It is CPU hungry though.

Got to imagine the v2 is in the works for an update. As someone used to guitar/pedal delays I always felt that despite all the features it never got me exactly what I wanted. Worth the ~$10 though and hope v2 has a good update when it inevitably drops