Free Plugin - Bertom Audio EQ Curve Analyzer

[Larry Shelby]

https://www.bertomaudio.com/eq-curve-analyzer.html

[mibby]

Good one!

[dubdisciple]

Just a reminder that although this can be had for free, you can set a price to show your appreciation. I think this is a one man operation.

[MusicMan]

6 hours ago, dubdisciple said:

Just a reminder that although this can be had for free, you can set a price to show your appreciation. I think this is a one man operation.

If that's the case he probably deserves it. This is a good free alternative to Plugin Doctor and his de-noise and other free plugins are pretty decent too.

[RSMcGuitar]

I've used this. Pretty great!

[dubdisciple]

I purchased a few years ago. I tried for free and went back and donated

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

It's also important to mention this plugin is not a free or cheaper alternative to DDMF's Plugin Doctor, which has many more ways to analyze audio, linear and distortion analysis, phase and so on.

[MusicMan]

36 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

It's also important to mention this plugin is not a free or cheaper alternative to DDMF's Plugin Doctor, which has many more ways to analyze audio, linear and distortion analysis, phase and so on.

While Plugin Doctor has more features (and is an excellent tool), I use this frequently as a drop in alternative for DDMF's for checking out the actual EQ curves in a lot of channel strips and boutique EQs and yes it measures phase as well. Plugin Doctor is more comprehensive, but not necessarily a lot more features that everyone will use, so for many people it for sure is a free alternative IMO. This coupled with most DAWs having signal generators and oscilloscopes covers a lot of what Plugin Doctor does.

For the alias police it's not and attack and decay curves for compressors and those things it won't. Although for compression there's also the free Compressor Measurement Toolbox too.

I'd definitely recommend people testing this one first and seeing if there's anything extra they will regularly use beyond that and then just buy Plugin Doctor if needed.

[Quick Math]

Plugin doctor demo version is actually enough to analyze single plugins

If you want to mimic the curve of a plugin chain then this one is very useful.

So in that sense, both are not free but free.

[jude77]

16 minutes ago, Quick Math said:

both are not free but free.

Rightly, and wisely spoken, Grasshopper.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

7 hours ago, MusicMan said:

While Plugin Doctor has more features (and is an excellent tool), I use this frequently as a drop in alternative for DDMF's for checking out the actual EQ curves in a lot of channel strips and boutique EQs and yes it measures phase as well. Plugin Doctor is more comprehensive, but not necessarily a lot more features that everyone will use, so for many people it for sure is a free alternative IMO. This coupled with most DAWs having signal generators and oscilloscopes covers a lot of what Plugin Doctor does.

For the alias police it's not and attack and decay curves for compressors and those things it won't. Although for compression there's also the free Compressor Measurement Toolbox too.

I'd definitely recommend people testing this one first and seeing if there's anything extra they will regularly use beyond that and then just buy Plugin Doctor if needed.

Both tools are an increbible ally in our constant quest of not letting people get scammed by Harrison.

[MusicMan]

8 hours ago, Quick Math said:

Plugin doctor demo version is actually enough to analyze single plugins

If you want to mimic the curve of a plugin chain then this one is very useful.

So in that sense, both are not free but free.

That's right, I do use the generous demo too. Although I think if you're getting enough use out of Plugin Doctor then for the convenience it's still worth buying it.

[MusicMan]

2 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Both tools are an increbible ally in our constant quest of not letting people get scammed by Harrison.

100% agreed ?

The Harrison thing I think has been a little blown out of proportion though and as much as I love Dan Worrall's reviews, walk throughs and tutorials, in that particular case I think he really missed the most critical point of distinction in painting the full picture. The Channel was never intended to be non linear and have an analogue vibe, it was more just about tone from the EQ curves, compression and shaping.

All the saturation and that goodness comes from the next stage in their DAW which are the busses, where you can use the Drive dial to introduce harmonics, etc to taste.

Their modelling apparently was to model the curve, taking into account the analogue components for their model only from that perspective.

Do I think they could've been more transparent with their marketing? Sure do! Do I think a vast proportion of developers we all like also oversell some of those analogue saturation and vibe buzzwords. Absolutely! Do I think Dan could've also been more transparent in sharing the full story and not omitting that major point? Definitely!

In a nutshell I don't think either Harrison, or Dan handled that one particular well, but it did get everyone talking and I do love things like these plugins to be able to check that stuff out for ourselves.

It did also send a clear message to other developers to make sure they can explain, or backup their marketing and I love that from it too ?

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

2 hours ago, MusicMan said:

The Harrison thing I think has been a little blown out of proportion though and as much as I love Dan Worrall's reviews, walk throughs and tutorials, in that particular case I think he really missed the most critical point of distinction in painting the full picture. The Channel was never intended to be non linear and have an analogue vibe, it was more just about tone from the EQ curves, compression and shaping.

I think the word you're looking for here is "false advertising." Because I've just taken a screenshot for this post and this is still in their site:

But that's okay, as if I wanted a 32C EQ emulation, Analog Obsession makes the nice Harqules, which is free and unlike Harrison's offer, has every resistor, capacitor and transistor as part of the model.

[MusicMan]

6 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

I think the word you're looking for here is "false advertising." Because I've just taken a screenshot for this post and this is still in their site:

But that's okay, as if I wanted a 32C EQ emulation, Analog Obsession makes the nice Harqules, which is free and unlike Harrison's offer, has every resistor, capacitor and transistor as part of the model.

They actually explain it quite well in their forum and why they feel it's not false advertising. Like I mentioned though, I do agree their advertising copy could be improved and they could've handled the situation better after Dan's video.

Instead of being focused on artifacts found in old gear, we focused on the original work that went into voicing the EQ at the time. As mentioned above the 32C EQ predated "parametric EQs" and it was very difficult to make that EQ do a lot of work with just the two knobs per band. The feel of the knobs, the depth of the proportional -Q action, the speed of the filters relative to the knobs etc. etc. etc. was a serious trial by error. Those refined circuit designs (yes resistors, capacitors, transistors etc.) are what we included in the mathematical model.

Also note, that the distortion and noise measurements of those original consoles (WHEN THEY WERE NEW) were extremely low and virtually unaffected even with the EQ in circuit. The entire point back when there were ONLY analog consoles was to make them as clean, with the lowest possible noise and distortion, lowest possible cross-talk, and as phase coherent as possible. Harrison was not alone. Every analog console manufacturer was after the same thing/s. Distortion, noise, cross-talk, phase issues etc. etc. were all the enemy. We spent many man years tweaking those console circuit designs for optimum performance.

All of that... is what we built into the mathematical model of the Mixbus32C EQ and now the 32C Channel EQ. As with the original console EQ design, this was no easy task. It caused a lot of headaches and issues here because the mathematical model was built on the knob resistor values to get the tapers and behaviors correct rather than using off-the-shelf Bi-quad math.

But we digress, this is a post about Bertom, so this should really be under a Harrison post, or PM ?

Analog Obsession make some great plugins too though and super generous for free. I don't use them much these days, but I might have to make a point to go through some of them again.  In particular the Harqules, as I don't remember that one, so thanks for sharing it!

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

11 minutes ago, MusicMan said:

Instead of being focused on artifacts found in old gear, we focused on the original work that went into voicing the EQ at the time. As mentioned above the 32C EQ predated "parametric EQs" and it was very difficult to make that EQ do a lot of work with just the two knobs per band. The feel of the knobs, the depth of the proportional -Q action, the speed of the filters relative to the knobs etc. etc. etc. was a serious trial by error. Those refined circuit designs (yes resistors, capacitors, transistors etc.) are what we included in the mathematical model.

This only makes their claims on the page blurb worse. This is a plugin, none of their flowery language about how you'd use the EQ on an actual 32C console applies here. Plus you'd expect a bunch of plugin and DAW developers to not claim it was an arduous task to create response curves for a digital EQ because...There's a metric ton of channel strip EQs out there with varying levels of complexity and I'm yet to see any of them claiming it was an arduous task to come up with the curves.

16 minutes ago, MusicMan said:

Also note, that the distortion and noise measurements of those original consoles (WHEN THEY WERE NEW) were extremely low and virtually unaffected even with the EQ in circuit. The entire point back when there were ONLY analog consoles was to make them as clean, with the lowest possible noise and distortion, lowest possible cross-talk, and as phase coherent as possible. Harrison was not alone. Every analog console manufacturer was after the same thing/s. Distortion, noise, cross-talk, phase issues etc. etc. were all the enemy. We spent many man years tweaking those console circuit designs for optimum performance.

All of that... is what we built into the mathematical model of the Mixbus32C EQ and now the 32C Channel EQ. As with the original console EQ design, this was no easy task. It caused a lot of headaches and issues here because the mathematical model was built on the knob resistor values to get the tapers and behaviors correct rather than using off-the-shelf Bi-quad math.

 The whole distortion, harmonics and saturation present in analog gear is what gives them their characteristic sound in the first place. Carefully calibrated EQ curves are not the reason why there's more SSL emulations than particles in the universe. Why would it be different for a Harrison console? The later part of it is just a bunch of attempt at diverting you from the subject. Also, their "complex" emulation cramps near Nyquist and, you can be 100% sure no analog console does that.

But this is not about Harrison and their "complex" emulation shenanigans. Just grab Harqules and a compressor of your choice and you're already way ahead of Harrison when it comes to emulating their own hardware, because one guy just recreating the behavior of their EQ going off from a schematic is beating them to the punch.