a brief 2021 blogging recap and 2022 outlook

Currently on my desk, awaiting further analysis: The Manultec Orca Bay EQ

Rebuilding my studio and restarting blogging activities one year ago was pretty much fun so far. Best hobby ever! To get things started in Jan/Feb this year, I did a short summary about the recent trends in audio and I might revise and update that in January again. Quite some audio gear caught my attention over the year and some found its way into the Blog or even in my humble new studio setup, e.g. the unique SOMA Lyra-8 and the Korg MS-20 remake as well as the Behringer Clone of the ARP 2600.

I also went into more detail on how to get the most out of the SPL Tube Vitalizer or the renaissance of the Baxandall EQs just to name the two topics and also had a more realistic look at the Pultec style equalizer designs which might be something I will continue to dig into a little bit further in 2022. As of lately I’m also intrigued by some analog effect pedal designs out there, namely the Fairfield Circuitry stuff. And as always, I’m highly interested in everything psychoacoustic related.

By end of August I started re-releasing my very own plugins and also did mkII versions for FerricTDS, ThrillseekerXTC and TesslaSE. I will continue that route and on top of my list is to have the whole Thrillseeker plugin series complete and available again. Some are asking me if I will develop brand new audio plugins as well. While I’m doing that already but just for my very own, at this point in time it remains unclear if some of that stuff will ever gonna make it into a public release. But you never know, the TesslaSE remake was also not planned at all.

Something I will continue for sure is that special developer interview series I did over the years. This year I already had the chance to talk to Vladislav Goncharov from Tokyo Dawn Labs and Andreas Eschenwecker from Vertigo Sound which gave some detailed insights about creating analog and digital audio devices, especially dynamic processors. To be published in January, the very next interview has also been done already and this time it will be with this years Technical Grammy Award winner, Daniel Weiss.

I’m looking forward to 2022!

Stay tuned
Herbert

The renaissance of the Baxandall EQs

Already in 1950, Peter Baxandall designed an analog tone correction circuit which found its way into some million consumer audio devices later on. Today, it is simply referred to as a Baxandall EQ.

What the f*ck is a Baxandall EQ?

Beside its appearance in numerous guitar amplifiers and effects, it made a very prominent reincarnation in the pro audio gear world in 2010 with the Dangerous Music Bax EQ. The concept shines with its very broad curves and gentle slopes which are all about transparancy and so it came to no surprise that this made it into lots of mastering rigs right away.

And it also had a reason that already in 2011 I did an authentic 1:1 emulation of the very same curves within the Baxter EQ plugin but just adding a dual channel M/S layout to better fit the mastering duties. For maximum accuracy and transparancy it already featured oversampling and double-precision filter calculations to that time and it is still one of my personal all time favourite EQs.

During the last 10 years quite a number of devices emerged each showing its very own interpretation of the Baxandall EQ whether thats in hard or software and this was highly anticipated especially in the mastering domain.

A highly deserved revival aka renaissance.

When comparing units be aware that the frequency labeling is not standardized and different frequencies might be declared while giving you same/similar curves. More plots and infos can be found here (german language).

BaxterEQ – update 1.0.1 available

BaxterEQ – transparent mastering and mix buss shelving EQ

Changes in version 1.0.1

• A smaller GUI version is included
• VST vendor tag is corrected

BaxterEQ is a Windows x32 freeware release for VST compatible applications and you can grab your copy via the download page.

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Related

• BaxterEQ – released today
• the mid-side technique

BaxterEQ – released today

BaxterEQ

BaxterEQ – final teaser and release info

(click to enlarge)

preFIX 1.0 – out now!

preFIX – getting those alignments done

preFIX – final teaser and release info

preFIX - gate and expander section with detailed sidechain fitering options

short links, year end 2010 edition

Since we’ve had a great delay plug-in release this year some might be interested in some further reading about that topic. A short history about delay effects is given here and some more specific readings about tape delay can be found in the mixonline magazine. Need some overview about the Roland tape echo stuff? Just look here.

From time to time some effect developer apprentices are asking where to start. Today, almost everything can be found in the cloud. Sometimes DSP suppliers/developers are offering good overviews and introductions such as this example. Don’t hesitate to search for all those papers which are freely available,

those sexy curves again

proportional EQ curves

What constitutes those smooth sounding equalizers some are raving all about? In fact the answer is pretty much simple but maybe disenchanting to someone else: It’s in the equalizers transfer curve and (almost) nothing else. That equalizer transfer curve determines the actual frequency and phase response and generally speaking, in an analog filter model the frequency response implies the according phase response (and vice versa). In the digital domain this holds not true in general as shown by linear phase filter implementations. Additional effects like the actual transient response or additionally generated harmonics are then the icing on top (if desired) but may appear quite subtle or even negligible if we just look into rather transparent devices.