Fredo, in my arena, there’s often something really, really, really wrong with the production sound! And no way to prevent it ahead of time. I get what I get.
If you were ending up with tracks that have a 6.4kHz semi-consistent whine here, and a 7.43 kHz systemic squeal there, well, you’d probably say “use Post Filter”! And, I do. But there are often times where an extra couple of notch-worthy bands would come in handy in the channel mixer.
May you never have to experience them on an ongoing basis… but on my project before last, it was Cambridge all the way, and I was grateful for the extra bands.
You’re right! It is personal! On a project like that (until the sound gets figured out) I almost feel like putting out a vendetta on the recordist. Though, in audiobooks (a fair chunk of what I do), they are typically the talent. Actors with USB mics and MBoxes-- the state of audio publishing today. Coming to a Kindle near you.
My bottom line in the FWIW department: every little bit (might) help(s)!
You understood me wrong.
I just said that whenever I needed more bands, there was something really wrong with the recordings.
Which was slightly off-topic, because it says nothing about the usability of a more-bands-eq.
And to stay of-topic …
The more bands an EQ has, the steeper the slopes, the narrower the Q’s, the more problematic it comes to build a good sounding EQ. Each process of a frequency range produces a phase shift within the frequencies that are manipulated versus the rest (untreated) audio, which creates artifacts. Reason why there aren’t many good sounding EQ’s and reason why the good sounding EQ’s cost a lot of money and are heavy on CPU. So, in defense of our product manager and the developers, building a 5 or 7 band good sounding EQ will “cost” a lot of time and resources. And the dilemma a Product Manager faces is where to spend the money and labor in order to make a product that -many- people will want to buy, in order to generate money to invest into the next version.
let me chime in here. I hear your grief and really believe that for Steinberg it’s important to focus on the “core” of the system - the engine that drives the car rather than the fancy looking dashboard.
Chances are that if you ask the Steinberg user base about the perfect EQ, you will get gazillions of different answers from analog emulation of various colours to analytical. Built in FFT, spectrograph, notch / steep filters - you name it.
All of these functions can be bought into the system for a couple of dollars via the VST platform to each user’s taste.
BUT
if you want Nuendo to “touch collect” more than 4 bands - ONLY STEINBERG can do this for us. And that is the ONLY reason I would want more bands in a Steinberg EQ. It would of course be even cooler if Steinberg implemented a way to touch collect whatever parameter I would ask Nuendo to (like PT does by the way)
@ Fredo… I understood you just fine. I’m pretty much agreeing with you, off-topically, for that matter. I only use more bands when there’s something really wrong with the audio.
MY problem is that there’s almost always something wrong with the audio… when doing these books my job is to glean professionally clean and balanced sound from a hideous sea of hiss, rumble, car horn, apartment pipe noise and who knows what else. Oh. Neighbors having sex. That was a good one. Can’t EQ that out.
For TV and movie stuff… I have only rarely used more than three bands in anything other than an offline spot-fix.
So… I’m with with you! And because I am devoted to Nuendo and it treats me so well, I want only the best for it, whatever it takes, resources-wise (but that’s easy for me to say)…
By the way… back on topic… more bands is not a major issue for me. It’s not really even on top of my wish list. But… it was the topic of the thread, and I think about it from time to time, so… here we are…
I would like to repeat once again that the only goal of my thread should be, to get more bands into channel eq, for having them permanent visible in mixer and in channel overview.
I do not need this feature - of course I bought the proper third-party VSTs for my work. But I am sure, it would be a great improvement. That’s all.
Right now this EQ-view in mixer is just useless for me, cause I’m forced to filter with thirdparty-tools.
And why do all film mixing consoles have more bands? And why do all other DAWs deliver EQs with more bands…? If nobody really needs them…
I agree. If Steinberg really want to compete in the Post world they need to deliver at least what the competition provides - and ideally more than the competition provides, like the great ADR taker facilities.
Yes please. By all means break backwards compatibility if it means an improved channel strip EQ. 6.x broke so much other functionality that what’s an EQ in the scheme of things.
thank you very much for this valuable and objective discussion. This is exactly the type of conversation that
makes it possible for us to “follow”. There is hardly a “wrong” or “right” in this discussion. As Chewy said, it very
much depends on the material you get and also the way you work.
Fredo is right when he says that this is a major task and other features need to be taken off the roadmap to
get this one done. Therefore it’s of major importance to know HOW important this feature is for your daily workflow.
It is not vitally important to me, but I think it should be very important to Steinberg. If you really want to get more Post facilities using Nuendo you need to provide features that make it irresistible to them. Nuendo is not cheap, but it is aimed at Post, so it should contain the features that such facilities commonly need.
Fredo is right when he says that this is a major task and other features need to be taken off the roadmap to
get this one done. Therefore it’s of major importance to know HOW important this feature is for your daily workflow.
I suppose that would depend on the roadmap, any chance of letting us know what’s on it? I love the idea of this EQ but there are other things I’d love to see first like the ability to leave Process plugins open until I’m ready to close them. John.
does PT not handle the channel EQ as a plugin? So by definition any 7 band eq would suffice? Of course parameters must be linked to hardware… not instantaneous solution, but doable …
This is one of the little things which I would like to see in Nuendo (as a post-daw) compared to cubase (not saying, that cubase should’nt get one).
I’ve been on many (movie) dubbing sessions on PT, and I never saw anybody inserting just a 4band-eq, or working with a hard-fixed slope. They use the 7band of PT, or the 10band from waves, or or or…
So if Steinberg wants to give us a (like the title of this thread) proper post eq, they should upgrade their channel eq in order to have this one shown on the mixer.
If Steinberg just would generate an extra vst plugin - then I don’t need one.
I’m working on Steinberg since 1996, and never used their channel eq due to the lack in filtering problematic location sound. I always had better third-party ones.
And next to Volume, Pan and Send, EQ is one of the four main features/operations in every single mix! So if Nuendo wants to present a mixing station which should compete with all the major consoles, imo, there’s no way around it. And still: the basic idea of the channel eq is great…
In film-mixing a proper and suitable eq-filter for me is much more important than most of the other features mentioned here (and much more important than having a channel strip tube-saturation or sth like that).
Agreed. The addition of HP and LP filters to channel EQ might actually get me to use them on a regular basis, which I can’t say that I do now…
I have become accustomed to using 3rd party EQ plug-ins as a matter of course.
I also agree it would probably help Steinberg’s reputation as a post-production DAW to have a more full-featured EQ as part of the default feature set.
does PT not handle the channel EQ as a plugin? So by definition any 7 band eq would suffice? Of course parameters must be linked to hardware… not instantaneous solution, but doable …