Here is an interesting quote from the latest Audio Technology mag from Mike Stavrou:

...There is a far greater difference in EQ approach than EQ devices....The only valid comparison of equalisers is when both are set to the same EQ curve - then you need golden ears to discern any subtle differences.  Admittedly, there is a good difference between linear and non linear phase EQ  but one is not always better than the other. Often times we like the colouration of the non linear EQ.  It's all about your approach and intention and perception.

The article is about a very interesting EQ approach. It is about getting the musician to make a series of sounds from the various instruments and vocals that don't contain any notes but rather something else. You then apply his EQ approach to the sounds, not notes.  After doing that when the notes come back into play the EQ is perfect.

It does require you though to get these sounds at the time of recording. One can get far too carried away comparing equalisers. Much better to spend the time on the approach than comparing the EQ's themselves. It is a bit like comparing a Roland string sound to a Kurzweil string sound. They are both great string sounds! What is really important is what the strings are saying in the music.

I love EQ's and right now i'm using the DMG Equilibrium and i love it. You can pretty much make it do whatever you want. You can make it any size u want it. You can turn the processing power down to where u can use it on every track or u can turn it up to where it will redline any CPU with just one instance. It's just very versatile. Is it better than any other EQ? Depends on who's using it i guess.

BTW, if you wouldn't mind sharing that vocal setting for the TDR comp, I'd be interested!

Sorry, I didn't save it. But I remember that I started from one of the presets called "Vocal Bus Slow", raised the ratio to 4:1 and mixed in some dry signal at around -12db. That's just from memory, but it's similar to my standard starting point for Pro-C when used on vocal tracks. Except that with Pro-C I usually use higher compression ratios and more dry signal - one of the things I liked about the TDR compressor is that I could get the nice smoothing effect I always shoot for but with lower ratios.


Now at this point I'd normally be apologizing for derailing the thread, but I guess it's OK seeing as how it's your thread.

Over on KVR, the developer came on to say that he acknowledges the CPU-usage problem and will be doing some optimizations. 

Regarding newer plugins being CPU-intensive: that's more an indication of the maturity of the product than about assumptions developers are making about what hardware we're using. 

A developer's first goal is a functioning product that meets design specifications without showstoppers. His second goal is stability, stamping out the annoying but nonfatal bugs. Then he turns to filling out functionality that didn't make the cut for the initial release, like a button or knob that had to be hidden at the last minute because it wasn't fully functional yet. 

Way down the list of priorities, the last thing you do, months or even years after the product has been released, is to optimize the code for efficiency. When you buy a version 1.0.0 of anything, you're not getting the polished version, you're getting the first version that didn't crash.

Pro-Q has been around since 2009, but even it saw significant optimization mods earlier this year.