eventide split eq Eventide Split EQ - a game changer

[KuruPrionz]

 I hope y'all find this interesting and useful.

 

I’ve had Eventide Split EQ for a couple of months and this is my user’s review after playing with it.

Since we are all going to be mixing different things and mixing them differently I thought I would post simple explanations without sound samples. Your experiments may be different and I’d love to see others post ways they’ve used Split EQ since the possibilities are infinite.

 

First, the technical aspects (and some of the uses) are well covered by the manual.

https://downloads.eventide.com/audio/manuals/plug-ins/SplitEQ+User+Guide.pdf

 

Yes, you can use it as a “regular” EQ, it sounds great and the GUI is simple and fast to work with. Split EQ is as good or better than any of the other EQ plugins I’ve used.

 

This is intended as a mixing tool, it does have a latency footprint that might prevent it from being used during tracking. That works for me, I tend to track without plugins or maybe just a guitar/bass amp once in a while.

I do put reverb on the master buss because it can make a vocalist sing better to have that ambience.

 

Getting the kick and bass to co-exist peacefully has become much easier when I’m mixing.

I won’t say it is less complicated but it is straightforward and won’t break the mind.

 

In the low frequencies, letting the kick provide the transients and the bass the tones helps them sound tighter and clearer. Unless the transient information from both instruments is super tight, the kick and bass conflicting can get a bit “blurry”.

Typically I work the kick at lower frequencies than the bass but dividing them by transient and tone has cleared up the low end of the mix considerably. This does not mean that the kick has only transients and the bass only tones, the adjustments that clear things up are much more subtle than that.

 

We’ve all heard “listen to everything at once when you mix” but it might be helpful to just tweak the kick and bass together at first and then do your final tweaks with everything going.

 

In addition, it is now very easy to place transient/tone responses for both kick and bass up in the higher frequencies in their own bands where they won’t “collide”. I typically also add some harmonic distortion to the bass, it translates well on a cell phone and other puny speakers in common use.

 

I’ve used Split EQ on vocals, snare and hi-hat, guitars etc. and I’m convinced that it can be used on anything and everything to improve a mix. Sometimes it just takes a little tweak. I plan on keeping the Apple AU high and low pass filters because they are so easy to use and will be removing all my other EQ plugins from my Favorites folder. I don’t need or want them any more.

 

There’s more, the addition of Split EQ to creating new and insane sounds can provide all sorts of options.

Copy and paste a couple of instances of something you want to play with, EQ one instance with transients and effects and the other with tones and effects and blend to taste, some crazy stuff in there if that’s what you want.

 

Last but not least, see the screen shot I’ve attached. That shows the options in Split EQ for an automation track running in Waveform 12 Pro. I don’t know other DAWs but it’s likely you will have lots of automation options since Eventide has made them available. That is a powerful feature, I haven’t come to grips with it yet but I’m sure I’ll try something crazy with it before too long. I didn’t see any mention of that in the manual, there may be other “secret features”. If I find any, I’ll post them. If somebody else finds them it would be great to learn about them! Cheers, Kuru

 

 

[Dave Bryce]

I saw this demoed at Tech Breakfast a few months back.  I was really impressed.  What a great idea, really well implemented.

 

Want.

 

Thank you, brother Kuru!

 

dB

[KuruPrionz]

You should just get it Dave, it's awesome and you won't regret not using your other EQ plugins. 

 

I also have Eventide Micro Pitch, Physion and Precision Time Align. Eventide makes top notch plugins in my book. I kinda want all of them!!!!

[Dave Bryce]

I’m a big Eventide fan.  Love my H9 Max.

 

dB

[KuruPrionz]

2 minutes ago, Dave Bryce said:

I’m a big Eventide fan.  Love my H9 Max.

 

dB

Nice! Some day I'll get the software version. It's funny but the H9 Max IS software. Eventide gets the tone, straight up sounds great. 

[KuruPrionz]

On reading the manual again, I see that there is a low pass filter, then up to 6 EQ bands and then a high pass filter. 

The standard rig when you open Split EQ is: Low Pass, 2 EQ bands, High Pass. That's what I've been working with up to now. 

 

The additional 4 bands mean that it is not difficult to provide individual EQ ranges to transients and tones. 

[cphollis]

Interesting, so thanks!  Looks great for taming harsh transients, among other things. 

 

In the somewhat related category for similar issues: multiband compression.  It ends up being yet another way of getting to the same goal: adjusting relative energy in different frequency bands.  Being able to compress each band separately turns out to cure a lot of ills.  Looking forward to trying this as well.

[KuruPrionz]

13 minutes ago, cphollis said:

Interesting, so thanks!  Looks great for taming harsh transients, among other things. 

 

In the somewhat related category for similar issues: multiband compression.  It ends up being yet another way of getting to the same goal: adjusting relative energy in different frequency bands.  Being able to compress each band separately turns out to cure a lot of ills.  Looking forward to trying this as well.

The difference is that Split EQ does not compress, the dynamics remain. 

It could be tedious but there's nothing to stop one from running transients completely to one side and tones to the other and then pasting those back in as individual tracks with multi-compression on each of them. Or other effects for that matter. 

 

It opens up new worlds. Eventide has a generous 30 day trial period as well. I bit when it went on sale, since I already owned Physion they gave me a cross grade/sale deal for $70 which is less than half. When I consider that I don't really need any other EQ, that's a bargain. No affiliation by the way, I just like their products and am patient. I've bought Physion, Micro Pitch and Precision Time Align all on sale and they've all been both useful and easy to use. I respect that and I like it.