Technical information
Band controls
When you select EQ bands in the interactive EQ display, the floating band controls will automatically appear, right under the
selected bands at the bottom of the display. The band controls show the current settings of the selected EQ bands and enable you
to adjust them precisely.
From left to right, the following settings are available:
The bypass button at the left top lets you easily bypass the selected EQ bands. Note that you can also bypass an EQ band by
Alt-clicking its dot in the display. While an EQ band is bypassed, it is dimmed in the display and a red light glows in the bypass
button.
The shape button selects the filter shape of the selected bands:
1. Bell, the traditional parametric EQ shape and probably the most versatile of them all
2. Low Shelf, to boost or attenuate low frequencies
3. Low Cut, to cut all sound below the filter frequency
4. High Shelf, to boost or attenuate high frequencies
5. High Cut, to cut all sound above the filter frequency
6. Notch, to cut a small section of the spectrum
7. Band Pass, to isolate a section of the spectrum
8. Tilt Shelf, to tilt the spectrum around a certain frequency
Note: you also change the shape of an EQ band by Ctrl+Alt-clicking its dot (Command+Alt on Mac OS X) in the display.
The slope button below the shape parameter sets the steepness of the filter from 6 dB/octave to 96 dB/octave. In Pro-Q 2,
the slope not only applies to the usual Low Cut and High Cut filters, but to all filter shapes! This allows you to make highly
surgical adjustments if needed. So for example, you can make ultra-narrow Bell or Notch filters or very steep Shelving filters.
The frequency knob sets the frequency of the selected band between 5 Hz and 30 kHz. If multiple bands are selected, they
are adjusted in parallel.
The gain knob sets the gain in dB of the selected bands between -30 and +30 dB. This setting is only used for Bell and
Shelving filter types.
The Q knob sets the bandwidth of the selected bands, widening or narrowing them. The Q cannot be adjusted when a 6
dB/octave slope is used.
Note: Because there are different interpretations of Q values in various EQ plug-ins and scientific papers, we have chosen the
value 1 to correspond to the default bandwidth. For the shelf filters, the internal Q values are chosen such that they result in
a good range of shelf shapes. Keep this in mind when trying to reproduce the filter shapes of another EQ plug-in in Pro-Q 2:
the interpretation of the Q values might not be the same.
Using the Gain-Q interaction button, between the gain and Q knobs, you can enable a subtle, analog-EQ-like gain-Q
interaction. When enabled, Q and gain influence each other in a pleasant way often found in analog mixing consoles.
Essentially, this means that the Q automatically gets a bit narrower when gain is increased, and the other way around, a little
gain is added when the Q gets very narrow.
Note: Gain-Q interaction only affects the Bell filter shape. Pro-Q 2 remembers the last Gain-Q interaction setting that you've
chosen and will use this for new instances of the plug-in.
The previous- and next band buttons let you step through the current available bands in the display, in the order in which
they currently appear in the display. In between, the band number of the current band is shown to help you to identify this
band in the host when automating EQ parameters.
Note: When creating new bands, they will be numbered 1, 2, 3 and so on. But when you delete a band, the others won't
renumber, in order to ensure that currently written automation in your host still controls the correct band.
The delete button at the right top removes the selected EQ bands. If you have accidentally deleted some bands, you can
easily restore them using the
Undo button at the top of the plug-in interface.
The L/stereo/R buttons control which channels are affected by the selected bands. See Stereo options.
Tips
Double-click any knob to enter the value directly using the keyboard. See Knobs for more information. For the Frequency
knob, you can enter values in various ways, like "100" or "2k", but also "A4" or "C#2+13".
11