EQ - Linear Phase & Analog (Digital)

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RobC
Posts: 1833
Joined: 10 Mar 2018

24 Apr 2019

Well, this topic was a pretty long 1 year journey for me, and here's what I got:

The more common EQs are excellent for adding character to a sound - though at extremes, it can create some ugly artifacts, that is quite abused in modern kicks, snares and basses (especially in electro genres). Inarguably, they sound hard, but at the same time, kind of cheap. With some engineering effort, the same hardness can be achieved, but without any unwanted cuts or boosts.

Linear Phase EQs don't create unwanted cuts or boosts at extremes, but pre-echoes and ringing. The best use I see for these is, for example creating a graphical equalizer by splitting the audio into multiple bands. My favorite is the one I did with Goldwave, where I isolated bands at 120 dB per Hz! [CORRECTION: that's just one side if it wasn't obvious! 1 band in total is usually an octave, so 20-40 Hz for example]. Yep, that means a pretty much straight line/true brick wall. When messing around with the level of each band, it remains clean when it comes to subtle changes. Trying the similar with analog style crossovers, created some nasty artifacts, especially at lower regions - and these are probably just 12 or 24 dB / Octave, and even add up to zero. Back to the Linear Phase one, if I make some more extreme boosts or reduction for any band, things get nasty (if you solo a band, you really hear the pre-echoing and ringing ~ depending on how accurate the splitting was ~ while when they just simply are merged at the same volume, you just hear the original sound [except if you mix this merged sound with the inversion of the original, non-split one, there's a low level tone, depending how many splits there were]) - but nothing comes without compromises.

All in all, I've come to the conclusion that I need both types of EQs. I'd use the analog-style ones for sculpting the sound, changing its character, etc. While the Linear Phase ones, especially a graphical equalizer, I'd use for gently balancing things out.
There's still a question what to do when an extreme boost would be needed in a band in case of Linear Phase, to deal with the increasing pre-echoing and ringing that can happen. Well, there's always the exciting possibility to simply mute that band, which can further add a very interesting flavor to the sound.

But again, there always are compromises, so gotta know the possibilities, and choose the most fitting one.

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