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4. Faking analogue EQ with regular DAW plugins

1 If you want proportional bandwidth, seek out a plugin with adjustable gain/Q interaction. Here we’re using DMGs EQuality plug in, and although it launches in a constant Q state, adjusting the interaction slider gradually changes how much the bandwidth narrows as gain increases. This is, in fact, considerably more flexible than a classic EQ, while retaining the underlying concept. 2 Many DAW EQs include adjustable Q for their shelving filters, which is what you need to emulate shelving overshoot. Here, we’re using ddmf’s IIEQ Pro CM: starting with a high-shelf and boosting at 10kHz brings up much of the high-mids in our acoustic guitar. Gradually increasing the Q, these frequencies become less significant, and eventually we get a small dip, adding air without harshness. 3 It is possible to create the Pultec low-end trick from scratch. First, you’ll need any regular low-shelf EQ plugin (here we’re using ddmf IIEQ Pro CM). Now, use a bus to send your signal at unity gain to three channels. One of these will be dry, one will be the low-shelf EQ cut and one will be the low-shelf EQ boost. 4 Next, set the shelves to cut and boost respectively at 100Hz with 15dB gain. Test the results by sending some white noise to the three channels. As you can see on the analyser, the cut shelf reshapes the frequency spectrum. Now, rather excellently, the ddmf IIEQ Pro CM also includes its own parallel option, allowing us to achieve all of this within just one plugin. 5 If we take our parallel Pultec style low frequency boost as a starting point, we can extend the vintage emulation with some transformer saturation. Here we’re using Lindell’s 6X-500 CM. If we ignore the EQ and simply engage the Analog option before increasing the Gain, we add thirdand fifth-harmonic distortions. 6 Let’s now use HoRNet’s Graffio CM to introduce some even harmonic distortion. The plugin’s Exciter circuit lets us specify even harmonics – turn up the Even knob to complete our valve and transformer emulation. Finally, gentle high- and low-shelf cuts (via IIEQ Pro CM) emulate the subtle band-pass roll-off imparted by certain analogue EQs.