EQual rights
Nectar 2’s eight-band EQ was no slouch, but Nectar 3’s blows it out of the water. For many, it will be the primary reason to upgrade.
First of all, like the Compressor module, you can have two of them in a preset now. Second, the maximum number of bands has been tripled from eight to 24, and a couple of new filter types have been added: Proportional Q Bell and Band Shelf. That’s all good stuff, of course, but what really takes Nectar 3’s EQ to another level are its two Dynamic Processing modes.
Switching a band to Dynamic Gain mode enables a Threshold to be set, above which the signal for that band is either boosted or cut – ie, compressed or expanded. It’s just the thing for taming particularly wild and variable resonances or sibilance, or bringing out understated details.
Even more powerful than that when it comes to getting vocals sounding spectrally on point, however, is Follow EQ mode. Turn this on for a band and it automatically targets the closest harmonic in the source material (the fundamental frequency is determined automatically), then tracks it up and down the frequency range as it changes in real time. Removing harshness and applying consistent sweetening have never been so easy.