Real-time auto-EQ: from science fiction to science fact

As you’re no doubt aware, despite its unarguable utility, a regular EQ plugin is a static tool applied to a constantly changing signal, and so, by definition, represents a compromise solution. That being the case, in recent years, audio software developers have thrown considerable resources and effort at the quest to build the truly automatic EQ, and the plugins they’ve come up with as a result are incredibly effective, employing serious number crunching to enable the analysis and smart adjustment of frequencies in any incoming signal. It’s truly impressive stuff, from the pitch-following Surfer EQ2 to the self-learning curves in Smart:EQ+.

However, if there’s one plugin that really pushes the auto-EQ concept to the limit, it has to be Gullfoss. With an engine capable of changing the frequency response more than 100 times per second, and Soundtheory’s proprietary computational auditory perception model beavering away in the background, this is a unique processor that almost invariably makes whatever it’s working its magic on sound better. All you have to decide is how much of its special sauce you’d like to apply. Simple and ever so slightly scary.