MindMeld announcements : EqMaster

Announcements
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Citizens of the Rack Federation!

The MindMeld team may have been quiet of late but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy… In fact we’ve been squirreled away in our secret research lab developing more sonic weaponry for your aural arsenal.

Musicians using DAWs like Live and Cubase etc, and those using hardware studio mixers, regularly use EQ on tracks to clean up their mix by cutting some unwanted or unnecessary frequencies and giving a boost to others. In the modular world however, EQ seems to be used a lot less - perhaps because it is considered difficult, time-consuming and/or expensive (in terms of either money or CPU resources) to patch in on every track.

Since the release of MixMaster (which used adapted Borg technology to assimilate itself into many of your patches), the most common question/request we have had is whether we had any plans for an EQ. Well we certainly did… and we are delighted to announce that they have now materialised.

Introducing EqMaster – a 24 track, stereo, 4 band parametric EQ and spectrum analyser. Our aim with EqMaster was to make EQing in VCV Rack as practical and straightforward as it is in any other DAW. A single instance of EqMaster allows separate EQ control of each of the 16 tracks, 4 group busses and 4 aux returns on MixMaster (or the 8 tracks, 2 groups and 4 aux busses on MixMaster Jr).

EqMaster can be placed anywhere in the patch and uses polyphonic cables to connect to the inserts on MixMaster mixers. Track names and colours can be pulled from any MixMaster in the patch (via the right-click menu in EqMaster) and will then update automatically if they are changed in the mixer.

EqMaster has a CV expander module called EqSpander. The 2 poly jacks at the top of EqSpander allow CV control of the EQ state (active/bypass) of the 16 tracks (channels 1-16 of the left jack) and 4 groups / 4 aux returns (channels 1-8 of the right jack). Channel 9 of the right jack controls the state of the global bypass which bypasses the EQ on all tracks.

The 24 poly jacks below allow CV control of each of the 4 parameters (State, Freq, Gain, Q) of each of the 4 bands (LF, LMF, HMF, HF) of each of the 24 tracks. That’s 409 separate CV controls in total – which probably makes EqMaster the most CVable module in the entire Rack universe!

EqMaster and EqSpander are both FREE and Open Source (although donations are always appreciated :slight_smile: - https://www.paypal.me/mindmeldmodular). A Beta release of version 1.1.5 of the MindMeldModular plugin which includes EqMaster and EqSpander is now available for download from our GitHub repository…

https://github.com/MarcBoule/MindMeldModular/releases/tag/v1.1.4b

If all goes well it should be beamed over to the Plugin Library soon. This version also includes a new feature for the mixers - a stereo width control (stereo tracks only) - which can be found in the track menus.

We have loved seeing all the patches and videos that have been posted which use MixMaster and can’t wait to see what you do with EqMaster.

Huge thanks as ever to our council of advisers and testers - Latif Fital, Artem Leonov, Omri Cohen, and Espen Storø. Live long and prosper friends!

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Just wanted to reply and say it is damn near a crime no one else has responded. Police have been notified.

This EQ looks simply amazing, both in terms of functionality and aesthetics; and not just compared to other modules but any software EQ frankly. I’m at work but I’ll be checking it out first thing when I get home. Thanks so much for your hard work. By the way I love your Mixer it’s perfection! :slight_smile:

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I think that’s because it was announced on Facebook first. These modules are brilliant.

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It does look amazing! I’ll wait for the official release before I get me paws on it :slight_smile:

Thank you both very much for your time and effort!

It’s going to make mixing tasks so much more intuitive and enjoyable for me :slight_smile: No more pesky rogue frequencies from resonators and the visual feedback will be really helpful for my ageing ears!

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Lets no forget there is already a good few EQ’s that can get rid of those frequency free and premium. That’s not to say this is a peach of an EQ either, very impressive work!

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Agreed, there are many tools with different feature sets, and people should use the best tool they consider for the job. In the low HP territory there is the Vult Decline, which is a great little package for EQing (coupled with a Bog Spectrum Analyser it can be very interesting). At the other end of the spectrum is Parametra, perfect for end-of-chain final EQing, with its 8 bands, very intuitive screen manipulation, and more filter types than we offer (and it supports VCV development!).

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Gotta say: I love how well thought out this whole ecosystem is. At first I was like, “I’d really like a HP filter” and before I could finish the thought, “duh, there are HP filters built into the MindMeld channels.” My next thought was, “damn, the filters are post-insert, I wish they were pre-insert so I could see the filter in the analyzer.” Next thought: “let me go look to see if there’s a setting for that just in case…” and there is! You guys really thought of just about everything. Thanks!

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You’re right there are other EQs and some very good ones too. The biggest difference between EQMaster and the others is that it is multi-track. If you wanted to put an EQ on every MixMaster track using one of the others you would need… 24 instances of them… which would take a lot of CPU, a lot of screen real estate and a lot of patching. Whereas one instance of EQMaster can EQ all 24 tracks, in a CPU efficient way with minimal patching.

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Context I was referring to.

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Hi Phil,

Would you split this EQMaster announcement back into its own thread seperate from the MixMaster thread please? Seems a bit odd to have a new announcement 70ish replies down in a 3 month old thread about a different module.

Also the old thread title has been changed which makes it difficult to find for anyone looking for that.

Thanks

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Here you go :slightly_smiling_face: feel free to reach out to a Mod if you desire a Title Change for either of the posts :wink:

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Thank you Olival :slight_smile:

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Got a chance to play with it yesterday with a song using MixMaster, it’s really nice! A good neutral-sounding mixing visual EQ was a big gap to use VCV standalone.

MixMaster is great, but I like GTG’s for live performance too, so I wanted to try them both together, it works well! Here’s the recipe I use:

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Also, thanks for offering a quick way to toggle the analyzer, I like having both modes, to avoid the trap of mixing visually rather than by ear.

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Now in the Plugin Library…

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@Aria_Salvatrice Can you share a bit more how this works?

I started to follow the routing, but it gets a bit tricky to understand how you’re managing the effect sends while also managing the levels of each mini bus.

Thanks!

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It’s just a proof of concept, I don’t know if it’s useful!!

Here’s the patch: eqmaster.vcv (50.8 KB)

EQMaster operates on stereo channels, and by default with MixMaster, EQ is applied before the send effects - the studio mixing console setup:

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A GTG group is comprised of 6 channels / 3 buses, one stereo pair per color. The bus route is a breakout box letting you process the sound as you wish. Somewhere in the processing chain, it goes Bus Route > Meld > EqMaster > Unmeld > Bus Route. Meld/Unmeld are splits and merge devices that show the stereo pairs clearly. Multiple bus road submixes can be merged into a single mix with a Road device. It’s more complex than just using MixMaster for everything, but allows you to define the signal chain in great detail, via cables rather than settings. It’s potentially useful for sound sculpting / live performance.

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Thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

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EqMaster will be a single pluging or it is part of mindmeld?

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It’s part of MindMeld, free and in the plugin library now.

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Thanks for this incredible plugin.

Does anyone know why this setup does not work?

I have two audio signals and try to push them through EqMaster and MixMaster consecutively with Polyphonic cables (after merging them with Merge).

I also notice that channel 9 of the merge output maps to channel 5 of EqMaster.

Thanks a lot!

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EDIT: I need to use the POLY INSERTS.

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