Music listening/mastering EQ
Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:25 pm
In the mid '80s (at the peak of my life as an audiophile) Mark Levinson started a new company called Cello. It's flagship product was a high-end and extremely expensive equalizer, of all things - something shunned by the entire audiophile community. But designed by someone who knows what they're doing and using the very best circuit components and construction methods, even the tweakiest critics had to admit that it made a huge percentage of commercial recordings much more pleasant to listen to. The Cello Audio Palette was not for room or system correction; it assumed a well-balanced system to start with - it was strictly intended for correcting poorly-balanced source material. It even became used by many professional mastering engineers as the final 'sweetening', or correcting older material for re-issue.
http://www.celloseattle.com/ctdocs/prod ... lette.html
We can, of course approximate such a device with FS, and I was very surprised to see that there is essentially no plug-in based on it! (EDIT: I finally found one - https://www.danielhertz.com/master-class-software - Mac only) One can set up a software 6-band parametric to do the job and save the settings as a preset, but I wanted a plug-and-play dedicated Cello-like EQ. Plus, the toolbox parametric is very difficult to adjust without shifting the frequency points. I'm sure someone could figure out how to adapt the graphic EQ that Spogg has used lately, but I sure wasn't able to. But even my clumsy attempt using the Martin-corrected SVF, the results were very effective. I was quite surprised that even listening with HiRes headphones, I could couldn't hear any difference with the circuit switched in and out, with all the controls flat.
Listening to a number of my own live (mostly classical) recordings, I've yet to come across one that wasn't considerably improved by this. An interesting aspect of the Audio Palette's design was that the top and bottom bands are not shelves, but are peaking EQs set to above and below human hearing (25kHz and 15 Hz). So one is hearing only the 'shoulders' of these bands as they 'slope' into hearing range. The 'Blend' position of the Equalization switch blends the stereo channels together below 40 Hz. Can often 'tighten' the bass on certain recordings.
Not being terribly imaginative, and unable to replicate the Cello's knobs and panel, I did this up in my 'Pultec' style.
I'm wondering if the ZDF multimode would be a better choice for this. I imagine Martin could probably do the whole thing up in a single chunk of code!
http://www.celloseattle.com/ctdocs/prod ... lette.html
We can, of course approximate such a device with FS, and I was very surprised to see that there is essentially no plug-in based on it! (EDIT: I finally found one - https://www.danielhertz.com/master-class-software - Mac only) One can set up a software 6-band parametric to do the job and save the settings as a preset, but I wanted a plug-and-play dedicated Cello-like EQ. Plus, the toolbox parametric is very difficult to adjust without shifting the frequency points. I'm sure someone could figure out how to adapt the graphic EQ that Spogg has used lately, but I sure wasn't able to. But even my clumsy attempt using the Martin-corrected SVF, the results were very effective. I was quite surprised that even listening with HiRes headphones, I could couldn't hear any difference with the circuit switched in and out, with all the controls flat.
Listening to a number of my own live (mostly classical) recordings, I've yet to come across one that wasn't considerably improved by this. An interesting aspect of the Audio Palette's design was that the top and bottom bands are not shelves, but are peaking EQs set to above and below human hearing (25kHz and 15 Hz). So one is hearing only the 'shoulders' of these bands as they 'slope' into hearing range. The 'Blend' position of the Equalization switch blends the stereo channels together below 40 Hz. Can often 'tighten' the bass on certain recordings.
Not being terribly imaginative, and unable to replicate the Cello's knobs and panel, I did this up in my 'Pultec' style.
I'm wondering if the ZDF multimode would be a better choice for this. I imagine Martin could probably do the whole thing up in a single chunk of code!