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DJ-style EQ or Emulator?

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:58 pm
by ill-legal?
Coming from a more traditional dj background (started with 1200’s, added CDJ’s and Serato eventually), I have begun to dabble in Ableton as a dj tool. I love the idea of being able to bring a laptop, my controller, and having the ability to run more than two tracks at once (without the hassle of additional decks, setup, etc). I’ve played a few live sets out now in Ableton, I use an Ohm64 for my controller, and one of the reasons I went this route is because of the way it’s designed with 3 knobs that I set up as my standard hi, mid, and low which coincide nicely with the faders below. This helps me maintain that “security blanket” of traditional dj style mixing, however, I’ve yet to find what I consider a suitable dj style EQ, and that is where I need some help at the moment. I tried the EQ3, and I am not a fan whatsoever, I don’t like the way it sounds and the way you have to position your know at somewhere around 3 or 4 o’clock to get your full range. I recently used the LSS DJ EQ plug-in at my last show, and I got some feedback that my bass didn’t sound right. Two of my friends use a one-knob setup that cuts out low frequencies when dialed to the left, and cuts hi’s when dialed to the right, but that’s not what I really want either.

Ideally, I’d like to find some sort of plug-in or something that emulates the type of EQ I have come to know and love on my Rane Empath, i.e. when the knob is all the way to the left, it cuts out the frequency entirely, and when it’s at 12 noon you’re getting a nice, clean, full range signal. I hate the EQ’s on the ever-popular Pioneer mixers (although the 800 is at least a slight improvement over the crap EQ on the 600). Do companies like Rane or Allen & Heath make any sort of downloadable EQ emulator plug-ins? What do you guys use? Any suggestions or advice? Please forgive my lack of inappropriate terminology and overall noob-ism. Thanks!

Re: DJ-style EQ or Emulator?

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:23 pm
by STRATEGY_510
ill-legal? wrote:Coming from a more traditional dj background (started with 1200’s, added CDJ’s and Serato eventually), I have begun to dabble in Ableton as a dj tool. I love the idea of being able to bring a laptop, my controller, and having the ability to run more than two tracks at once (without the hassle of additional decks, setup, etc). I’ve played a few live sets out now in Ableton, I use an Ohm64 for my controller, and one of the reasons I went this route is because of the way it’s designed with 3 knobs that I set up as my standard hi, mid, and low which coincide nicely with the faders below. This helps me maintain that “security blanket” of traditional dj style mixing, however, I’ve yet to find what I consider a suitable dj style EQ, and that is where I need some help at the moment. I tried the EQ3, and I am not a fan whatsoever, I don’t like the way it sounds and the way you have to position your know at somewhere around 3 or 4 o’clock to get your full range. I recently used the LSS DJ EQ plug-in at my last show, and I got some feedback that my bass didn’t sound right. Two of my friends use a one-knob setup that cuts out low frequencies when dialed to the left, and cuts hi’s when dialed to the right, but that’s not what I really want either.

Ideally, I’d like to find some sort of plug-in or something that emulates the type of EQ I have come to know and love on my Rane Empath, i.e. when the knob is all the way to the left, it cuts out the frequency entirely, and when it’s at 12 noon you’re getting a nice, clean, full range signal. I hate the EQ’s on the ever-popular Pioneer mixers (although the 800 is at least a slight improvement over the crap EQ on the 600). Do companies like Rane or Allen & Heath make any sort of downloadable EQ emulator plug-ins? What do you guys use? Any suggestions or advice? Please forgive my lack of inappropriate terminology and overall noob-ism. Thanks!

I lot of folks use EQ8 with just 3 bands enabled and dialed in to the high/mid/low frequencies of your cchoice.

Doesn't have the nice kills like EQ3 though, I think someone posted a workaround to this.

You should search the forum, this has come up a lot, and also take a search of aldj.com

STRATEGY

Re: DJ-style EQ or Emulator?

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:46 pm
by SubFunk
the free LSS DJeq is also very popular under ableton live DJs.

http://www.londonschoolofsound.co.uk/plugins.php

Re: DJ-style EQ or Emulator?

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:35 pm
by Tarekith

Re: DJ-style EQ or Emulator?

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:01 pm
by ill-legal?
Thanks for the feedback thus far, guys. I did indeed search the topic, both here and on a few other forums as well. Like I mentioned in my initial post, I’ve tried the LSS DJ EQ, and while I thought it sounded passable (then again, I had two monitors blaring in my face) I did get some negative feedback from a few friends in the crowd. I plan to do some more A-B comparisons at home with my studio monitors and my Mackie SRM450’s. I’ve heard good things about the EQ 8, but in my experimentation thus far I wasn’t particularly thrilled with it either. I also found a few other plug-ins, but I didn’t have any luck getting them to work on my Mac. :(

Re: DJ-style EQ or Emulator?

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:24 pm
by ill-legal?
Tarekith wrote:Try my EQ3.8 rack:

http://tarekith.com/assets/TarekithDJEFXv7.2.zip
thanks, I'll give that a test drive tonight. I've seen a few of your write-ups/tutorials, good stuff!