Recording - June 2020 - 20

- Review by Bill Stunt

Nugen Audio SEQ-S

Linear Phase Spline EQ
Match, morph, and get surgical with
this pristinely accurate EQ plugin
Nugen Audio has recently updated its sophisticated
SEQ-S EQ plugin, a linear-phase parametric EQ with a host
of powerful sound sculpting and transition tools.
The SEQ-S GUI will be familiar to anyone who has used a
parametric EQ plugin with a graphical analysis display. Depending on the mode, the center of the screen shows EQ control points over either the dynamic incoming audio or the static
curve of a reference file. The utility bar at the top of the display
offers a preset browser, A/B comparison toggles, undo, reset
and more. The advanced mode adds a toolset for creating reference morph and match files, along with controls for reset,
invert, and 'banding'.

In the band

Banding allows you to select the frequency position of the
control points of the EQ curve from a drop-down menu. You
can split the frequency range of each band into a choice of
1/3 octave, 1/6 octave, or chromatic intervals. There are also
unique interval choices including Bark scale (I had to look that
one up-check it out, it's interesting).
Bottom-located processing and control options allow you to set
the shape, depth, and slope of the EQ envelopes; three envelope
shapes are available. A nice touch: you can assign different envelopes for the left, right, and mid-side portions of the signal for up
to eight surround channels. The zone control is used to lock control
points located outside the selected zone's area-useful for avoiding
making inadvertent changes to control points in excluded zones;
this makes doing fine adjustments in a tight range much easier.

Click, drag, tweak

Adjusting the EQ is a simple click/drag operation. Control
points at any given frequency increment jump to the cursor position. You can zoom in to both the dB scale and the frequency
range. Tweaking the shape, depth, and slope of the curve and
assigning custom settings for individual channels lets you get
granular very quickly.

Match

Match and Morph modes are somewhat complicated at first,
but the effort invested is richly rewarded. Match allows you to
take the EQ profile of one sound file and apply it to another.
Typical applications for Match include smoothing out EQ
20 RECORDING June 2020

differences when comping several takes from different sessions
where the setup or mics may have been different. It can also
be useful in mastering, to EQ-match a mix to a reference track.
The Match process creates templates of both the reference
sound's EQ curve and the sound you'd like it applied to. Route
the audio from the reference track (via supplied send utility
plugin) to the SEQ-S plugin on the receiving track; a difference
EQ curve is then created and applied.

Morph

Morph allows you to transition between two EQ settings over
time. You can use this function to create unique filter effects
or for sophisticated post-production transitions. The time of the
transition can be programmed and even beat-matched to the
BPM of your project. As with Match, the SEQ-S user guide does
a great job of laying out the process.

In Use

I found SEQ-S to be a very effective EQ, particularly for bus
or end-of-chain processing. It's incredibly surgical and sonically
pristine. It took some time to get comfortable with dragging the
control points, but once I familiarized myself with zooming and
using the Zone function, the path to good results got much shorter.
The Match function works great. In one song, I was struggling to find the right sound for a finger-picked acoustic guitar.
I kept going back and forth on mic selection, and I ended up
recording the main track three times with three different microphones. As luck would have it, the track that sounded the best,
sonically, had the worst performance. By using Match, I was
able to successfully apply the EQ curve from the poorly played
(but sonically superior) track to the one I played well.
I achieved similarly good results using Match on a complete
mix. Tweaking the depth control allowed me to adjust my mix EQ
gently to get closer to the sonic balance of the reference track.

Wrap Up

I wish I had SEQ-S back when I worked in broadcast audio! More
than a few times, audio recorded live had to be fixed and overdubbed before broadcast (shocking, I know, but it happens!). I spent
many an hour trying to EQ-match those live sounds to the studio
overdubs. Likewise, it would have come in very handy for my TV
work, where transitioning from scene to scene often involved difficult
EQ matching. Now, SEQ-S makes that kind of work a snap.
Bill Stunt (stunt@recordingmag.com) is a recording engineer,
producer, and recording musician living in Ottawa.
Formats: 64-bit AAX, VST3, AU, and AudioSuite.
Price: SEQ-ST (mono/stereo) $119; SEQ-S $199
More From: nugenaudio.com

http://www.nugenaudio.com

Recording - June 2020

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