Product Reviews by KVR Members

That thing is amazing and now my goto EQ for most EQing tasks.

SonEQ 2 is an amazing enhancement of its little brother SonEQ and SonEQ pro.
If you don't know these EQ here are the main characteristics of the SonEQ plugins family :
- It is a frankenstein equalizer plugins where each band is modeled after different famous EQ, and these EQ sounds so good
- Despite having few controls these EQ are very versatile : LP and HP filters, low band mimics a pultec shelf, and high shelf. Whatever you do with this plugin, it always sounds good !

This new version, sonEQ2, is way more expensive but believe or not, it sounds even better to my ears than the other iterations ! The sound is really something crazy.

The second new thing is a new very useful feature : it is now a modular EQ where you can add up to 16 bands of any of these "frankenstein" band, each with its on character. It also features integrated oversampling (with selectable rate) and the option to remove the labels/values on the knob to have the pleasure to mix only with ears.

Pros :
- great analog sounding.

- flexible yet simple
- great for mixing with the ears and not the eyes.

- great for working quickly.

cons :
-more expensive than its brothers.

I am wondering why this plugin is not more popular....

I was looking for a general purpose EQ with the following features :

- High quality sound (transparent EQ, no aliasing, handling natural/analog phase around nyquist).

- Low CPU.

- automatic gain compensation.

- Convenient to use.

- cheap (less than 100 euros).

When you want all these features, there are not much options :

- TDR NOVA, hotnet total EQ and Acon Equalize are heavy on CPU.

- DDMF IIEQ and DMF Equick have a buggy GUI on my computer.

- Melda EQ, KiloHeart CarveEQ, VOxengo EQs, toonebooster equlize have cluttered gui and feels a pain to use.
I still prefer using my DAW stock EQ than these....

- PRO Q, Equilibrium and other "premium EQ" feels too expensive.

In the end, I think craveEQ fits all my needs and even more .

It really sounds amazing, is really transparent and is impressively light on CPU. I found no bugs until now.

and is almost as convenient to use as ProQ 3.
Also, it has some very interesting phase modes :

- Analog phase : which handle the phase like an analog EQ, that is without messing up with the phase around nyquist frequency.

- Linear phase : which is a nice option to have.

- Transparent phase : which is a genius crossover of analog phase (in the low part of the spectrum) and linear phase (in the high part of the spectrum). Indeed a pure linear phase mode tends to add a lot of pre-ringing, in the lows. So this modes allows you to maximize transparency .

- Digital phase : which is the worse sounding mode But is also latency free, which is ideal when used in a software that doesn't have latency compensation (maschine or else).

It is the best for the money, really.

Nova is so impressive for a lot of reasons.

I could easily cost 100 ou 200 hundred euros, and still be impressive.
As you know, it is a excellent dynamic EQ, and the compression sounds very natural.

What is less obvious if you didn't try it, is its sound quality, which is as good or even better than proQ and other.

So what the catch here ???

The catch is that it uses a lot more CPU thant ProQ or other plugins and has less features (only 4 bands, no linear mode, no per band listening, no m/s mode etc.)
However, .It has a very good automatic gain compensation and is free.
So it CPU use and these features doesn't matter to you, it is the best.

If you love the sonEQ, you ll love this one ! (and you ll support sonimus !).

It's a wonderfull coloring/tone shaping tool that never sounds bad and that contains history !
It is an homemade mix of famous analog units :

The drive is nice and adds low end presence, there's a pultec shelf for the lows, .

an agressive low-mid/mid band, a smooth high-mid bands, and wonderfull high-shelp trop produce air and shimmer .

There is also different high-frequency cuts filter/bands type, that allows to tame the high in a very musical way (different configuration of high shelf and low-cut filter that are perfectly connected to do the job)

Some examples of use :

- Pultec shelf and drive on drums/bass to shape the low-end with no mud.

- shimmer and agression on vocals with the high mid and shelf.

- tame high frequency of a violin in a musical way to let the vocals cut through the highs.

A good SSL sound quality at a cheap price .

I don't like using my eyes for tone shaping and place instruments in the mix. when it comes to tone shaping and make mixing decision, this is my go-to plugin ! (for surgical purpose, I still use IIEQ pro).

This plugin is not as popular as other sonimus, because when sonimus released it, the gui was awfull... but they correct it, and it is now worth the price.

This EQ makes the bulk of the work in my mixes :

- 4 bands, shape from precise narrow band to large musical band (it is a mix between brown and black ssl units).

- Nice low-cut and high-cut.

- low CPU usage when the drive is at 0%, a bit more with the drive on, which sound very nice by the way !

My favorite Digital EQ so far !

It's my go to digital EQ. I use it mainly for surgical EQ (tame resonances/noise in a track or surgically.

correct the mix) and sometimes for tone shaping (Only when I wanna be quick. Otherwise, my taste is to 4 bands analog EQ with no graphical display and rely on my ears only).

There are 2 main reasons I love it :

1°) High quality with low CPU usage : Better than basic daw EQ (soft sounding in the high frequency) with less CPU usage than most external Digital EQ. I found that only Fabfilter Pro-Q beats it when considering quality over CPU usage. This EQ cost less than 50 bucks ! that's amazing.

2°) ease of use : Click to create a band and depending where you click the nature of the band is different (in the lows or high, you got a filter, in the medium you got a bell, and in between a shelf).

Other than this : stereo operation, mid-side, AB and serial/parallel processing ! There is also a feature that allows to control all the instances of IIEQ from a window. It can be convenient for quick mixing, but be careful not to mix with your eyes .

There only downside for me is the stability of the graphical interface, that can be buggy on some daws/software (doesn't work on maschine, works pretty well in reaper) or laggy (multi-window feature can become laggy with a lot of instances)....But at that price I still rate it 5 stars .