FabFilter User Forum

Pro Q3 Messing Up Transients sometimes?

Hello everyone. I stumbled uppon this video and something confused me a bit.

Around minute 27 this guy in the video demonstrates how the Plugin messes with the transients and more just by throwing an instance with Default setings on the master. I have never tested this and will do so but would also like some more opinions. Your experiences. This is not something unimportant if its true.

The only thing i see is that the Output of Pro Q3 shows +2Db in the video. Does the Plugin saturate in Default state if you feed it with a relativelly Hot signal?

Here is the video. Atround 26:50-27:00 from what i remember
www.youtube.com/watch?v=11OH7fJZRjk&feature=youtu.be&t=1577

Peace

Sputnik

Hi Sputnik,

It's safe to use Pro-Q 3 at any place in your mixing or mastering process. However, please be aware of your gain staging. When your audio signal is too hot it can clip the input the plug-in. As you can see in the video, the signal coming in Pro-Q 3 is at +2dbFS, which is clipping the input by +2db. Clipping always affects your transients.

It's good to leave a few db of headroom coming in to every plug-in, including Pro-Q 3. Especially if you're planning on boosting, which will make the source material even louder. If you need to make your material loud, use a limiter like our Pro-L 2 on the last insert of your master.

Cheers,

Ralph (FabFilter)

Hi Ralph.

Thank you for the fast Reply!

Hmm that confuses me a bit. Is the Plugin not working on a 32 bit floating point like Ableton does?
In Live if i see "Red" meters while it might look scary , it does not affect the sound really unless you render it this way.
Is the Pro Q3 Emulating analog device behaviour?
It makes no sense to me if it does...

Peace,
Sim

Sputnik

As far as I can tell, the FF plugins all work in floating point (as do practically all VST & AU plugins with extremely rare exceptions). I just tested running at +20 dBFS sweep to Pro-Q3, Pro-C2, Pro-MB & Pro-L2 and none of them clipped.

Antti

I see.

Well if you have the time watch the part of the video i mention and tell me your (another) opinion what is happening there.

Would appreciate it a lot

Sputnik

Don't understand what the guy in the video is talking about but his "transient problems" don't come from the FabFilter EQ. Just tested it with a null-test - just adding ProQ2 or ProQ3 nulls perfectly with the original signal. Even when the input is +6 or +12dBFS. It's a clean bypass if no bands are added.

But if you add an EQ point you of course have to consider the phase mode as well as the interaction with other layers.

And I guess he has a limiter somewhere in the chain later because else it would distort as hell and that means it will react differently to changes in the signal chain.

KB

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