FabFilter User Forum

Pro-Q3 Gain/Q dependency squirrely behavior

Something a little odd in Pro-Q3's Gain/Q dependency: I seems to only work if you "physically" move the Gain 'knob' in the GUI - if you numerically enter a gain amount for the band, the Q does *not* change as expected. IOW, if I have Gain/Q dependency turned on, and Q is set to 1, then it changes as I move the gain knob from say 0 to -20, but if I enter -20 into the numeric gain field, Q does not change. This doesn't seem like desired behavior to me. You?

Rich Breen

I've always felt like there was something unreliable about this interaction (sometimes it seemed to work as expected, sometimes not) - now I know why!

Rich Breen

Hi Rich,

When you enable Gain/Q link, basically the two knobs are linked together, not the parameter values. It's not programmed in a way that an x amount of gain correlates with an x Q factor. When you have Gain-Q interaction enabled you can still adjust the Q, and it will be adjusted with a certain scale when you adjust the gain. When you enter a value manually for the gain, the Q will indeed not be adjusted automatically. Just like when you set the gain with GQ interaction disabled and you enable it later, the Q will not be adjusted, it will simply adjust when you adjust the gain again.

Hope that clears it up.

Ralph (FabFilter)

Hi Rich,

When you enable Gain/Q link, basically the two knobs are linked together, not the parameter values. It's not programmed in a way that an x amount of gain correlates with an x Q factor. When you have Gain-Q interaction enabled you can still adjust the Q, and it will be adjusted with a certain scale when you adjust the gain. When you enter a value manually for the gain, the Q will indeed not be adjusted automatically. Just like when you set the gain with GQ interaction disabled and you enable it later, the Q will not be adjusted, it will simply adjust when you adjust the gain again.

Hope that clears it up.

Ralph (FabFilter)

Thanks Ralph - yes, that does clear it up, though it seems pretty non-intuitive to me.

best,
rich

Rich Breen

I agree, I also found this functionality unintuitive. It would be awesome if it worked like Ableton's stock EQ 8 adaptive EQ, except whereas the adaptive setting is a global setting on EQ 8, it would be awesome if it were a per band setting, so you could have a mix of adaptive and non-adaptive-Q bands set up in one instance of the Pro Q3.

To be clear about what I'm claiming is unintuitive in Pro Q3 - when using adaptive Q in Ableton's EQ8, the Q setting doesn't change unless you change it (via the Q knob). The adaptive functionality seems to be working on a hidden layer behind the user facing Q setting. Whether you manually increase/decrease the gain of a band with the knob, or if you input the gain setting, the Q setting stays the same on EQ8 even though the adaptive functionality is enabled.

Conversely, in Pro Q3, with a band that has zero gain, and a Q setting of 1, if you manually drag the knob down to -10 db, then manually input the gain back to zero (by double clicking on the gain knob and entering zero), the Q setting is now 1.248 instead of 1. Pro Q3 is awesome but that's my two cents on this feature! Thanks!

Michael
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