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 — Jun 5, 2023
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!
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.
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.
Thanks Ralph - yes, that does clear it up, though it seems pretty non-intuitive to me.
best,
rich
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!