ApEq problem

[John_C]

I love apeq but recently i've started to find problems with it......
the visuals eat my cpu and cause dropouts if i'm stressing my system already

secondly, try this:
take your mix, split it to two seperate channels, put a blank apeq on one
listen to the phase, its horrendous

I've been getting around this by making sure that every single track has an equal number of apeqs in its signal path before the master bus, but maybe there's a better way

I'm using reaper

 

[fade_2_black]

the phase could be from latency from the plugin?

 

[botus99]

turn off the oversampling

 

[Dogman]

Yes turn off oversampling and everything will be fine. I love the ApEQ and use it a lot but with oversampling engaged basically everything over 20k is cut off. Its not immediately obvious and the manual doesn`t point it out. The mastering engineer of the first record I mixed with the ApEQ was really scratching his head in disbelief when he discovered that hole in my mixes... very embarrassing. I mailed the programmer reporting this "bug", but he replied it`s intended to work that way and promised to change the manual. Anyway I keep using the ApEQ due to its qualities and make a point of leaving oversampling off.

Regarding the graphics eating CPU: just turn em off?! There`s a button on the interface for that. I mostly do it like that, except for one instance of the plugin that I use as graphic analyzer in the master bus.

Hope this helps, all the best.

 

[gorath23]

Yes turn off oversampling and everything will be fine. I love the ApEQ and use it a lot but with oversampling engaged basically everything over 20k is cut off.

I doubt I can hear 20k, let alone anything above it....

 

[botus99]

I doubt I can hear 20k, let alone anything above it....

+1 I did a group hearing test once with a band and no one could hear above 18k, and even thats pretty good

 

[Dogman]

+1 I did a group hearing test once with a band and no one could hear above 18k, and even thats pretty good

I agree - also the mastering studio didn`t discover that by ear but by looking at the analyzer. Nonetheless a bit annoying to deliever something "nonstandard" like that without knowing

Anyway, back to the original posters observation:
The "horrendous phasing" he discovered is due to the altering of the signal when using oversampling in ApEQ. With 1x oversampling the two parallel signals sound absolutely normal and even zero out if you flip the phase of one channel.

 

[John_C]

thanks!! going to 1x oversampling fixed it!

completely changed all my carefully setup drum eqs but heyyy it's all sorted now!

what actually is oversampling???

 

[AudioGeekZine]

oversampling, is running the plugin at 2x the sample rate for smoother filters. Oversampling goes back to the early cd player days.

This IS something you can hear under 20kHz. I'd say any Hi boost above 8Khz and you'll hear a difference with the oversampling at different settings.

 

[TheSweetener]

I never heard a hicut at 20k while using the oversampling. So if I don't hear it, I don't care!

The ApEQ Hi Shelv sounds amazing and much better WITH the 4x oversampling engaged! Keep that in mind.

Concerning the phasing issues. It sounds like Reaper isn't compensating the latency correctly. Not a mistake of the plugin.

 

[pflugshaupt]

Hi all,

I'm the programmer of apEQ and would like to chime in as a user has informed me about this thread and requested I clear things up.

Overall most things stated above are correct. When using oversampling, apEQ has to use an oversample filter which will result in cutting the very high end. This is an unavoidable thing when it comes to oversampling. This filter is much more steep than what's usually used in D-A converters, so I cannot imagine any speaker system that would make this audible. It is of course visible in an analyzer (also in apEq's own if you zoom in to the extreme right). Said oversampling filter is not phase neutral, apEQ's filters in general are not (yet). I'm thinking about doing a linear-phase version at some point in the future.

In the meantime I added a section to the apEQ manual explaining these facts and am pondering making the oversampler default to off as it is producing quite a lot of confusion and only does improve things in some rare cases. So I think I was a little bit too happy about my shiny oversampler and activated it in too many of the default presets. I'd say if you can't hear any difference leave it off (also saves a big lot of CPU power).

Btw reaper is not to blame as apEQ does report a latency of 0 anyways. These are indeed phase distortions coming from the oversample filter. When oversampling is activated, a non-phase-linear high-cut filter is working which cuts the highest freqs before downsampling.

If you like how apEQ sounds for high freqs with oversampling and still don't want any cutting to happen, I recommend running your host at a higher samplerate and turning off the apeq oversampler.

The problems with dropouts when apEQ is drawing the analyzer do indeed exist, it's just a real lot of drawing that's going on. Things work better with multicore machines and mac os x and for everybody else I'm working on some improvment in that area (possibly updateing the display less often as long as the mouse is outside the window.. we'll see). Right now just deactivate the analyzer if you don't need it.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Hi all,
lots of info

Dude, nice to see people like this pop in. Thanks for that.

 

[botus99]

yeah pflugshaupt, thanks for clearing that up! The oversample option in GClip does the same thing (if you ever run it parallel with something) so I figured it was just in the nature of oversampling.

 

[Dogman]

Also from me big thanks to Pflugshaupt for chiming in and delivering some insight!

 

[John_C]

it seems the phase distortions are only audible on tracks that are panned central, hard left + right like drum OHs it seems to make no difference