I had to redo the “Water” and “Fire” curve sets times, and this was a real struggle at one point because I wanted to get those perfect, but at the same time I wanted to finally release the product (laughs). The biggest challenge for me was to adjust every character, gain and Q combination by ear, and to make these artistic decisions with strong technical constraints. The process ran for about three years, alongside product development for other plugins. How long has it taken you to create “AirEQ”, and what were the biggest challenges? For mastering, it’s suitable because it offers you the absolute best sonic quality possible. It’s zero-delay and low CPU-usage allows you to put AirEQ on every single one of your tracks. That’s why it’s both a mixing and mastering EQ. It was a big challenge to get the CPU-usage so low, even when automating the plugin’s parameters. “AirEQ” is very light on CPU, with a zero delay and absolutely perfect curve behavior. To what extent does “AirEQ” tax your computer’s CPU? The phase/impulse responses have been tweaked in order to get flat phase down to around 50Hz, even at maximum values, which provides a very tight and non-boomy sound. “Earth”, even if it may look like a shelf filter, has a very different phase response. This provides some natural and very musical results. How do these differ from shelves on other EQ plugins?īoth “Air” and “Earth” may look like shelf filters, but they are not, technically speaking. The “Air” frequency response is precisely tuned by ear, so it’s always smooth and reacts very specifically to the Air amount it’s not just a simple gain. “Earth” and “Air” are the shelving bands. “Water” is useful for everything which requires you to smooth out the resonances, like vocals, tight basses and smooth highs, whilst “Fire” is useful for snappy drum mids, focused and tight bass adjustments and removing high sibilants. whilst “Fire” is dynamic, focused and hits without being resonant.
Also, the names fit pretty well to the sonic sensation that you have : “Water” is smooth, transparent, and natural. Because we had already used “Air”, I thought that it would be interesting to stay in the same vocabulary environment. I had the idea for those curves a long time ago, and when I started designing them, I wanted also to give an evocative name to them. Can you distinguish these two from each other? What would each one be useful for? “AirEQ” has different labels on it’s GUI, like “Fire” and “Water”. Of course I was inspired from some analog EQs, because I wanted the curves to sound exactly as some analog units that I love, but otherwise, regarding the curves, everything is from original designs that I adjusted by ear myself.
#Fabrice gabriel slate vcc how to
But we have still a lot to do in terms of educating people about how to use “AirEQ”, and we intend to make new updates available that will improve the plugin, as well as add many new features too. We did everything we could with the Eiosis team to make sure that “AirEQ” would turn out as good as possible, with the most perfect technical aspects, the best workflow possible, and the most musical sound we could offer. Well, we should never feel too confident that a plugin is going to attract attention, but I’m very glad to already have so much positive feedback about “AirEQ”, and many people are telling me that it’s became their go to EQ against other very well-established plugins that have been around for years. How will “AirEQ” be able to attract the attention of the audio world when it has so much competition? Many engineers and mixers already have their go-to EQ plugins for their work. We’ve been quiet with Eiosis for some business-related issues, but I wanted to bring back the brand, as well as some ideas that I really wanted to develop.
I created Eiosisbefore Slate Digital, and it was my company that led to my meeting with Steven. Give the success of Slate Digital’s plugins, why did you feel the need make your own EQ, instead of solely focusing Slate’s emulations?
We believed that we could create something interesting, hoped to improve the sound of what plugins could do! We shared the same views and the same goals when it comes to audio plugins and digital processing. Steven and I founded Slate Digital together after meeting at a convention. How did you come to work with Steven Slate on his plugins? Most people know you from the tutorial videos and newsletters that are published through Slate Digital. Very early, I was interested in algorithm analysis, and studying audio processing. I was originally a computer science engineer, and also a mixing engineer. Below, you can read the interview I did with Fabrice about his work. He’s now making news with his own company, Eiosis, and it’s first plugin, the “ AirEQ“. Fabrice Gabriel has risen to fame within the audio world as the technical powerhouse behind Slate Digital plugins, like the VCCand VTM.