23 Sep
2003
23 Sep
'03
2:43 p.m.
I don't have any answers to your real question,
but I just want
to warn you off from using FreqTweak as your EQ for a PA. I'm
sure if you were careful it might be possible, but that tool
is really intended for freakish audio damage, rather than proper
reinforcement :)
Wow, you won't find that kind of honesty in the commercial world :-)
I appreciate the warning. I've actually used it as an EQ for
non-realtime stuff with decent results, but I haven't decided whether
it's what I really want for this purpose.
Try some of Steve's LADSPA plugins (multiband EQ, 3 band
parametric, SC1/2/3/4), or use Jamin, which has both EQ and
dynamics built in,
and that EQ is actually much more transparent and linear.
I haven't used Jamin at all and I've only used Steve's stuff just a
little. The thing I liked about Freqtweak was resolution. With 256
bands using only the boost and cut modules I had the resolution I
needed to make surgical changes. What I'd really like that I haven't
seen yet is a 31-band 1/3-octave EQ that works something like
Freqtweak with the spectral analysis and drawing curves and whatnot.
Also, if you are using any of this for live
performance or
monitoring,
latency is going to be a *big* issue for you.
I haven't had a problem with it yet. I did some tests with a
microphone and had my Jack latency set to @5ms and I didn't see any
noticable Freqtweak latency. I was using the boost and cut modules
only with the lowest max delay setting (not really sure what that's
for yet) and 256 bands of EQ and I couldn't tell a noticable latency.
I don't think the people I play with/mix for would either. My
computer is an AthlonXP 2400 so it's relatively fast.
But then again, maybe your
material is not latency sensitive......
I can't imagine that :-)
I'm not sure I'm ready to introduce this idea yet, (certainly not in
this thread) but I've been thinking about building a system that will
be stable and reliable enough to be a PA processor -- sort of like a
Driverack or something. I was thinking about using the processing
engine of Freqtweak and writing a GUI (or not) to control it that
would run separately. I envisioned the processing engine running as
a service so if the computer crashed it could be brought back up
without having to manually start and set everything and if the GUI
crashed the engine would still be running. I even thought about the
possibility of running the "controller" on a separate computer so the
processing box could be just a text-based Linux with nothing but
audio on it.
Eventually I'd like this to lead to a real-time live mixing
environment where my "console" was just a control surface. The
routing and processing options available in the digital domain are
just too cool to pass up.
I've been taking a hard look at Freqtweak, both to learn the
environment and to see if it does some of what I'm looking for. I
plan to look at other packages too, just haven't gotten there yet.
Greg
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