Free VST Review #1 : Two Mastering/Bus Friendly EQs from Variety of Sound and Lkjb

In this post I will taking a look and a listen at two free VST equalizers which I deem suitable for mastering/mix bus duties. This will be part of a series of reviews for small plug-in designers making neat free VST plugins. There is a lot out there in the free VST world and I hope I can pick a few really special bits out for you and help improve your sound at no added cost.

I will be testing the Lkjb Luftikus Analogue Modeled EQ and the Variety of Sound Baxter EQ in this episode.

First Impressions

So I loaded the Luftikus up on a channel, no problems, not glitches. The UI is really nicely done and is a great improvement from the beta versions seen on forums last year. It's pretty obvious what it's inspiration stems from if you know the equalizer designs of Cliff Maag, it's a Nightpro/Maag EQ3/4-esque design with the same octave fixed bands as the Maag EQs. The unit itself has some "modes" not found in the Maag EQs or their plug-in counterparts such as "analog" and  "mastering".

Next I reached for Variety of Sound's BaxterEQ. People familiar with Dangerous Music's BAXEQ will be aware that this takes it's "Baxandall Tone Control" style (NB: worth a google if you're interested in further reading) and runs with it. Whereas the Dangerous Bax provides you with a neat single rackmount design with L/R on one strip, the BaxterEQ splits it into two virtual rack units and provides a Mid/Side matrix for those looking to get deeper into the stereo image of their source material. It also provides high and low pass filters for BOTH channels unlike the Dangerous Bax. This is particularly useful in mastering when the S channel is providing some useless out of phase bass or the middle image is too forward.

Field Test

 I loaded up a great, vibey yet murky and a little pokey in the high end, indie rock mix I received this month to have a look at how these things work in practice. I loaded up the Luftikus and checked the signal path in/bypassed: with all modes off it appears completely transparent, with "analog" mode engaged the signal also appears consistent. It's not stated clearly what "analog" is actually doing, but in my experience these Maag designs do have a sonic imprint: a smooth snakey tonal adjustments across the freq spectrum, and it's possible this is a factor in this mode, but it's very subtle if it is! Also provided is the "mastering" mode which makes the EQ work in steps, which some people might think is useless, but us mastering guys think in blocks of gain! Speaking of gain, the further "keep gain" mode is optional here. The Maag designs produce and overall gain shift beyond a certain point, which is counteracted in the Plugin Alliance version with a gain knob (also available here), but Lkjb have gone one step further with a kind of "make down" gain when this analogue modeled phenomenon becomes apparent.

Let's do some stuff: I felt the mix was a bit bunged up in the lower mids and lacking in the actual fundamental bass stuff, so I went in at 160 and took 1.7 dBs out and 2dBs in at 40. This cleared up room fast and clean, and uncovered some gunk a little further up, 1dB cut t 640 seemed apparent. A quick A-B showed me that the mix had been instantly improved in a wide sense and it was now time to take a look at the upper mid/high end balance. The 2.5 cut was applied, but instantly I felt the Q shape was too wide and had no control over this. I had in mind a cut in the upper mids and a boost with the AIR band (more on that later), but the width of the EQ let me down a bit here. The feature Maag's designs are famous for is the AIR band, a super high shelf with only gain. I put in 2dBs at 10kHz, which provided a really smooth brightening to the track, bringing out the ambience and wide elements of the overheads without adding back in any of the bad stuff I took out previously.

At this point I hit a bit of a snag. I punched in the "mastering button" to see if it was doing anything other than providing steps and it rounded my settings up/down to the nearest dB, essentially trashing my settings! Something to be looked into on updated versions perhaps? Annoyingly this messed up my gain structure, which I had to go back and re address, could be a bit of a bummer to have this happen when the chain has compressors either side of the plug.

I soldiered on and took some time to sit and A/B my settings. It's safe the say the combination of wide octave laid bands and super clean EQ modelling provided an incredibly smooth and un-distorted sound over all. For interest I pushed the AIR band up a few more dBs and took it out. Wow, that was some difference, and I dare anyone to tell me the effect "sounded EQ'd". Shout out to Lkjb for nailing that element of the Maag design.

Time to move on so I took the Luftikus off and loaded up the BaxterEQ. Taking what I learned from listening previously I had a go at cleaning up the same program material. The first thing I did (because I could this time round) is had a listen to the S channel to see if I could clear anything up here. As I had expected there was some bleed in the low end in the room, which is a perfect storm for murky low mids. I popped the M/S matrix on and took the low cut on the S, and although this did cut some stuff, I got stuck at 54Hz. I continued on my low mid cleaning mission by looking at the shelf cut on the S channel: 2 dBs at 74Hz took out the gunk I wasn't fond of, and auditioning back in stereo the imaging opened up quite a lot. Now I had cleared stuff up I felt I needed to focus the bass lower down, so I took the 74Hz knob, this time on the M channel and boosted it 1dB, and although this did the desired effect, it would have been nice to place it lower (an overlap with the filters would be useful!) to avoid adding to the low mids I am trying to clean up.

Moving on I addressed the top end: again I wanted to take some of the nasty forward nature of the mix and get some of the good top end stuff appearing clearer. I took the M/S approach again here, popping a 3dB lift on the S at the highest frequency available: 18kHz, and carving half a dB away on the M at 4.8kHz. This M/S push and pull stuff generally sounds more transparent than carving away with notches and dynamic EQs in my opinion, but it all depends on the width and shape of the EQ. The results were good, although I felt if I went much further with the boosts the EQ would begin to interact with areas I wasn't keen on touching.

At this point it's worth mentioning that the the Baxter has it's own bypass button, which I was using within this test, and this doesn't cut the plugin off, it simply un-engages the EQ, leaving the analogue modeled "hardware sound" of the EQ engaged. This might not to everyone's taste, having some harmonic excitement inline whenever you use anything on the plug-in, but it's safe to say it is very subtle.

Final Thoughts

Both of these free EQs are well worth trying, considering the price (or lack of) I really can't see how anyone working in the mix with busses or looking to carve their mix bus can afford to not check these out. Both faithfully represent analogue devices and add features only available in digital.

The Luftikus is great for adding top end to stuff where other EQs can't quite do it right, and is good for large swooping changes in the mid range. It is fixed in a mono channel (representing the EQ4 hardware) which makes it only dual stereo in practice, which can be not so useful when adding low end where there are problems in the S channel, it also misses a trick of adding varying amounts of AIR band to both the M and S, which would be so useful in mastering especially.

The BaxterEQ is a great representation of the classic Baxandall circuit with some neat features for buss and mastering work. It's analogue modeled sound when no EQ is engaged might upset a few people, but it's generally never been a problem in my experience. The added M/S matrix makes this thing very useful compared to many analogue modelling EQs out there. The freq points might be a little limited for using it on it's own, but there is no reason why this EQ alongside a clean and flexible digital EQ and a more vibey coloured analogue (or modeled) EQ couldn't EQ a troublesome mix.

Blown The F@#K Out! : Mastering Intentionally Distorted Music

People often talk about mastering, and mastering engineers, enhancing, improving, adding warmth or depth. But what about when audio art is created with the intention to make the listener hear rawness, distortion, hazyness, fuzzyness? These are all words we use to describe when an audio process or unit is either working incorrectly or is of low quality.

As musicians, audio engineers and music consumers we are all too aware of distortion, it's uses and abuses and place in popular music. Rock n Roll, a style which provides the foundation for a large part of modern western popular music, is a direct result of "doing it wrong" with your gear and "playing it too hard" for example.

But what about when the recorded elements are not the subject of distortion, but the process or recording itself? How do we approach this? Do we take audio which has been destroyed to some extent and try and make it fixed again? Do we want our feedback and clipping to somehow sound "warm"? Is that even possible?

And to go one step further, how about when we are working with an audio recording where the output itself (sometimes known as the 2-bus or mix-bus) has been processed in a way which intentionally distorts the music found within?

Perhaps apt, with the recent passing of Lou Reed, one example of pioneering distortion beyond the acoustic realm is the Velvet Underground's "White Light White Heat", and its subsequent imitators and progressors in production value such as The Jesus and Mary Chain's "Pyschocandy", that this discussion is being raised right now.

As a mastering engineer I used to think my job was to make audio "sound better", after a few years of being challenged by a wide range of audio sources and aesthetic choices I realised my job is to make audio sound "right" or "fit for purpose".

So when audio is meant to sound "bad" compared to "pop music", what do I do? Well I do exactly the same thing I do with a pop/dance production, I make it sound the way it needs to be heard. Sometimes as audio engineers we can get a bit of an ego about our input on the music we work with, it's an important that to curb in the back of your mind. When a track comes in all messed up on the 2bus, it's all to easy to think "oh this is a poor production, let's try and fix this". Communication, as always, is the key here.

One example of this is a job where I was given a reference and asked to "make this new record, have the distortion of our previous tape demo, but the balance of a good sounding hardcore punk record". My conclusion was that I needed to take the clean, raw premaster, balance it out so the tonal relationship felt good and then push it out of my analogue chain into my converters so the red light hardly drops. This is the kinda thing which would make some audio engineers cry, but it was the right thing to do! Furthermore because my converters are solid in tonal and dynamic response, I got that clipping sound, without too much of the bass getting swallowed up or a loss of stereo imaging.

The conclusion here is that us mastering folks aren't here to make beautiful sounding music, we're here to facilitate an artists vision, specifically how that vision is heard. OK I love making beautiful sounding records, delicate dynamics, shiney analogue top ends, real aural pleasures. But sometimes you gotta let it be blown the fuck out, let it hurt a little bit, give the listener that uncomfortable masochistic audio experience, if it's what the artist wants!

Independent and DIY musicians/labels.. why bother mastering your releases?

So, first post, and it's probably only going to make sense if I tell you a little about who I am and what I do. I live a double life, but these lives overlap as much as I can make this possible. My job, or career if you like, is working as an audio mastering engineer under the name Subsequent Mastering, a company I set up 4 years ago as an attempt to follow my dream of working with audio full time. On the other hand I co-run a DIY music space in my hometown of Nottingham called JT SOAR and play in a band with the other guys running this place called Plaids. I'd say my time is split pretty much 50/50 between the two endeavors, and it works out nicely as far as achieving a good balance in life, as audio engineering can be lonely work if you're not working attended (I don't).

Because of this splitting of my time between the above, I manage to get quite a balanced view of bands and artists from the DIY/indie side of the tracks, and especially how they present their music to people. I spend a lot of time listening to demos/promos and subsequently seeing these songs performed live. I am also part of a small community of DIY music promoters who are also working full time in audio industry locally and we often wax lyrical over a delicious pint of Old Rosie on our experiences working with DIY musicians.

It's never been easier to get your music to people who might like it, brilliant inventions such as Bandcamp have made it really easy for any weirdo with brilliant ideas to reach other weirdos via the internet. The probability of your music reaching someone who really genuinely cares without having to pay someone else to find them is pretty high, and getting higher in my experience. This said vinyl; the staple format for underground music of many genres; gets more expensive and harder to source by the day, at least objectively high quality pressings we expect as consumers (NB I don't mean "audiophile" products, I just mean not bad).

This understood, I can now pose my question: "Independent and DIY musicians/labels.. why bother mastering your releases?", or perhaps it should read "why pay someone to.."

Let's define mastering first, from a philosophical point of view:

Mastering is where the audio recordings become an audio product. This can be split up into a variety of tasks and thought processes, which vary in importance dependent on the outcome required and the audio supplied. These can be separated into two main categories:

1. Creating the correct output format to be replicated/duplicated.

This can be anything from making sure a track which is going to be cut to vinyl has the right amount of headroom to outputting the audio to the correct sample-rate to getting something super loud as it's got to be competitive on Bandcamp, Spotify, Soundcloud etc...

2. Analyzing and correcting objective problems and errors in the supplied audio.

So for example: is the mix meant to be bright? it's not because the monitoring is incorrect where it was mixed. Expecting the mix to go really loud? it can't because that vocal is so bloody sibilant! Want that epic outro to blend into track 4 on your record? it can't because you've cut the cymbal decay off.

Consider your mastering engineer to be a second set of ears and the last net to catch mistakes before it gets to the consumer. You can't turn back, once the music is out there, it's being perceived and judged by your potential fans/gig going punters.



So we can agree on all these things, but I hear you cry "I have ways around all these issues!", I hear these statements a lot and I want to do a bit of mythbusting and challenge a few attitudes I consider to be bogus. I say this as BOTH an audio engineer and someone who works damn hard for DIY musicians of all ilks.

"The person who mixed it is doing us mastering (and he's a darn slight cheaper than you too!)"

The person who mixed it CAN in theory master the release, they can set it to the right file format and export it from their computer. But what they can't do is improve on the objective qualities of the mix or discover errors. Why? because the process doesn't include enough variables: what about the monitoring? how can they hear stuff which has been wrong all along without changing the speakers and room it's heard in, and furthermore the mixing engineer will mix until they think it's perfect, it takes a second set of ears to go "woah hold on a minute, the vocal is killing that kick drum in the chorus" to which the reply is usually something like "oh crap, I didn't notice, let me fix it and get a mix out asap.."

"Im not paying for snakeoil! I have a program on my computer which can do it, even better it's got presets!"

It's true to say some of these "do it all" mastering programs are pretty good.. in the right hands and ears. It bums me out a lot to think that bands will spend 700 quid on a guitar, 700 on an amp, 1000 for recording and mixing time and will happily run it blind through something and stick it out for the world to hear. A lot of this is down to mis-education I feel, and a lot of that comes from mastering engineers themselves.

Mastering is not some incredibly complicated rocket science thing. It's actually very simple and quick, but requires a very high level of listening skills and specialist equipment, unfortunately it seems some engineers trade off this mystique, when in reality transparency yields better results in any creative task.

And possibly the point I would like to hammer home most here is that we're not expensive! By we I mean mastering guys who work with niche/independent/underground/whatever musicians. Most of the work I do is connected to bands I am involved with, or music scenes people know I'm into. I don't see any reason why I can't do a better job than some dude with a 5 month waiting list and 100 dollars an hour can on your "80s hardcore punk meets 90s noise rock" band's 7inch EP (exchange engineer and music as applicable). Objectively, in the budget of a project and against the top tier of earners in the mastering game, guys who master the more obscure or specific genres of music are "affordable", otherwise we wouldn't make a living off this stuff.

"Argh it's just some little thing we're messing about with, it's not worth mastering"

If you're bothering to make it, someone will bother to listen to it! why penalise that person before they have even been given a chance to make a judgement on your music. Some of my favourite music is just weird little projects people did, but man I wish that stuff sounded good enough to listen to on the train or walking through town.


I think we'll leave it at that for now... but to sign off here are some top tips for finding the mastering engineer for your independent/DIY release:

1. Look at credits for music you both LIKE and listen to successfully in a VARIETY of environments. i.e. that album you stick on your record player after a few beers and lie in a star shape on the bed, that you also like to listen to on your headphones at work and on the bus.

2. Google the mastering engineer and send them and email. Don't just read the prices and go "nah", have a word with them, if you can't get a deal out of them they most likely know someone to recommend.

3. Make great sounding records with less ballache.


I genuinely hope this helps, whack me an email on subsequentstudio@hotmail.com if you want to chat about anything in this article, or just about mastering in general.

Joe Caithness, Subsequent Mastering


NEXT ARTICLE: "Blown out to fuck": Mastering intentionally distorted music