Gullfoss EQ Plugin

[Cocobolo Kid]

The Gullfoss EQ plug-in looks like a very unique and inexpensive product, especially being based on 15 years of research and development. It just got a great review in Tape Op, which is how I came across it. I don't have time to try it out now, but if other regulars of this forum do (I'm thinking of you Doug Young), please let me know your thoughts, especially for stereo recording of fingerstyle guitar.

https://www.soundtheory.com/home

From their website:
"Gullfoss is an intelligent equalizer that listens to a signal and decides how to prepare the audio so that your brain can get the most information out of it. The realtime analysis of Gullfoss uses Soundtheory’s computational auditory perception model to understand which audible elements are competing for your attention. Gullfoss allows for quick and precise fixes that would otherwise be unsolvable or would require significant time and experience to resolve.

Gullfoss, enabled by new patent-pending equalizer technology, processes audio with unrivaled sound quality. The equalizer is capable of changing its frequency response more than 300 times per second and without introducing audible artifacts or degrading signal quality. Together with the highly advanced computational auditory perception model that has been developed by Soundtheory, Gullfoss is the first and only product of its kind."

[jim1960]

Sonible has a similar product out called the smart:EQ 2. I own it and it's helpful on poorly recorded tracks because it gets you closer to where you want to be and then you can further adjust from there using whatever eq you choose. I haven't found it very useful on anything well recorded.

[rick-slo]

Tried the Gullfoss EQ Plugin (you need a Pace iLok dongle to use it) and did not find it useful for what I like on acoustic guitar.
The last new thing I have gotten is FabFilter Q which I like quite a bit.

[Doug Young]

Yeah, I tried this and didn't find it useful for guitar. Definitely a different approach that would take some getting used to, so maybe I'd learn to like with with more effort. But it seems to me that solo guitar is so different from music 99% of the world has even heard of that these tools that try to automatically adjust the spectrum to some pre-defined standard of "balanced" are going to be all wrong. Probably works well on a pop production, and the demo they have with some funky synth-pop thing seems to work nicely. But that's not the EQ curve I want on guitar.

If I understand, they claim they're doing things to re-align the phase/timing of a mix to bring out parts that might be buried. That's not going to be an issue with solo guitar, and is probably going to just mess things up.

The one control, "recover", I think, seemed to be basically a Dynamic EQ/Multi-band Compressor but without controls other than how much. It sort of flattened everything out, compressing every individual note as it played. Could be useful perhaps, but in my brief trial, it seemed to either do nothing, or sound overly compressed. The "tame" control was kind of baffling, since what it seemed to do was boost the highs to the point of sounding shrill, which seems like the opposite of "tame" to me :-)

Anyway, I'd give them credit for trying something new, I just think solo acoustic guitar probably isn't the application they have in mind for this.

[Cocobolo Kid]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Based on what everyone said, I don't think I'll try this out. Seems I could put my time to better use elsewhere.

[Andy Howell]

Fab Filter Pro Eq 3 has a very useful dynamic Eq point tool - for guitars this is very useful for levelling our base thump or even reducing string squeak.

[Guitarist99]

Interesting. This review in SonicScoop suggests there are uses here...

"I found use for Gullfoss in a wide variety of mix scenarios. I used the Boost to my advantage in a mix recently which had a thin and harsh sounding drum loop. I pushed this parameter until the bottom filled out and the mids were put in check, and my problem was solved.

The same mix had an acoustic guitar with some harsh fret noise. I used the frequency limit markers to define the harsh region, pushed Tame until it felt smooth, and then compensated with a little bit of the Brighten parameter. I employed a similar technique in a different mix working with live cymbals that needed to be controlled but still present."

https://sonicscoop.com/2019/05/07/ne...y-soundtheory/

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Andy Howell

Fab Filter Pro Eq 3 has a very useful dynamic Eq point tool - for guitars this is very useful for levelling our base thump or even reducing string squeak.

Dynamic EQ in general is pretty useful on guitar. It's nice that so many are popping up finally. I had one with my TC PowerCore back when, then PowerCore went away, and I couldn't find anything equivalent for ages. Then not long ago, they started showing up everywhere. I use the one that's part of Ozone. But I like to be able to control the frequencies, Q, and amount of compression, not just have an automatic preset like the GulFloss, unless those controls are hiding somewhere.