[Ardour-Users] graphical EQs [was: what linux audio, project, do you miss?]

[David Kastrup]

Kim Cascone <kim at anechoicmedia.com> writes:

>> well, keep on doing it. but at some point, when you want to tack a photo
>> to a silk folding screen, you may find that the nailgun comes with
>> certain disadvantages. this is not creativity, but craftsmanship, which
>> does have best practices. they should be honed, questioned, and
>> revisited often, but they exist.
>
> for acousmatic and field recording based work a 31 band EQ is anything
> *but* a nail gun

31 band over what? 8 octaves?  About 4 bands per octave.  If those are
supposed to be of actual value, you need at least 24dB/octave filters.
If you have actual _use_ for the 31 bands, you will have some steps
where the phase of a filter is relevant quite beyond the transition
frequency to the next filter.  That means that you get 270 degrees of
phase shift while progressing into the stop band.

Alternatively, you use linear phase filters and get significant delay,
large computational resources and onset artifacts.

If you have a good design, you get most of the artifacts only if you
have steep slider changes.  If you don't, there is no point in having 31
bands, is there?

-- 
David Kastrup