Waves Audio Renaissance Equalizer User Guide
Renaissance Equalizer
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Renaissance EQ Quick Star t
Chapter 3 The Interface
Chapter 4 The Filters
Chapter 5 The Controls
Chapter 6 Factory Presets
Chapter 7 FAQ’s
Chapter 8 An EQ Essay With Wonderful Tips
2
3
4
6
11
16
20
21
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
1
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Welcome to the Renaissance Equalizer manual.
Since the development of Q10 by Waves in 1993, there has been an increasing need for high-quality “sweet”
EQs. To answer the need, Waves created the Renaissance Equalizer.
This EQ is a 6-band audiophile equalizer for professional audio production. It offers a choice of 6, 4, or 2 band operation for optimum use of processing power. Stereo, dual-mono, and mono implementations are
part of the EQ, although not necessarily available in all platforms.
The following manual explains how to use the Renaissance Equalizer.
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
2
Waves Renaissance Equalizer
Chapter 2 - Quick Start
Please, do yourself a Power Tips favor: refer to the WavesSystem Manual for a full explanation regarding
standard Waves controls.
Default settings and behavior
1. The REQ is slightly different from the Q10, in that when you first open the EQ, the bands will be “on”.
The only exception to this is the 6-band, in which the 1st band is off because it is a low cut filter
(highpass), and is not desirable to be switched in until needed.
2. Preview the source track (or play audio, depending on your platform).
3. Click and drag any dot (band marker) in the graph to change the Gain and Freq of that band. The
default settings are designed to be usuable immediately for a wide range of applications (see the
Factory Setup Notes for explanations of “Gerzon shelves” and “Baxandall”, and so forth).
4. Double-click any band marker to turn it on or off (or just drag it to turn it on).
5. Option-drag any band marker to adjust the Q (left/right movement) [PC uses Alt-drag]. Vertical
movement always changes the gain.
6. Command-click any band marker to change the filter type; it will toggle to the next type available for
that band (not all bands have all filter types).[PC does not support this].
7. Control-drag any band marker to constrain that band to one direction (the first you move in, either
Gain or Frequency; if option-control-drag, then it will be Gain or Q). [PC uses Control-drag, and AltControl-drag].
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
3
Chapter 3 - The interface
With a functi onal de s i gn based direct ly on the Waves Q10 Equ a l i zer, the Ren a i s s a n ce EQ has a single wi n dow
w i t h f u l l g r a p h i n g , n u m e r i c a l d i s p l a y a n d c o n t r o l , a n d c o l o r - c o o r d i n a t e d o b j e c t s f o r i n t u i t i v e o p e r a t i o n .
All buttons, controls, meters, and faders operate with a common set of functions called the WaveSystem. If
you are unfamiliar with it, please do a quick read of the WaveSystem manual. The information you’ll find
there works for all Waves plug-in processors, so you only have to learn it once! It is highly worth your time,
as Waves offers controls that are absolutely unavailable on competitors products, such as simultaneous control of multiple values (use the sele ction rectangle or shift-click to sele ct desired controls, then drag on any
one of the selected controls), and much more.
You can drag directly on any button to change its value, click on it and type in a value, or click on it and
tweak the value with the arrow keys. You may also drag any mar ker in the g raph directly to change the EQ.
Graphical control
S i m p l y c l i c k a n d d r a g a n y m a r k e r i n t h e g r a p h f o r e a s y c o n t r o l o f F r e q u e n c y a n d G a i n . O n t h e l e f t e d g e o f t h e
s c reen yo u’ ll see little arrows near the labels so as to make it clear wh i ch way to move the mouse. Some controls work lef t / ri gh t , and some up/down . ( Hi n t : Wave Sys tem manual has the clues on using this fe a tu re for re a l
power ) . By using the X/Y con trols of the mouse in com bi n a ti on with the Opti on , Com m a n d , and Con tro l
k e y s , y o u c a n h a v e c o m p l e t e c o n t r o l o f t h e E Q b a n d w i t h a v e r y s m a l l n u m b e r o f c l i c k s a n d k e y p r e s s e s .
Legend of the Mouse Moves
• To control the Q instead of Frequency, just press the Option key while dragging (you don’t even have
to stop holding the mouse down, just press the Option key to switch to the Q value). [PC uses the Alt
key and supports on-the-fly switching to Q control].
• To change the filter type of the band, press the Option-Command keys and click on the band. Each
click will toggle to the next filter type. [PC doesn’t support this].
• To turn a band off, you can Command-click, or double-click the band. [PC doesn’t support this].
• To turn a band on, simply drag it, or double-click it.
• To constrain the band marker to moving in just the X or Y direction, press the Control key while
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
4
dragging. If you want to change to the other direction, simply release the key, then press it again,then move
the mouse in the preferred direction (again, you don’t have to release the mouse).[PC uses Control-drag,
but does not support on-the-fly directional changes; you have to release the Control key and mouse, then
press Control and click again to drag in another direction].
Keyboard control
Though the Renaissance Equalizer makes use of an intuitive graphic interface which can be controlled
almost entirely via mouse if preferred, there is also complete keyboard commands for those who prefer to
work that way. All parameters may be selected, and their values entered directly from the keyboard; TABbased control is used to navigate through all parameters and Value Windows, and to move from one parameter to another when multiple items are selected.
Multiple Selection
Whether working with the graph or keyboard, one of the most powerful functions is the ability to select and
drag multiple controls or band markers at the same time. If you have created a complex EQ curve, for
example,using a high shelf and a small p resence boost, you can simply select both band markers and drag
on either to change them together.
Alternatively, you could drag a selection rectangle around both of the band’s Frequency value windows (or
shift-click on bands that are not beside each other), then simply click and drag on any one of the selected
value windows to change all of them.
Using the Control, Option, and Command keys as described in the previous section also applies when multiple bands are selected in the graph, so you might start to see how powerful these features can be!
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
5
Chapter 4 - The filters
What is in each band
Each of the bands of EQ provided by the Renaissance Equalizer are not the same, unlike the Q10. This has
been done to optimize the processing requirements for as many professional users as possible (and for the
platform they use).
Bands 1 and 6 are common to all components of the REQ, that is, if you select the 2-band component from
your plug-in menu,then the 2 bands have the same filter options as bands 1 and 6 from the 6-band version.
The 4-band version adds bands 2 and 5, and the 6-band version adds bands 3 and 4.
Band 1 and 6 have cut filters , re s onant shelve s , and bell filters . (1 is low cut and shel f , 6 is high cut and shel f) .
Bands 2, 3 , 4 , 5 all have re s onant shelves and bell filters . (2 and 3 have low shelve s , 4 and 5 have high shelve s ) .
Default values
Each component (2-,4-, or 6-band) of the REQ has a different default setup to provide a highly-usable general setting.
When you insert the REQ into your editor, you’ll see that all bands are already switched “In” by default,
except in the 6-band EQ, in which Band 1 is intentionally “Out” because it is a low cut filter. Since the low
cut is the most commonly used cut filter, it was included in the default, but we didn’t presume that you
wanted to use it by default!
For complete details of the default setup and the factory presets, see the Factory Presets chapter.
What the filters are
You might be wondering what “resonant shelves” are, or if you’ve already been using the Renaissance EQ
and are just now reading this sentence, you might be doing so to find out just what a Gerzon Shelf or a
Baxandall filter really is.
Resonant shelf filters
Michael Gerzon proposed the idea of a resonant shelf in a confidential paper to Waves in 1994. Analog filters (specifically, Pultec) had already achieved this type of EQ behavior by using both the cut and boost
knobs simultaneously (see Chapter 8 for many more great details).Mr. Gerzon had defined a way to make
this acoustically-desirable behavior into a single filter type. He did not live to see the implementation o f his
proposal. We have named some of the presets using these shelves in his honor although our implementation
is not quite exactly his proposal. Instead, they are a compromise between his idea and the great sound of the
Pultec filters, with thanks to suggestions from Craig “Hutch”Hutchinson.
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
6
The two main differences in these shelves from traditional shelves, such as those in the Q10, are the visibly
obvious curves of the shelf (shown here), and that you can change the Q of the shelf, which shifts the steepness of the slope. In a way, you can think of these as “parametric shelves”.
Q=1.41,4kHz High shelf
With the highest available Q of 1.41, the slope is steepest and the “resonant” parts of the curve are at their
most extreme. The lowest Q is 0.71, which is very similar to the gentleness of the slopes in the Q10 shelves.
Michael Gerzon suggested that values of Q just under 1.00 would be pleasing for most applications. The
classic Gerzon Shelf setting is a Q of 0.99, with low and high shelving at 250Hz and 4kHz, respectively.
Variations of this shelf are in the factory presets of each REQ component (2,4, or 6 band).
For more extensive suggested uses of the resonant shelves, please explore the small but powerful setup
library for the Renaissance EQ.
Cut filters
These are sometimes called “pass” filters in the USA, in synthesizers,and by design engineers; highpass filters are the same as low cuts, lowpass filters are the same as high cuts.
Again, a variable Q value makes these cut filters distinctively different from typical cut filters. The Q
changes the slope of the line, plus includes a bump in the frequency response that allows the filter to be
more musical and pleasing, while still performing the basic operation of a cut filter: to “clean up” unwanted
frequencies outside of a given range.
Initially, it might seem that using a sharp filter would be the best thing to really remove unwanted frequencies. However, if a very sharp brickwall filter is employed to cut off these frequencies, there is a psychoacoustic effect of making the sound very dull (when using a high cut). By allowing a few of these frequencies
to remain, the removal of frequencies is performed and the resulting sound is sweeter and not as dull.
Please note that this situation is not applicable to multimedia or other bandlimited requirements such as
various digital conversions, which do require very sharp brickwall filtering. The REQ filters are designed for
the most musical and magical results for pro audio.
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
7
Bands 1 and 6 are third-order filters (equal to 18dB/octave). When the Q=1.0, then they are indeed
18dB/octave, without the bump, as seen below.
3rd Order Filter Curves,Q = 1.0
In order to show the bump of a higher Q value, which is below the edge of the graph of the REQ, here is a
screenshot of the Waves PAZ real-time analyzer. It was created by a sine-wave frequency sweep of a high cut
filter at 2kHz, with a Q=1.41:
Curve of a High-cut Filter,Q = 1.41
When the value of Q is higher than 1.0, the notch and bump actually give a higher slope than a 3rd o rder
filter, but still allow some of the higher harmonics to pass thru, although greatly reduced.
When the value of Q is at its smallest (0.71), the slope is slightly less than a 2nd-order filter, about
10dB/octave:
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
8
Q = 0.71, A Slope of About 10dB/octave
Bell filters (parametric)
George Massenberg invented the parametric equalizer, and most people are quite accustomed to using
them. Almost completely without exception, they have symmetrical response characteristics. However, when
we use an equalizer to boost, it is nearly always for tonal correction, and when cutting, for removal of bothersome artifacts (see Chapter 8 “An EQ Essay” for a rather entertaining viewpoint about EQ). The asymmetrical filters had been described by several audio researchers and designers (including Mitra,“Hutch”
Hutchinson, and others), but not included in any commercial products to our knowledge; Waves chose to
include this type of filter simply because it sounded better for high-end use.
What does symmetrical mean? Simply that most e qualizers have exactly the same response in the boost or
gain of a bell filter, seen here:
Symmetrical bell filt er.Engineer ing Q=1.0,from the Q10
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
9
However, an asymmetrical response,is, in a way, the most “natural”thing for an equalizer to do in the analog domain. To put it in other words, for a constant value of Q,a boost and a cut at the same frequency of a
bell filter will not have the same shape. Here is the same setting (engineering Q=1.0) but on the REQ:
Asymmetrical bell filters of the RenEQ
Renaissance Equalizer Plug-in Manual
10
Loading...