Eq5/10 Freq Automation: Make It Exponential

Dsil · February 25, 2012, 2:49pm

Thanks for making the EQ 5 and 10 frequencies automatable. Im very happy with this function, but i found one flaw:
When automating, the automation grid is linear, while the freq is exponential. This makes it very hard to automate the low frequencies.

Hope this is an easy fix!!

Jonas · February 25, 2012, 4:18pm

I’m not sure if I understand you correctly, but doesn’t the ‘curve’ option in the automation editor equal the exponential character you’re looking for?

dblue · February 25, 2012, 4:36pm

Nope. The ‘curve’ option simply defines how the automation behaves when interpolating from point to point.

Add a Filter device to a track and start adjusting the Cutoff parameter. Take a look at how the slider position is mapped to the frequency. The frequency range goes from 0kHz to 22kHz, but the frequencies are not actually mapped in a linear fashion. If it was linear, then 11kHz would map to a slider position of 50%, and 5.5kHz would map to 25%, and so on. The exponential mapping provides much more ‘room’ as you go towards the lower frequencies, making it easier to fine-tune the useful frequencies in that range. You can see the same behaviour when automating the Filter’s cutoff in the Automation editor.

The frequency parameters of the EQ devices, on the other hand, are not mapped in this exponential fashion, and will therefore behave differently when editing the automation curves. This makes it more difficult to create automation points at specific lower frequencies (unless typing them in manually), because the range of movement is much more limited due to the linear mapping.

So, it would indeed make sense to map the EQ frequencies exponentially instead of linearly, although I’m not sure how much of a pain in the ass this will be to change now…

Dsil · February 25, 2012, 4:52pm

Thanks Dblue for a much clearer explanation of the problem than I did.

Now let’s hope it’s not a very complicated change

dblue:

Nope. The ‘curve’ option simply defines how the automation behaves when interpolating from point to point.

Add a Filter device to a track and start adjusting the Cutoff parameter. Take a look at how the slider position is mapped to the frequency. The frequency range goes from 0kHz to 22kHz, but the frequencies are not actually mapped in a linear fashion. If it was linear, then 11kHz would map to a slider position of 50%, and 5.5kHz would map to 25%, and so on. The exponential mapping provides much more ‘room’ as you go towards the lower frequencies, making it easier to fine-tune the useful frequencies in that range. You can see the same behaviour when automating the Filter’s cutoff in the Automation editor.

The frequency parameters of the EQ devices, on the other hand, are not mapped in this exponential fashion, and will therefore behave differently when editing the automation curves. This makes it more difficult to create automation points at specific lower frequencies (unless typing them in manually), because the range of movement is much more limited due to the linear mapping.

So, it would indeed make sense to map the EQ frequencies exponentially instead of linearly, although I’m not sure how much of a pain in the ass this will be to change now…

Jonas · February 25, 2012, 5:25pm

thanks for the info Dblue, makes sense now … lately I think Kraken or another genius produced an inertia device, utilizing the formula device…maybe something like an exponential device can be hacked with the formula device as well?