This week here at Sonic Academy we welcome back Rory from Hyper Production for a look at How To Use FabFilter Pro-Q 2.
FabFilter already set the bar high with Pro-Q back in 2010 and was a first choice EQ plugin for most producers, but not being complacent, FabFilter upped their game in version 2 offering a positive avalanche of new features which include EQ matching, Spectrum Grab, ‘tilt shelf’ bands, Natural Phase mode and automatic output gain adjustment.
In this two part course Rory firstly checks out the user interface and each of the functions before showing us how the plugin can be used in real world examples using vocals, drums and a synth lead line.
In terms of usability, functionality and sound, FabFilter Pro-Q 2 is hard to beat and with a reasonable price-tag it’s a difficult one to resist!
Thank you Rory, very useful and well explained tutorial really showing up the great features of Pro Q2, probably justifying the Fab Filter plugins pricing policy
By the way it would have been awesome to ask Fab Filter if they could join with Sonic Academy or Hyper Production to offer some coupon or discount for Sonic Academy subscribers - It would be interesting to see this happening more often when offering specific plugins only tutorials. It would really add value to Sonic Academy subscriber’s features & benefits I think.
One additional tip that sprung to mind watching this (in my eyes the best feature of the plug in). In the Spectrum Grab mode once the spectrum freezes (turns purple) you can just grab one of the peaks and boost or cut it, with ProQ automatically creating a bell and adjusting the Q. I find this saves loads of time and means that you can be super accurate in reducing peaks.
Also it might be worth covering the EQ Match functionality on a future tutorial. This is a really easy to use starting point for getting a frequency balance in line with professional productions.
All FabFilter plug-ins are available in VST, VST3, Audio Units, AAX Native and AudioSuite formats (all both 64-bit and 32-bit), as well as RTAS (32-bit only).
