Topic: Preview: Zynewave zPEQ

Sorry I came unfashionably late to this party. Can I chime in here or is it too late?

– Include the entire z-series plugin suite with the installer.
Even if you end up making a massive suite with 10 plugins, that’ll be an extra, what, ONE megabyte? In this day and age where the average download is 75 MB, this shouldn’t be any concern.

– Make sure the plugins are only accessible to Podium.
In other words, only Podium should be able to use these plugins. This should also hold true for your “advanced” suite if you ever do that…it increases the value of Podium and promotes loyalty.

– Personal preference: one plugin that handles both mono and stereo.
Most of my plugins are like this, but the Waves suite for instance? There’s like 100 plugins in the plugin menu because they make m/m, m/s, s/s, s/m…it’s ridiculous and as I understand it, Logic for PC is the only sequencer that actually NEEDS seperate plugins for every stereo/mono situation.

– Slopes
It’s perfectly alright for the parametric bands to have no slope control (as long as they’re set to a musically useful slope), but the two shelves should definitely have adjustable slopes. These bands are typically “utility” bands, used to roll off muddiness in the bass and ear-bleed in the highs when used with extreme slopes like 36 dB/oct. But then when set to more musical slopes like 12 dB/oct they can be used to add sparkle or reduce presence.

– Number of bands
zPEQ would be useful for more things if it had more bands. I think 5 or 6 parametrics (plus the 2 shelves) would be the right number. Especially useful for EQing anything “live”…vocals, acoustic guitars, mic’d amps, mic’d drums, real room verb, anything like that. In my experience only synthesizers and VERY VERY well-recorded live stuff in very expensive studios are already EQd so well that you can just throw on a couple parametrics and a low-pass and you’re done. With vox especially I’m doing all kinds of notches and bells.

Anyways that’s my input, and I’m real gald Frits is finally doing some plugins. AWEsome.

I think 5 bands is fine for what it is – a sequencer based EQ this will come (free?) with Podium. If people want better, then they should buy a third party plug

5 bands is enough, IMO

edit: to add to my argument, if it’s to be used as a tracking EQ, I really think more than 5 bands is overkill anyway. If you need to EQ a sound with more than 5 bands while tracking, maybe you should choose another instrument to replace that part (or re-record it, or edit a synth patch)

just my opinion 🙂

@Zynewave wrote:

After some consideration, I think I’ll agree with you. The focus with the z plugins is to keep the complexity and number of parameters to a minimum. At some point I may make an advanced series (xPEQ?) which would include more bands, separate channel adjustments with band/channel locks, multi-channel support etc.

I like this approach.

I agree with Suges regarding making the z series dedicated to Podium. I’m not sure that I agree with a similar approach for an x series. If the quality of your plugins are on par with the quality of Podium, there could be a demand that is much broader than Podium’s base. However, if they were dedicated to Podium it might serve to bring people over to this fine product as well.

I think I’ve said it before (when I was 1st looking at Podium), but you have this thought out pretty well.

@Zynewave wrote:

Also, I’ve extended the zPEQ with a feature that allows Podium to reduce the plugin CPU usage when the plugin is processing silence.

Very good idea. That will be very useful, especially in larger projects.

I was writing a big long thing here like I usually do, but I ran out of time. Yeah 5 bands are okay for sure, we can easily insert another zPEQ on the same channel if we need more.

I think there should be a spectrum analyzer (switchable on/off) built into it too.

To Super Crunchy, I’ve never heard anyone say in my life 5 bands is “overkill”…maybe “good enough” but not overkill. Can’t always “choose another instrument to replace the part” for example, if I was mixing a Britney Spears record and HER VOCALS needed more than 5 bands to sound good (which is likely 😉 ) would you suggest replacing HER? Hahahh.

To summarize what I was writing, my suggestions are based on where I think Podium should be going. Even though Podium is $90 now, it’s way too good and too sophisticated and I think, targetted at pros, to be in this category for long. Besides, there’s no money in the ~$100 sequencer market unless you want to get in bed with a big distributor type of thing like Tracktion did.

I think the entire suite of plugins should have AWEsome signal processing, lots of features, and be Podium-only so that, once you get them all done and get Podium rounded out, you can jack up the price to like $800 and start selling it as a pro tool. It DOES compete with the “big boys” because, as I’ve said before, Podium’s marketing position (in my mind/view) is the answer to the discontinuation of Logic on the PC. Nothing else works like it, and it already has more “pro” functions than all the cheap sequencers.

But if your marketing position is more “a high quality, inexpensive sequencer”, then I understand all the decisions you’re making. If you haven’t made any decision about your marketing position, then the time to do that is NOW since you’re starting to work on “value-added features” (the plugin suite).

@suges wrote:

I think the entire suite of plugins should have AWEsome signal processing, lots of features, and be Podium-only so that, once you get them all done and get Podium rounded out, you can jack up the price to like $800 and start selling it as a pro tool.

While I agree that Podium shipping with the Zsuite is defintely worth more than £60 I think if the price soared to £400 a direct comparison will be made with Sonar5 and CubaseSX3. While Podiums engine is as solid as Live 5 in my opinion the only area that users and magazines will expect to see immediate development in will be good old Rewire, especially at that price point.

Everything from EXT (£27) to Nuendo has rewire. It’s ok now for a relatively small number of Podium users, but with a £400 price tag, rewire would be a bit of a surprise omission for many.

But if your marketing position is more “a high quality, inexpensive sequencer”, then I understand all the decisions you’re making.

I think this may be more in line with Frits thinking for now. Of course he can speak for himself, he may completely disagree! 😀

If you haven’t made any decision about your marketing position, then the time to do that is NOW since you’re starting to work on “value-added features” (the plugin suite)

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It’s a very interesting time for Podium. To have it’s own suite of plugs is a pretty massive achievement. 😉