Overview
Each band is a bell or a shelf that listens to its own range and moves only when it gets loud: cut a boomy note only when it booms, a harsh vowel only when it bites, or bring out a snare only when it hits.
Getting started
- Double-click a point to turn its band on.
- Drag the point to the problem frequency and down for a cut; set Threshold so it acts only on the loud moments.
Controls
| Band 1 to 4 | Choose the band below. |
| On, shape | On or off; Bell, Low shelf, High shelf. |
| Frequency, Q | Where and how wide. |
| Threshold | How loud its part must get. |
| Range | How far it moves: down to cut, up to bring out. |
Settings
The gear in the header opens the settings panel; it covers the lower panel until the gear is clicked again.
| Attack, Release | Shared by the four bands: how fast they move and come back. |
What the screen shows
Each band at its full range, dashed; the curve the bands make now, in orange; drag the points.
Tips
- All bands start off, so the plugin changes nothing until you turn one on.
Technical notes
- Each band listens to the input, not to what the other bands did.
Common to every plugin
| The header | Every window opens with the same header. On the left a dot-matrix display shows the main reading large and the details under it; text that does not fit scrolls. Next to it a hint with a coloured dot says what the plugin is doing or what to do next. On the right: Undo and Redo arrows (up to 100 steps of everything done in the window), the Bypass button, and the gear, which opens the plugin's settings panel when it has one. |
| Bypass | With Bypass lit, the plugin lets the sound through untouched. It is the same switch as your DAW's own bypass for the plugin, so either can be used and automated. The input is held back by exactly the plugin's latency, so the timing stays right, and switching fades over 10 ms, so it never clicks. Bypass is not part of Undo. |
| Input and Output | Most plugins have a column on the right with a pair of VU meters for the input and the output, each with its own gain knob (plus or minus 24 dB). Analog shows the classic VU scale, dBFS the digital one. A click on a meter opens a large view of it. The CLIP lamp lights when a sample reaches 0 dBFS. |
| Knobs | Drag a knob up or down to turn it. Knobs that go both ways, or that have a natural middle, catch briefly at their centre. A double-click returns a knob to its default. |
| About and the demo | A click on the xsidfx logo in the footer opens About. In the demo version the plugin's name ends in (demo), its settings are not saved with your project, and About opens each time the window does. |
