AIXDSP DrumEQ

Could this clever, labour‑saving plug‑in change the way you mix drums?

AIXDSP have been around for a few years now but when I first tried out their debut plug‑ins, although I found them impressive, they didn’t feel quite finished, so I decided to await updates before reviewing them. Their offering has since matured considerably, and they now have a range of thoughtfully conceived EQ, dynamics and reverb plug‑ins, including several that are aimed primarily (though not exclusively) at drum processing. These include a multiband gate, a multiband compressor and a dynamic EQ, but while each has some commendable features, by far their most impressive offering to me is DrumEQ, which is the focus of this review and is available separately and, along with Multiband Gate and Intuition Compressor, as part of their Drum Producer Pack.

What It Is

At heart, there’s some fairly conventional technology behind DrumEQ and, technically, it’s possible to achieve pretty much anything you can with DrumEQ using conventional EQs and dynamics processors. But the way in which these technologies have been combined in this implementation makes DrumEQ a very different proposition to any other plug‑in I’ve used.

In addition to separate sweepable, fixed‑slope high‑ and low‑pass filters, there are 16 bands of fully parametric EQ here, each with gain, Q and frequency controls. But unlike in most EQs, these are organised in complementary pairs. You can see one pair at a time in the main part of the GUI, along with all the controls for...