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 both bands. The band on the left is described as an Octave Filter and the other, on the right, as a Resonant Note Filter. Each band also has a dynamics section, with Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Hold and Release controls, and this can go from expansion to, effectively, limiting.

You get an overview of all the bands in a spectrum analyser in the upper pane, with Octave Filters represented as vertical blue lines, and the Resonant Note Filters as green ones. Here, you see the EQ curve along with the input spectrum, and can toggle the output spectrum on/off as an overlay so you can quickly see what you’re doing to the signal in real time. Click on any octave in the spectrum analyser, and that octave’s filter pair is selected in the lower pane.

On the left of the GUI are three global control knobs: Tune Frequency, Master Transposition and View Filters. Turning Tune Frequency shifts the frequency of all the parametric bands simultaneously (ie. everything but the high‑/low‑pass filters), while turning Master Transposition shifts all of the Resonant Note Filters, effectively introducing an offset between these and the Octave Filters. Meanwhile, View Filters cycles the GUI view through the different filter pairs. There are also buttons to engage and solo each of the two visible EQ bands and to engage/bypass the dynamics processing, as well as the ability to load factory presets, or save/load your own.

If this all sounds conceptually simple, well it is... but that’s kinda the point here!

Hit Maker?

If this all sounds conceptually simple, well it is... but that’s kinda the point here! Drums can be incredibly complex instruments, with multiple resonances and overtones contributing to each drum’s unique character. Processing them to your satisfaction can take time, and it’s easy to take the processing too far — such that it’s often as easy to zero everything and start again as it is to trace your steps and fix what you got wrong. With DrumEQ, it’s super easy to dial in just as much snap or girth from a drum as you want, while keeping nasty side‑effects at bay.

The manual suggests what I agree is the best way to work: listen to your drum to hear where there’s a resonant peak that’s contributing something useful or unwanted, and loop that section. Playing the loop, turn the global Tune Frequency knob until you sit a blue line (ie. an Octave Filter) on that resonance, and then start twisting the controls in that octave, pulling the resonance and its harmonics up or down as you please to emphasise the character. Then bring the Resonant Note filters into play to shape the resulting sound, perhaps cutting ugly resonances after a boost. Finally, you can fine tune the individual filters if required, and if you want to, bring the dynamics section into play.

In practice it’s an extremely intuitive and effective tool for tailoring your close drum mics. I’m normally one for using ears before eyes, but using the spectrum analyser for the initial filter placement works very well — you can get a long way very quickly, before fine‑tuning by ear. My only note of caution is that those global filter positioning controls override anything you’ve set up differently in the individual bands, so you really do have to position those first, and if you make changes to the frequency of any individual bands, you might want to save a ‘safety preset’ for ease of recall.

The bottom line is that DrumEQ makes dialling in a huge and boomy or tight and snappy sound from your kick, snare and toms super easy and super fast. A great time‑saver that will probably lead you to more satisfying results!