Steinberg Q-Metric

Installation of the Steinberg Q-Metric plug-in wasn't a hard process at all and was one that was pretty pain free.  The whole installation process only took a few minutes and I was able to use the plug-in fairly quickly from the beginning of installation.  The interface of the software is a bit more complex than most software EQs, but this isn't to say that it is really complex at all, there is just more going on than in most other EQs.  It has 7 bands - three mid range bands, a high and low cut and high and low shelve.  The mid range bands have knobs for frequency, Q, and gain, while the other bands don't have knobs for Q but have the others.  The plug-in also has features for 'max quality,' double sampling and overall volume level.  Everything is laid out conveniently and a manual isn't needed in my opinion because of this easy to follow interface.


SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I've never had any troubles running a few of these at a time, although I haven't ever had a need to use more than three or four at a time.  While I no longer use this plug-in in my set up, I used it for a good while in Cubase SX that I ran with a Hewlett Packard lap top that had a 3.0 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM.  Since Steinberg makes both this plug-in and Cubase SX, the compatibility was great and it always ran quite smoothly for me. 


OVERALL OPINION

While I liked using this plug-in a lot, I haven't used it since I got my Pro Tools rig because there isn't a version of this plug-in that can be used in Pro Tools.  This being said, if you are running a Steinberg based sequencer like Cubase or Nuendo, I would definitely recommend looking into Steinberg Q-Metric because it is a good sounding plug-in that is easy to use and compatible with these pieces of software.  However, if you have another sequencer of Pro Tools, I would look elsewhere as I don't know how well this would transfer to another type of software if it would at all...