Vinyl Cutting EQ Inspires Plug-In

US HoRNet ElliptiQ, based on a tool to stop the needle jumping, addresses bass problems 25/04/18

HoRNet tells us that their ElliptiQ is an elliptic equalizer, a kind of tool that is a very special case of equalizer that has its roots in the vinyl cutting era. This is the story in their own words…

A tool like this is needed because if the bass frequencies goes in anti phase or the difference between left and right channel is too wide the needle may jump outside the groove in the final vinyl master, so an elliptic eq works on the difference of the two channels removing part of the low frequencies and preventing this problem.

While the vinyl is having a renaissance you can use a tool like this to reduce the stereo wideness of the bass in your tracks, both to fix problems if there is some kind of anti phase between left and right channel or to give more impact and presence to your bass making it mono.

An elliptic eq works on the side component of the signal, so first the plugin encodes the stereo signal in the Mid/Side matrix extracting the difference from the left and right channel, then the side part of the channel is filtered with a low shelf leaving intact only the mid part, after the reconstruction you get a stereo output reduced in wideness un the low frequencies.

HoRNet ElliptiQ allows you to filter out frequencies up to 2000Hz, so it extends well into the mid frequencies. To cut the stereo info you can use a Butterworth style low shelf with three different slopes: 12, 24 and 48 dB/octave so from a gentle curve to a very steep one.

EllpitiQ also offer a very unique “auto width” feature, when activated the difference between the mid and side informations is continuously evaluated and if the side is too high (hence the stereo width of the bass is too wide) it is automatically reduced to avoid creating issues and give more impact to the track.

The plugin also provides a very handy correlation meter divided into seven key frequencies so that you may spot issues with anti phase in different areas of the spectrum.

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