Is Soothe2 worth twice the price of DSEQ 2?

[Joseph SwensonParticipant]

Hi All,

I've recently "discovered" the Soothe 2 plugin.  Sorry I missed @Warren's give-away last fall.  A little late to the show!  $219 is pretty steep these days for a plugin when you think of all the great deals out there from Waves and ValHalla, for example. I needed help with a wonky violin recording and spent several hours dialing in on offending frequencies and notching them out with Cubase Frequency 2 dynamic EQ.  WHen I heard about this "magic" plugin that is designed to remove resonances from a track I was really excited to try it out.  I'm finishing up my first week on the 20 day free trial.  However the $219 price tag had me taken aback just a bit.  I then discovered DSEQ 2 which has been around a bit longer and advertises to do the same thing and for half the price.  So I put them both to work on my wonky violin track.

Here is the "raw" recording - meaning unprocessed for resonances.  It has some compression and EQ and for overall tone and balance.
(Sorry for the pan right of the track.  Took these directly from my mix)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hwzcrbxrro2z1va/Sometimes-%20Violin%20Raw.mp3?dl=0

Download the wave file if you want to take a stab at it, here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zp30pvc5uv1ogic/Sometimes-%20Violin%20Raw.wav?dl=1

My first attempt at fixing this track was using the Steinberg Frequency 2 dynamic EQ in Cubase 11.
It does a pretty good job but took some time to set up. It's of course up to your ear how much of each offending frequency you want to suppress.

Here is the processed track using Frequency 2.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmubjd1n8ullia3/Sometimes-%20Violin%20Freq2.mp3?dl=0

Here's a shot of the Plugin and the frequencies I cut.

Plugin in action:

With Soothe 2 as with DSEQ 2 there is a learning curve to get the plugins to do the job you want.  Spent a few days looking at both plugins. Soothe 2 has a slicker UI with only 6 filter bands with a maximum sensitivity dynamic range of 12 dB and maximum Q value of 10.  Soothe 2 has a "Soft" and "Hard" mode as well. Soft is more subtle. Hard mode is for more edgy approaches to removing harsh peaks like the one I have in this violin track.  Comparing this DSEQ 2 which has 12 filter bands where you can set the sensitivity to 30 and a maximum Q value 30, you have the potential of getting much more "specific" with DSEQ 2 and with a much higher relative sensitivity in the filter bands.  It also has a learn function which I tried to utilize.  It doesn't do that well on setting the threshold and you still need manual adjustment depending upon the section of the track you used the "learn" function on.

Here is the Soothe 2 processed track (soft mode):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c19sas87fb8pzuk/Sometimes-%20Violin%20Soothe2-Soft.mp3?dl=0
Here is the Soothe 2 processed track (hard mode):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwq2houxxd9uq9s/Sometimes-%20Violin%20Soothe2-Hard.mp3?dl=0

And the Soothe 2 settings:

For the hard mode setting, I left everything as is and just toggled to "hard"... Its definitely a more aggressive approach.

Finally I tested DSEQ 2 trying to reproduce the same filter curve as in Soothe 2.  I only adjusted the sensitivity and Q value to get what sounded best on the 2.5 and 3KHz bands.

Here is the track processed with DSEQ 2:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mp52f1ljfpzzr5y/Sometimes-%20Violin%20DSEQ2.mp3?dl=0

The settings I used are shown below:

This shows the plugin set to listen to the Delta which is what you are removing from the signal.

Here is the Delta of the violin track:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4yog672vjr7rjxf/Sometimes-%20Violin%20DSEQ2_Delta.mp3?dl=0

Both plugins do a good job on the track.  The question is whether Soothe 2 is worth the extra $100.

Let me know what you think, or try the plugins yourself to see if you can get a better result.

Cheers,
Joe

• This topic was modified 2 years ago by Joseph Swenson.
• This topic was modified 2 years ago by Joseph Swenson.
• This topic was modified 2 years ago by Joseph Swenson.
• This topic was modified 2 years ago by Joseph Swenson.

[Joseph SwensonParticipant]

Here is another useful review of the two plugins:
https://audiosex.pro/threads/oeksound-soothe2-vs-tbproaudio-dseq-edit-2020-04-22.53224/

[Joseph SwensonParticipant]

Aftrr more testing I'm going to say "No!"... Just bought DSEQ!

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