Newly unveiled by Plugin Alliance and designed for use in mastering applications is the Knif Audio Soma EQ plug-in. Created in cooperation with analog hardware designer Jonte Knif, the Soma plug-in utilizes TMT, Brainworx’s patented Tolerance Modeling Technology, for faithful re-creation of the Knif Soma hardware equalizer.
One of the quirks of conventional passive EQs is that changing the bandwidth can create an unwanted, unpredictable change in the amount of boost or cut that has been applied to the source. Soma is the first passive, tube-based EQ to employ “Real Q Adjustment,” which avoids this issue by allowing precise, accurate, and predictable changes in EQ regardless of bandwidth.
The Soma plug-in emulates the clean tone and natural characteristics of the tubes and transformers used in the hardware version, while providing independent controls for headroom, input and output gain, enabling fully-variable saturation when needed.
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Each channel of Soma features four EQ bands with independent bypass and stepped controls for frequency, gain and bandwidth. Precise gain adjustment is facilitated through use of 0.5dB steps from 0 to ±3 dB, and 1dB steps from ±3 to ±8 dB. Bandwidth can be adjusted in four steps from 0.5 to 1.5; settings for Shelf. Lowpass and Highpass filters are also included, offering a choice of 6 or 12 dB/octave for the highpass.
Additional tools include Mid-Side processing, a Mono Maker, and a Stereo Width control. The plug-in supports AAX DSP, AAX Native, AU, AAX AudioSuite, VST2, and VST3 formats, and runs on macOS 10.9 through 11, or Windows 7 through 10.
