So far, Golden Equaliser provides an elegant yet comprehensive array of controls, but there's a clever twist to come: the band-pass filter sections can be globally set to one of four different EQ 'styles'. I found this really useful when trying out subtle mastering curves that might only be ☑dB at most, and therefore almost invisible on most other EQ displays. You can zoom into any area by drawing a box around it with your mouse or scroll it by mouse-dragging, or you can switch to Auto Scale to have the gain range adjust itself automatically so the current response fills the display in the vertical direction. There's a graphic display above the controls that shows each channel's frequency response in a different colour. Even on the full version this is modest, taking just 2 percent of my Pentium 4C 2.8GHz with all five bands active. The stereo channels can be adjusted together, separately, or in a linked fashion relative to their current settings, while mono and permanently linked stereo versions are also supplied, and have correspondingly less CPU overhead.

There are also separate low-cut and high-cut filters offering slopes of up to 48dB/octave, which can be handy for removing subsonic rubbish at the low end, for instance. Each band has a set of colour-coded rotary Gain, Frequency and Q controls, while the top and bottom bands can be switched to a shelving response. Golden Equaliser is a versatile five-band parametric design. These feature beautifully rendered 'brushed gold' front panels, 64-bit internal processing for a more 'analogue' sound with greater detail, and support for sample rates up to 192kHz. We reviewed Kjaerhus Audio's Classic Series freeware plug-ins in SOS March 2004, and they have now launched a shareware Gold Series.

Kjaerhus golden audio plugins