Three-Body Technology Kirchhoff-EQ: Surgical Über-EQ for mixing and mastering
5,0 / 5,0 | 
From Three-Body Technology comes Kirchhoff-EQ, a new equalizer plug-in with some impressive specs. With 32 parametric bands, 11 filter types, dynamic EQing, analog-matched curves, and 30 modeled vintage equalizers, is Kirchhoff-EQ “the ultimate EQ plugin”, as the developer claims it is?
Three-Body Technology Kirchhoff-EQ
Chinese developer Three-Body Technology makes some pretty bold statements about Kirchhoff-EQ, the company’s new equalizer plug-in. The superlative-laden website claims that the EQ is a “next-generation standard” and that “equalizers will never be the same again”. What’s behind these statements, is Kirchhoff-EQ really that revolutionary, and could it give FabFilter Pro-Q and other top dogs a run for their money?
Kirchhoff-EQ: 32 bands, 11 filter types · Source: Three-Body Technology
Let’s start with the basics. With 32 parametric bands, Kirchhoff-EQ does give you a lot of flexibility to design your EQ curve and make precision adjustments during mixing and mastering. For each of these bands, you can choose from 11 filter types, which include low pass, high pass and band pass filters, bell, notch and shelving filters and a couple of extras like flat tilt, flat top and sword. And as if that wasn’t enough variety already, they’ve included 30 filter types modeled from vintage EQs using the Nyquist-matched Transform technology. You can mix and match filter types and models to your liking. Bands can be set to left/right or mid/side modes individually, for even more surgical flexibility.
30 modeled vintage filters · Source: Three-Body Technology
Kirchhoff-EQ offers four phase modes: zero-latency, analogue, linear phase and mixed phase. According to the developer, the latter uses zero-latency when the band frequency point is low, and seamlessly switches to linear phase when it is high. With increasing frequency, the phase response becomes more and more linear.
Dynamic processing
The similarities to Pro-Q continue with the dynamic EQ option. All filter types except the low pass, high pass, band pass and notch filters can be applied dynamically. This also applies to the vintage models. The dynamic behavior can be adjusted separately for the signal portions above and below the threshold. Three-Body Technology claims that its Harmonic Shifted Envelope technology, which shifts most of the energy of the odd harmonics to even harmonics, ensures a low noise floor and an “enhanced sound”.
Dynamic processing · Source: Three-Body Technology
Add to that some other goodies like “extreme CPU optimization”, GPU-accelerated GUI and a convenient Spectrum Grab function that allows you to simply grab onto a frequency in the analyzer, and you’ve got an equalizer plug-in that does pretty much anything you could possibly want. I’m a bit wary of the developer’s bold claims, but that could just be a cultural thing. If Kirchhoff-EQ delivers on these promises, it’s bound to become a compelling alternative to other big name EQs, especially since it’s surprisingly affordable considering the specs.
Price and compatibility
Three-Body Technology Kirchhoff-EQ is now available for an introductory price of USD 109. The regular price will be USD 189. A restricted demo version is available.
The plug-in requires macOS 10.9 or higher or Windows 7 or higher (64 bit only). It’s available in VST, VST3, AU and AAX formats.
More information about Kirchhoff-EQ
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