# Is Hornet Total EQ a good EQ to use?



## Jackal_King (Jun 10, 2021)

For anyone that currently or has used Hornet Total EQ, is it a good alternative to FabFilter Pro-Q 3? I want to eventually get the Pro-Q 3 when a deep sale for it is happening (maybe Black Friday). But until then, Hornet's EQ really caught my attention after watching a few videos on it. And how well does Total EQ work as a surgical EQ compared Pro-Q 3?


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## doctoremmet (Jun 10, 2021)

It is a damn fine EQ. Nuff said. Make sure to also get Hornet Tape (it is great).


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## Markrs (Jun 10, 2021)

I bought it too, I loved the idea you could add saturation to just a frequency. Plus, it does a lot of what other dynamic EQs can do.


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## doctoremmet (Jun 10, 2021)

Also: Waves F6


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## José Herring (Jun 10, 2021)

Jackal_King said:


> For anyone that currently or has used Hornet Total EQ, is it a good alternative to FabFilter Pro-Q 3? I want to eventually get the Pro-Q 3 when a deep sale for it is happening (maybe Black Friday). But until then, Hornet's EQ really caught my attention after watching a few videos on it. And how well does Total EQ work as a surgical EQ compared Pro-Q 3?


At only 14 Euros. I will buy it now and let you know.


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## doctoremmet (Jun 10, 2021)

José Herring said:


> At only 14 Euros. I will buy it now and let you know.


Bet you’ll love it


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## Markrs (Jun 10, 2021)

I have quite a few things from them. The HATEFISh RhyGenerator is nice, for Euclidean sequancing. I also recently got ThirtyOne MK2 and Mastertool (was a bit unstable at the time) and thought both sounded good.

I use LU Meter MK2, VU Meter MK2 and TheNormalizer all the time to help with Gainstaging.


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## SupremeFist (Jun 10, 2021)

José Herring said:


> At only 14 Euros. I will buy it now and let you know.


Did the same since I didn't have a dedicated dynamic EQ. Looks nice!


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## Markrs (Jun 10, 2021)

Hornet does 60% off sales also throughout the year and on Black Friday do 70% off.


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## doctoremmet (Jun 10, 2021)

50% off is like their regular price. I remember buying dozens of plugins for mere dollars each, and being astonished by their quality afterwards.


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## sostenuto (Jun 10, 2021)

@ $14. easy to try /buy /compare ..... yet have PA - bx_dyn EQ V2 which should be equally  capable ?


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## doctoremmet (Jun 10, 2021)

Markrs said:


> I use LU Meter MK2, VU Meter MK2 and TheNormalizer all the time to help with Gainstaging.


Yes. This was my “in” with Hornet too. I came for those and ended up buying EQs all over the place


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## José Herring (Jun 10, 2021)

I got it and I'm testing it. In my opinion of you have Hornet it would be tough to justify getting Fab-Filter. There are some sonic differences. Out of the box Fab Filter sounded a bit smoother on strings on the high end. But then I fiddled a little bit more with Hornet and it became just as smooth. The EQ Loudness makes all the difference in that EQ. The fact that you can add some saturation as mentioned is a plus point. 

If all I had for a surgical graphic style EQ was Hornet I'd be happy enough. 

The only thing that I should mention is that I'm fairly new to ProQ as well. Only just recently got it and only use it occasionally.

But for 15 Euros this EQ is a steal. Man people we are so lucky. Feel sorry for developers because the quality is getting so high on new plugins that are so inexpensive compared to what we were paying even 5 years ago.


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## Markrs (Jun 10, 2021)

doctoremmet said:


> Yes. This was my “in” with Hornet too. I came for those and ended up buying EQs all over the place


I think we both got those at the same time as I think we were commenting on a thread when someone posted about Hornet and how cheap they were but very good quality.


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## doctoremmet (Jun 10, 2021)

Markrs said:


> I think we both got those at the same time as I think we were commenting on a thread when someone posted about Hornet and how cheap they were but very good quality.


That’s RIGHT! Haha - cool!


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## José Herring (Jun 10, 2021)

After working with it some more, maybe FabFilter has just a slight advantage at ablity to retain a slightly more pleasing sound overall when in use and at times can sound a tiny bit fuller. But both are really top shelf EQ's that would do equally well.


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## Markrs (Jun 10, 2021)

José Herring said:


> After working with it some more, maybe FabFilter has just a slight advantage at ablity to retain a slightly more pleasing sound overall when in use and at times can sound a tiny bit fuller. But both are really top shelf EQ's that would do equally well.


On top of almost comparable quality, when you add in the Analog and saturation option either on the full EQ or just on a node, it really is stellar value.


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## Jackal_King (Jun 10, 2021)

Markrs said:


> On top of almost comparable quality, when you add in the Analog and saturation option either on the full EQ or just on a node, it really is stellar value.


When would it be useful to use the analog option? And with that EQ having a saturation option built in, would it still be necessary for me to use a secondary saturator during the mastering stage like Kramer or Klanghelm IVGI? The music I'm working on is cinematic orchestra.


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## Markrs (Jun 10, 2021)

Jackal_King said:


> When would it be useful to use the analog option? And with that EQ having a saturation option built in, would it still be necessary for me to use a secondary saturator during the mastering stage like Kramer or Klanghelm IVGI? The music I'm working on is cinematic orchestra.


I find using saturation or using an analog always quite interesting. For me it helps fill out the sound but you might not want that everywhere especially if it quite strong. I would maybe limit strong saturation to an instrument. But on the master bus maybe use some to help glue, like you would with gentle compress and reverb and give that fuller sound. To be honest to do what what sound good rather than a hard and fast rule.

You don't need saturation on an EQ given you can use a plugin to do that. However it is a nice feature to have.


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## José Herring (Jun 10, 2021)

After working with them some more I realized they are both fuckin' great EQ's. Damn, if this stuff gets any better I may never get the opportunity to leave my home studio ever again.


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## antret (Jun 10, 2021)

I’ve just stopped by to share my love for this EQ (I own just about all the Hornet plugs) in case the quality to price ratio still wasn’t clear.


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## doctoremmet (Jun 10, 2021)

Jackal_King said:


> When would it be useful to use the analog option? And with that EQ having a saturation option built in, would it still be necessary for me to use a secondary saturator during the mastering stage like Kramer or Klanghelm IVGI? The music I'm working on is cinematic orchestra.


I use saturation on inserts (by using Kazrog, Waves, IKM Saturator-X, tape etc.) AND on the master bus too (VSM3, HG2, IKM tape).


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## Trash Panda (Jun 10, 2021)

Jackal_King said:


> For anyone that currently or has used Hornet Total EQ, is it a good alternative to FabFilter Pro-Q 3? I want to eventually get the Pro-Q 3 when a deep sale for it is happening (maybe Black Friday). But until then, Hornet's EQ really caught my attention after watching a few videos on it. And how well does Total EQ work as a surgical EQ compared Pro-Q 3?


From a functionality standpoint Hornet Total EQ checks most of the same boxes FF ProQ3 does. Off the top of my head, ProQ3 adds match EQ and L/R EQ and has a nicer GUI than Total EQ. Total EQ gets the band level analog mode and saturation options that ProQ3 doesn’t provide. Izotope’s Neutron 3 EQ does most of these things too.

Sonically, you’ll hear opinions go both ways, but I think most of it is confirmation bias for those who drop the cash on Fabfilter vs those who save the cash and go with Hornet. Either one should be a good buy.

I personally like the workflow of Neutron 3 over either option because I’m lazy and appreciate the Learn function finding resonant frequencies for me instead of frequency surfing.


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## Trash Panda (Jun 10, 2021)

Two other Hornet plugins that don’t get mentioned enough.

ThirtyOne, who’s auto EQ mode makes almost any instrument level track sound better with its AutoEQ function. It’s intended to be used as a master bus plugin, but I find it great as a track or group bus insert. Might want to stick to static AutoEQ mode over constant if you use it as a track insert though. I think one time it didn’t make the instrument I used it on sound better out of the hundreds of times I’ve used it as an insert effect.

The other is MultiComp Mk2. Not only does it give you 5 compressor emulations in one that all sound good, it also has automatic threshold, input and output leveling for proper gain staging. It usually gets pretty close to what my ears, SmartComp or Neutron land on, so it’s done wonders for streamlining my workflow.


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## Markrs (Jun 10, 2021)

Trash Panda said:


> Izotope’s Neutron 3 EQ does most of these things too.


I use Neutron 3 advanced as well. Though my recent go to has been Melda AutodynamicEQ, which is very nice, especially the follow harmonic feature and it also has match EQ.

If I don't need dynamic I often just use MEqualizer, and keep it simple.


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## NeonMediaKJT (Jun 10, 2021)

my only gripe is I can't seem to increase the sensitivity with my mousewheel when editing a band. Anyone else?


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## sostenuto (Jun 10, 2021)

Easy to add several Hornet FX, not so easy for FF $$, but as other providers creep in  _ fairly confident that massive toolbox of PA plugins covers all of these bases, quite well. 

_OTH, truly open to critique and willing to add superior vst where clearly deficient._


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## Trash Panda (Jun 10, 2021)

NeonMediaKJT said:


> my only gripe is I can't seem to increase the sensitivity with my mousewheel when editing a band. Anyone else?


I run into the same with that. If you submit an email to Sevario, he’ll probably adjust it or add a sensitivity control in the next update.


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## Tralen (Jun 10, 2021)

I would like to call attention to the very comprehensive walkthroughs Saverio always puts out.


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## Jackal_King (Jun 11, 2021)

Thank you all for the input on Hornet. I'm going to try it and also do the free trial with Pro-Q 3, Saturn 2 and Pro-R. FabFilter seems to have a ton of features that I'm not sure would be necessary for me to use for orchestra music. From many of the tutorials I've seen, it looks like that most of the features would benefit best for vocals, drums and hip-hop music. But I'm sure I'll do a follow up post this weekend with questions on FabFilter.


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## tomosane (Jun 11, 2021)

I haven't used this EQ (nor Pro-Q for that matter) but generally speaking the market for parametric EQs seems totally over-saturated, personally I'm using Melda's MDynamicEQ but even that one is arguably overkill for basic EQ tasks compared to basically any stock EQ on a modern DAW.

Dan Worrall has a number of great videos on this subject, including this one:


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## NeonMediaKJT (Jun 11, 2021)

toneboosters eq 4 is pretty good if you want a cheap one.


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## José Herring (Jun 11, 2021)

tomosane said:


> I haven't used this EQ (nor Pro-Q for that matter) but generally speaking the market for parametric EQs seems totally over-saturated, personally I'm using Melda's MDynamicEQ but even that one is arguably overkill for basic EQ tasks compared to basically any stock EQ on a modern DAW.
> 
> Dan Worrall has a number of great videos on this subject, including this one:



The channel strip in Cubase is solid but other stock plugins in Cubase add a ton of latency. So weird because you think that they would be the most efficient but they aren't. So generally I tend to stay away from the stock plugins beyond the basic channel strip which has been nearly the same since SX3.


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## José Herring (Jun 11, 2021)

NeonMediaKJT said:


> toneboosters eq 4 is pretty good if you want a cheap one.


Ah yes, memories. Actually back in the day when I had no money for all the expensive plugins toneboosters and Voxengo were all I could get. I still think the Tonebooster Limiter and Voxengo Elephant limiter and the Voxengo EQ are some of the best and most transparent plugins.


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## el-bo (Jun 11, 2021)

NeonMediaKJT said:


> toneboosters eq 4 is pretty good if you want a cheap one.


Generally sticking with Logic's EQ's, these days. But if I were ever looking for a 3rd-party option, this would likely be it. Will demo the Hornet one, though.


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## el-bo (Jun 11, 2021)

el-bo said:


> Will demo the Hornet one, though.


Probably shouldn't have. Some horribly twitchy controls and buggy behaviour, eventually leading to me having to close session to regain control of my pointer/cursor.


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## José Herring (Jun 11, 2021)

el-bo said:


> Probably shouldn't have. Some horribly twitchy controls and buggy behaviour, eventually leading to me having to close session to regain control of my pointer/cursor.


Wow. Totally rock solid here. What machine are you running?


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## el-bo (Jun 11, 2021)

José Herring said:


> Wow. Totally rock solid here. What machine are you running?


2012 Macbook Pro. But I've not experienced anything like it in any other plugin. 

When I have a few moments, I'll set up a screen-recording and see if I can get a repeat show happening. If so, I'll send it to the developer.


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## vitocorleone123 (Jun 13, 2021)

From what I’ve read, the best sounding EQ - except maybe for the MAAT ones - is CraveEQ. Nothing is as usable as ProQ3 that I’ve seen, but ProQ3 simple sounds great - not “the best” for everything.

If looking for inexpensive, I’d probably go with NovaGE before anything else, or SlickEQ plus Nova.


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## doctoremmet (Jun 13, 2021)

vitocorleone123 said:


> the best sounding EQ


Explain please what “the best” means?

The best = the cleanest?
The best = “creamy” 
The best = emulates classic model X, Y, Z most accurately?
The best = the most transparent?
The best according to who? A huge sample set? A famous mixer? A huge statistically safe and sound survey group?
The best in specific use case X, Y or Z?
The best in all of the above use cases?

...

(sorry hehe, but I genuinely think “the best” is kind of a useless adjective)


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## vitocorleone123 (Jun 13, 2021)

doctoremmet said:


> Explain please what “the best” means?
> 
> The best = the cleanest?
> The best = “creamy”
> ...


I’ve not tried it, because I’m happy with ProQ3 (I also rarely boost frequencies dramatically as opposed to cut). I’m only relaying what I’ve read, fwiw. It’s not an EQ a lot of people seem to have heard about, so I wanted to mention it in case anyone wants to demo it. The price is $69.

It’s not an emulation. It’s transparent, I believe- supposedly more transparent than most any other EQ, including ProQ3.


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## vitocorleone123 (Jun 13, 2021)

Jackal_King said:


> Thank you all for the input on Hornet. I'm going to try it and also do the free trial with Pro-Q 3, Saturn 2 and Pro-R. FabFilter seems to have a ton of features that I'm not sure would be necessary for me to use for orchestra music. From many of the tutorials I've seen, it looks like that most of the features would benefit best for vocals, drums and hip-hop music. But I'm sure I'll do a follow up post this weekend with questions on FabFilter.


I have no idea where you get those genres being what Fabfilter is best for. They’re digital tools for ANY genre. ProQ3 is simply the best combination of ease of use, powerful features, and sound quality on the market (some other EQs may be better in features or sound quality) - and is one of the best plugins ever made to date.

Saturn 2 can very quickly target and shape saturation or distortion at specific frequencies - something I’d think very valuable for orchestral, where you may not want everything saturated, but might want to saturate a bit of the high frequencies to reduce transients without EQ or other plugins impacting dynamics. I like it’s saturation better than heavy distortion (Blue Cats Destructor is a better distortion unit). If you can get Blackbox HG2MS for $50 at some point when it isn’t ridiculously overpriced, it can also target a frequency and sound great doing it (subtle saturation to moderate distortion), but it’s not as visually easy to use as Saturn 2.

ProR… well, many people love it, and I really wanted to, but I just didn’t like the way it sounded. At all. I’ll definitely try a v2 if/whenever that happens. I think there’s better for less money, or a lot better for a bit more money.


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## Tralen (Jun 13, 2021)

If transparent EQ is in order, it is wise to consider a nice tilt EQ.

Audiothing's Tilt is on sale for just $9.


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## Phillip Dixon (Jun 13, 2021)

WahWah. Surprisingly good. Bunged on real strat


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## vitocorleone123 (Jun 13, 2021)

Tralen said:


> If transparent EQ is in order, it is wise to consider a nice tilt EQ.
> 
> Audiothing's Tilt is on sale for just $9.


I haven’t tried it, but TBProAudio has a free tilt EQ, and Fuse Audio has a free bandall.


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## AkashicBird (Jun 15, 2021)

How do you think Mequalizer compares to these ones? I'm a beginner but it serves me well and I plan on switching to their paying EQ one of these days.


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## el-bo (Jun 15, 2021)

AkashicBird said:


> How do you think Mequalizer compares to these ones? I'm a beginner but it serves me well and I plan on switching to their paying EQ one of these days.


At this point in the 'game' it'd likely very rare to find a bad delay, reverb, eq or compressor etc. and that includes those that come free with most DAW. The differentiators are in certain functionality and workflows.

In the world of fx, a lot of plugins are modelled on older, more limited units that, due to the inherent limitations of hardware, often had very specific broad approaches to curves and sweet-spots. This meant that very 'musical' moves could be made, with very few knobs and very little visual feedback. Because of this, many units have become famous for a certain character that they can impart, or functionality they have. Two examples of this might be the LA-2A, which has very few controls, allowing pretty easy access to it's characteristic smoothness - something that helped it gain infamy as a vocal compressor. The other would be the Pultec eq's, with their push/pull, boost/cut functionality.

Mequalizer, like the other eq's mentioned in this thread, takes more of a Swiss-army-knife, jack-of-all-trades approach to eq. While character can be imparted using saturation etc. the general idea is for these eq's to offer a more 'transparent' (Surgical, even) approach to eq. These are the eq's you'd turn to for corrective purposes e.g the pin-pointing and removing of errant, resonant peaks. Some of these more surgical eq's will even allow certain nodes to act dynamically to the incoming signal. Either way, these models tend to allow much finer sculpting of the frequency spectrum.

Even though these types of eq take such a different approach, it's usually possible to create similar curves as the 'character' eq's; it just might take a bit more time to get there.

Also, just to point out: Everything I've said generally applies to other plugins, as well. The LA-2A might have become the de-facto vocal compressor, but most compressors can be tailored to compress vocals. You'll also often find EQ and compressors (and reverbs and delays) that include many different algorithms, which allow users to benefit from the character of famous, older machines.

So, really...it's about your preferred workflow for each 'job'.

Other considerations include UX/GUI. And this is where Melda, in particular, inspires a love/hate type of sentiment. For me, personally, their version of a particular effect in question needs to be either spectacular or unique, before I'd consider the visual affront that is their GUI. There are other reasons I avoid them, but that's not worth going into, here.

All this to say, that if you gel with the workflow of Mequaliser and if nothing particularly negative stands out in the sound, then just keep using it. If I remember correctly, it comes for free and can be updated for very little cost. If you do want to experiment with some other options, before paying to upgrade, then there are a few good suggestions in this thread, most of which are also 'cheap'/good value. And there are a ton of free/cheap character Eq effects, if you want to try adding that kind of workflow to your toolbox.

Personally, I tend, for the sake of ease, to use Logic's stock eq's and compressors...for most things. I also like (but don't currently use so much), channel-strips, due to the workflow benefits they afford. Were I to buy a new standalone EQ, it'd likely be from Toneboosters:






ToneBoosters | Audio Plug-ins | Equalizer


Pro-grade audio software




www.toneboosters.com


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## AkashicBird (Jun 16, 2021)

Fantastic answer, thanks.
Yeah people seem to hate on Melda and I agree their GUI is not the most user friendly but I kinda started with their free suite so I got used to it. So yeah I'll probably stick to this (and TDR Nova, I need to start using this more, might get the GE edition, it's a really good EQ plus it's got dynamic bands) it's probably not doing worse than other transparent EQs.


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## doctoremmet (Jun 16, 2021)

Big Melda user here. The various paid versions of their equalizer range serve me well. The cool thing about Melda is that it basically just works, but always offers fantastic oversampling - so it sounds best in class - and if need be you’re able to dig down DEEP. And I’m totally digging the GUI. 

MCharmVerb, MConvolutionEZ, MEqualiser, MTurboCompLE (which was a Plugin Boutique freebie a while ago), MTurboEQ (which was an ADSR freebie last month) are fantastic plugins. Free. Incredible really.

Also: for surgical “non character” EQ any modern DAW should have you covered. So a lot of our options these days boil down to “all are pretty good - pick the one that suits your workflow, taste / inspires you most”


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## Trash Panda (Jul 2, 2021)

As I’m working on building out a massive Infinite Series template that has Precedence, Breeze and an EQ on every channel, I’ve come to realize my only major gripe with Hornet Total EQ is the CPU usage compared to ProQ3 and Neutron 3. It’s averaging around 2-5% CPU load per channel on my Surface Book 2, which is fine for smaller projects, but for a big template, 0-1% CPU usage on Neutron and ProQ3 are a big advantage over Total EQ in my eyes.


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