"Focusing Equalizer nevertheless brims with character, making most other EQ plug-ins sound boring and dimensionless by comparison."

Electronic Musician. The ultimate resource for musicians who want to make better music, in the studio or onstage.

"Focusing Equalizer is the missing link! I love it. It's simple / easy to use and in the 'passive' position it creates a richness like nothing else. Absolutely wicked!"

Rob Chiarelli. Grammy awarded mix engineer: Madonna, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Quincy Jones, Luther Vandross.

"Overall, the Passive-Active Pack is a great piece of work from Softube, designed with vision but also with full regard for the sound of some pretty rare kit."

Computer Music. The world’s best selling magazine dedicated to making great music with your Mac or PC.

This Collection Includes Three Highly Useable Equalizer Models that are Unique to Softube

The Passive-Active Pack is a collection of three very different equalizers, each with its own character and quirks. The Passive and Active equalizers emulate real workhorse units, used on thousands of recordings from past to present. The Focusing Equalizer combines these with analog sounding saturation and a novel workflow.

Passive Equalizer

Passive Equalizer is modeled from a famous German passive three-band equalizer, and features a wide bandwidth and an unsurpassed clear and open sound. The low boost gives you a warm low end, perfect to fatten up a bass drum or bass guitar track. Cutting the highs gives you a very gentle 6 dB cut which allows you to remove highs in a very musical way. The high boost is open and crisp and breathes life into any track.

Key Features:

Three bands with an extremely wide and open sound
Excellent treble control without any "digital harshness"
Warm low end and a sparkling top

Active Equalizer

Active Equalizer is modeled from an active equalizer design made somewhere in the Swiss alps in the seventies. Whereas the Passive Equalizer is wide, clear and unintrusive, the Active Equalizer is more of a surgeon with a tight and focused sound. It's a highly useful problem solver when you need to get into details.

Key Features:

Tight and focused sounding filters
Low and High cut
Three parametric bands with selectable gain in 2dB steps (-/+ 16 dB), selectable frequency with overlapping, but non-interfering, bands (50-500 Hz, 380Hz-3.8kHz, 1.8-18kHz) and a choice between a narrow or wide peak (Q) for each band

Focusing Equalizer

Focusing Equalizer is an inspiring and untraditional take on the EQ concept, which is all made up by Softube. The Focusing Equalizer works in a very musical way and does a lot of thinking for you.

At first glance it may seem like you're sacrificing versatility by using an equalizer with a limited set of options - why use a three-band equalizer when you can use your digital equalizer with umpteen bands, continous gain, selectable Q and different curves all built in? Well, equalization is all about sound design. Having an equalizer where the designer has already made some of the choices four you is like having an experienced sound engineer helping out and giving you directions.

Key Features:

Inspiring, untraditional and very useful workflow
Choose between Passive or Active EQ character
Three-band EQ that automatically and musically changes with Low and High Cut
Built-in one-knob saturation with metering and selectable saturation type

System Requirements

macOS Big Sur 11, Monterey 12, Ventura 13
Windows 10 (64-bit), Windows 11
Softube account
iLok account
Computer with AU, VST, VST3, and/or AAX-compatible DAW host software
Internet access (for downloading installers and managing licenses)

Supported CPU Families

Apple macOS computers with Intel Core i3/i5/i7 or Apple silicon (M1 or newer) CPU. Apple silicon is supported natively.
Windows computers with quad-core Intel Core i3/i5/i7 or AMD quad-core processors with SSE 4.2 support.
Other Intel processors (Celeron, Pentium, and Xeon) are compatible if they support SSE 4.2 instructions.

Supported Host Software (DAW)

Any 64-bit VST, VST3, AU, or AAX (Pro Tools 11.0.2 or higher) compatible host application should work. However, due to plug-in host differences between DAWs—and our rigorous standards—Softube only officially test their plug-ins and instruments in the most recent versions of Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Cubase, Ableton Live, Studio One, and Reaper. Softube plug-ins are not tested regularly in non-listed systems. They will likely work if the system requirements are met. However, the manufacturer cannot guarantee a solution for issues in unsupported systems.

Softube strongly recommend using VST3, as some of their plug-ins have features that are not present in the older VST format. Supported sample rates: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, and 192 kHz, in both mono and stereo. The most recent maintenance release of your DAW application is recommended. AAX DSP is not currently in active development. TDM/VENUE/RTAS are no longer supported. See Legacy Installers.

Important Note: Make sure that you always use the latest iLok License Manager. It is not included in the Softube installer but can be downloaded from www.ilok.com