Review: SweetEQ by Musik Hack

“Another EQ? Really?” That’s probably the first thought that crosses your mind when you see the title, but bear with me — this one is a little different. It’s a saturation plugin masquerading as an equaliser. Sure, we’ve seen this before with the likes of Spectre by Wavesfactory. But again — this one is different.

Musik Hack has developed some great plugins, including Masterplan, which finds its way onto a lot of my mixes. Their plugins are known to provide lots of improvement with very little fuss or complexity. So is SweetEQ by Musik Hack better than a bunch of other saturation plugins? Let’s find out! 

Most saturators add complexity. SweetEQ cuts through it: sweeten your low end, punch up the mids, bring out articulations, or add high-end sparkle.

Simple and Sweet  

SweetEQ’s interface is fun, quirky, simple, and efficient. It reminds me a lot of Baby Audio plugins in terms of the visual style. All of the controls are laid out clearly. It’s intuitive and it takes no time at all to understand the plugin controls. 

There are three sections in SweetEQ. The top section with the utility controls, the middle “analyser” section, and the bottom section, which has the four main controls with a mix knob in the middle. 

The utility section is pretty straightforward, with input and output controls and buttons for bypass, oversample, unity (gain match) and clip out. There’s also a preset menu with many options to choose from. 

The analyser section appears to be a standard (if colourful) spectrum analyser, but is actually organised by the Bark frequency scale. This means it displays sonic energy in groups that indicate how one sound may mask another. If two sounds have energy in the exact same bars, they’ll likely fight each other in the mix. Brighter, more opaque bars mean SweetEQ is adding energy there, while darker, more transparent bars indicate that SweetEQ is removing energy. Essentially, SweetEQ’s analyser is meant to be a more intuitive representation of sonic interactions, rather than a representation of raw data. There are also sneaky high-pass and low-pass filter controls hiding in the analyser that you can adjust from either end.

The main controls at the bottom of SweetEQ are pretty simple with labels that perfectly describe what each control does. Low, for instance, is low-end saturation. The pitch slider below adjusts the frequency around which the saturation is centred. Density is wide-band saturation that literally does what it says. Lift controls upper-mid range saturation, and Highs is self-explanatory. The calm slider under the highs can be used to smooth out the high-end saturation. 

Perfect for That Modern Sound 

So what does SweetEQ actually do? I think to call it an equaliser would be misleading, but Musik Hack still have chosen an apt name for the plugin. Let me explain: many producers view EQ primarily as a tool to sculpt sound, remove masking, etc. The secondary use is as a means to sweeten audio. That’s precisely what SweetEQ does. It’s only additive in nature and instead of providing a plain boring gain boost, it offers a bit more magic dust to help audio sources shine.

It’s ridiculously easy to use and quite difficult to make SweetEQ sound too bad. The low end is very similar to what a plugin like Rbass from Waves produces. I really appreciate Musik Hack adding the pitch control as well. Density adds nice full spectrum saturation that is gentle yet extremely impactful. It doesn’t seem to change the overall balance of the source significantly but does add heft.

It’s a similar story with Lift and Highs. The results sound very refined and rarely get harsh unless you push the effects to ridiculous levels. The calm control on the highs is quite helpful when you want to add a lot of saturation, but it starts to feel a little untamed.

This plugin works well whether you want to just add subtle effects to breathe a bit of life into a track or when you want to add lots of colour. Its a very easy and simple way to sweeten something without fuss, time, or significant effort.

Personal Thoughts

I’m sure many people will love the lift and highs features of SweetEQ, but I personally love the density feature. It rounds out thin sources very musically. Usually when you have thin, anaemic sources, they sound very papery when you add more mid- or high-frequency content. But SweetEQ solves this by providing the ability to round off the source before saturating, giving much better results.

I will say that I feel this plugin has a very specific sound of its own and it’s not a bad thing at all. It’s a very modern, pop-friendly sound. SweetEQ gives vocals that radio-ready pop finish that comes from good saturation and silky smooth high end. 

Buy SweetEQ from our friends at Thomann.

Learn more about SweetEQ at the Musik Hack site.