Low Steep and High Steep Buttons in the Studio EQ

    Best I can tell, having the Low Steep and High Steep buttons "ON" when trying to do Hi Pass/Lo Pass cutoffs gives the least amount of filtering whereas having those buttons "OFF" gives you the greater filtering of highs and lows...at least that's what I'm hearing. Is that right? There may be some tightening of the low end though when I press the "ON" button for the Low Steep.


    What is their purpose?

    From the Main Manual:

    Studio Equalizer

    The Studio Equalizer is a full, 4-band parametric equalizer, similar to those found in professional mixing desks or digital workstations. It offers one low shelf, one high shelf and two peak equalizer bands. All four bands have adjustable frequency, and the two peak EQ bands come with adjustable bandwidth or Q-factor. The low and high shelf filters can be switched between 1st and 2nd order.

    Quote from Burkhard

    I picked this from the OS 8.1 changelog:


    added: new parameters Steep Low and Steep High in Studio EQ allowing to switch filter from 1st to 2nd order

    I’ve read it too but still don’t understand what 1st to 2nd order means and how it affect the tones.

    In electrical engineering filter terms, 1st and 2nd order generically means how many circuit elements were used to make the filter. Generically each element should add a sharper cutoff. Something like 6 dB/Octave or 20 dB/Decade. So every time you double the frequency you will get 6dB cut or about half the amplitude.


    See WIKI:

    Wikipedia Roll Off


    Here is the high frequency cut (Roll off) for a first order Low Pass filter.



    You can see that from 10 Hz to 100 Hz (a decade) we are losing 20 dB of signal.


    If this were a 2nd order filter you would get 40 dB of loss for every decade of frequency.

    thanks! So it’s like a « cut more » :)

    Low Steep is less "steep" and High Steep is more dramatic & steeper cut off. Low steep would be like a shelf filter with a lower "Q" and High steep like a shelving filter with a high "Q" and steep curve. At least that's how I see it.