The fine folks at Audio Plugin Deals are giving away NoiseAsh’s Backs EQ for free for a limited time, saving you $90 from the retail price.
Backs EQ is a 64-bit-only macOS and Windows release for VST3, AAX, and AU formats.
The equalizer combines the classic Baxandall curves with a modern feature set to create a musical and versatile sound.
Peter Baxandall published the Baxandall tone circuit in 1952 and made it free for the world to use.
The circuit then made its way to countless audio systems globally, such as the bass and treble controls on many stereos.
The Baxandall shelving curve has a gentle slope that sounds pleasingly smooth and natural for many applications.
The Baxandall curve can be contrasted with a shelving EQ, such as the Pultec EQP-1A, which has a steeper curve.
OK so enough of the history lesson, what does the Backs EQ deliver for us bedroom producers?
NoiseAsh’s take on the classic EQ provides the smooth, warm sound you’d expect to hear from a vintage circuit.
The plugin allows producers to shape tracks with wide EQ bands, and add saturation with the built-in tube-style preamp.
The Backs EQ has the classic shelving tones of low shelf, high shelf, high-pass filter and low-pass filter.
It also adds a powerful mid-band for more nuance in your tonal shaping. All these bands interact with each other.
The design is built around an anti-aliasing analogue modelling engine, which is built to be CPU-friendly.
The devs also provided a resizable interface for ease of workflow.
I have to say the interface is also hella classy in a sort of understated way. They certainly got the look right.
The Backs EQ is the little bro of the Backs Pro EQ, with the Pro version offering more expansive modern features for tonal shaping.
I can’t see a standalone purchase for the Backs Pro EQ, and it instead comes packaged together with the Backs EQ in a bundle that the dev is currently offering for $59.9, down from a list price of $140.
While Backs EQ is a freebie at the Audio Plugin Deals site, it is not available as a free download at the NoiseAsh site.
Audio Plugin Deals state that the freebie is a limited-time offer, but don’t specify exactly when the deal will expire.
The Backs EQ is a fairly new release, with its release back in October 2023.
It’s an awesome little free deal, and I reckon it’s very much worth picking up to expand your toolbox of EQs!
Check out the deal: Backs EQ (FREE for a limited time)
More:
44 Comments
alex
onThx. Gonna check it out just to see if they did something about their plugins crashing Reaper on startup. I contacted their support multiple times and had a nice chat with them but the bug never got solved. The only solution I’ve heard of is the “read-only” fix that doesn’t work for me. That’s why the Rule Tec EQ1A which is an amazing eq just sits in my plugin folder. I really don’t want to have to put it offline every time I want to close a session so that it doesn’t crash Reaper on startup. Hopefully, they’re gonna solve it someday. Rant over.
Neil
onAre you sure this is still an issue? I’m able to open a project that has the Backs EQ and a Prestige Rack among many heavy plugins from for instance Acustica with no crashes on a 10+ yearold computer in Reaper. Maybe they fixed it?
alex
onI’ll check it out. Maybe Backs EQ works fine, but Rule Tec EQ1A randomly (very often) crashes Reaper on startup. Then I have to start Reaper again and it will load that project fully with a good chance to randomly crash at any point later. I’ve ditched plugins for a lot less. Now, that’s the only Noise Ash plugin that I own so I can’t speak about any others, but I’ve seen a bunch of people reporting similar crashes with all of their plugins. It’s a pity because they make some really good plugins.
Neil
onI asked about it, and according to Noise Ash the issue was a couple of years ago, and they have since resolved it with updates over time. So make sure you have the latest version.
He mentioned that they resolve the system-specific graphics card driver issues by using OpenGL.
alex
onYeah, it seems there’s a newer version. Downloading. TBH, I gave it up after contacting them for a couple of times. I even still haven’t installed the Backs EQ, but now I will. Thx!
PascalHP
onThank you very much for the proposal.
Musical friendship.
Calidreads
onWTF…wo ist mein komentar vom gestern ?
Habt ihr es gelöscht ? :-/
Krass…nicht schön BpB
Naat
onSo you have to install another sketchy license manager to run the light version. And you have to get an account at NoiseAsh as well. No thanks….
DgU
onYou don’t have to install any license manager. That’s optional.
alex
onIt’s not. You can’t authorize the plugin without it.
DgU
onYes you can. I’ve always used noiseash plugins. I even got that backsEq. I don’t have any noiseash license manager installed on my computer.
alex
onSo, how do you activate them?
DgU
onDownload the plugin and install it. Open your daw and load up the plugin. Click activate online and log in. No license manager required.
Anne
onSounds good to me
alex
onOK. Good to know. I got the Rule Tec EQ1A a couple of years back and followed the instructions. They say you have to use the license manager for both online and offline activation/deactivation.
lars
onWhat is sketchy about a license manager and so annoying about an account? I’m new to the plugin world, so if this is laughably obvious, please excuse ……..
˘J˘
andy
onnot really “sketchy” per say, it just gets extremely annoying having to tediously deal with dozens of different license and download managers that every plugin company seems to want to make, and they end up sitting on your computer taking up unnecessary space when you could just download a plugin and authorize it with a simple license code or something. basically, there is no “universal” way to download, manage, and license all plugins; every single plugin company seems to use a different method.
Z
onThere is such a thing actually, it’s called iLok
DgU
onThere’s nothing wrong with license managers. People just love to be annoying and don’t appreciate things.
lars
onThanks for your reply, i wish there was a notification center on BPB in order to see when someone replied to ones comments/questions.
And yes, i keep seeing a lot of complaining about minor inconveniences which go along with free stuff.
Tomislav Zlatic
onImproved comments are coming soon to BPB. Still finetuning the new comment system to make sure everything works correctly before adding it to the site. It will let you create a user account and edit comments, get notifications, etc.
lars
onI thought i had already said thank you and let you know how great that is, guess not. So i say thank you and yes, that’s great!
Brenny C
onDoes someone have to complain every single time a payware plugin is offered for free? My god, man. If you don’t want to do what’s required to receive the free plugin, just move along! Why this need to comment just to whine and tell everyone, “nah, I don’t want it”? It’s obnoxious.
Robin
onTried a few presets on strings and synths, seems to add quite a bit of distortion, rather than warmth and ‘mojo’?
Neil
onIf you don’t enable the preamp the EQ is completely clean. If you do enable it, be aware that THD is set to max and that is a TON of harmonics and saturation compared to normal preamps and EQs with preamps. Even if you turn the preamps THD all the way down to 0 it will still give you more saturation than most EQs. So here’s how you turn this thing into a useful mojo EQ rather than a distortion box (and you can save this as Default Preset for the plugin in your DAW like I did):
Turn “In” down to about -7dB, and compensate by turning “out” up to +8. You can fine tune the values by holding the ctr key once you hit ballpark numbers.
This, along with the preamp turned on with its THD set to 0 still gives you a lot of saturation but on the Mojo side of things.
Neil
onEdit: I meant to say -8 dB and +8 dB, Equal amounts.
Jay Lane
onThis unfortunately is not free, it just takes it down from 69.99 to 29.99.
Jay Lane
onWorks now, my mistake.
AMS
onyou drummin’ for Primus again, Jay?
Phil
onThe many mistakes in the manual make me not thrust this company.
Savant
onthrusty
AVILLA
onrustyth
PMF
onin god we thrust
Anne
onWill give this eq a try. Looks like a good eq for clean audio recordings. In other words, it may be a good non-surgical eq designed for increasing or decreasing frequency volumes.
Buddy J
onI added this freebie at Audio Plugin Deals and then got an email asking me to go to Noise Ash site and add a code, but the code is only applied to the EQ Bundle and not just the free EQ. Huh. What a cluster. It seems so many of these promotions overload the vendors websites or the process is not verified. That was a waste of time.
Max
onThere’ a problem with activating this. The manager is not working correctly.
Is there some activation code?
Grannitus
onDas 2. SEHR GUTE Plugin von Noise Ash in meiner Sammlung, läuft in Reaper 7.27 und Samplitude ProX 7 ohne Probleme ! Danke
Michal Ochedowski
onDespite the generous offer, one might wonder why LPF has the option to filter out 70 kHz. As Phil already mentioned above, the manual also has some errors.
DgU
onbecause this is a baxandall eq. The original hardware unit has a 70khz low pass
Michal Ochedowski
onThank you for that explanation.
jef
onbecause of ultrasonic noise caused by analog hardware can create artifacts during conversion especially when working at higher sample rates
grant
onthanks for this
Dpeer
onSketchy or problematic? Can’t checkout without opening an account. So I signed up , but still cannot checkout.
Arthur
onAmazing transparent EQ! Don’t regret about installing it!