The always busy folk over at Blue Cat audio have published a Beta of their new Parametr'EQ v3.0 and were nice enough to favor us with it. We'll be getting a video out soon but first we wanted to get some of the info and initial reactions to you.

The plug-in gets a nice face-lift in this version. Of course, in typical Blue Cat fashion the skins are customizable. This has been the case since version 2.1 of the Parametr'EQ. It is nice to have a well laid out and attractive default skin. There are also a few new parameters. Most notably, the controls for Non-Linear and Comp-Dist. This is an interesting control that can be used to dirty up the effect of the plug-in.

Upon first playing with the plug-in it sounded much like the v2.1 that we had installed. Not much of an audible change was a good thing considering I liked the quality of the ealier version. Next I turned to the Non-Linear and Comp-Dist controls to see if I could dirty up this clean sounding EQ.

I was really impressed with the amount of warmth that could be added with this control coupled with the low shelf. I was not as pleased with the distortion when boosting high frequencies and will probably stray away from this setting when boosting highs. The sound was brittle and it was quick to add digital clipping even when activating internal limiter and oversampling.

BTW, the limiting and oversampling are also welcome new features. Overall I am excited to work more with this plug-in in a mix. Stay tuned for a video walkthru of this product.