Fabfilter Q3
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Hello everyone. I'm just wondering what the cost of creating the FabFilter q3 plugin will be?) What is the price, amount of work and time. Thank you.)
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I'm not an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure it will depend on the developers hired.
Q3 has some really nice filter algorithms and clever details behind the scenes. Not to mention a heck load of filter algorithms. The filters themselves would likely cost a few thousand for sure, Fabfilter has an absolute battery of them and they are all super robust. Theres also the graphics, Q3 has very clean FFT analysis and is able to accurately analyse the filter shapes to create the frequency response graph. The graphics and UI have a ton of work put into them.I have no idea how much they spent to get Q3 made, but to hire experts to create it, I'd expect it to cost a few thousand for sure. There are developers who would do it for cheaper, or would cut a deal of some kind, but most of the time you get what you pay for. As for timescale, it depends on the devs, if experts on filters were hired, it would be much faster than hiring a generalist (an expert would already have plenty of algos under their belt that they can use as a starting point) but the more you spend, the faster the work. I'd expect at LEAST a year of development. But that's on the short side. For instance, if I was being hired for this, I would want two years, to deliver something actually able to match Q3.
It depends on the dev though.
For instance everyone here is developing stuff mostly on their own - not necessarily any funding involved, and so lots of great work is done 'for free' out of passion or to build a product that will sell in the future. Cost can vary a lot with software dev. -
@udalilprofile No real answer for that... But seeing Fabfilter being top notch in their field, I'd say the cost of a big company with quite a team of programmers, high rank dsp engineers, top knowledge in filter mathematics, etc...
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@griffinboy I would say that the plugin itself in terms of functionalities and interface isn't complicated imho. But the DSP, waouw... since they have their own algorithms, and they have such efficiency, developing the math behind and make the digital transforms, at this level, is nothing but a "tour de force"!
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@udalilprofile their filters are svf so pretty simple... Until you go to higher dB per octave. For example, the "higher order" peak filters are dual shelving filters, I think. Not exactly, but close.
The there's the matching algorithm, which I think would warrant the most time.
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I would estimate something around 200.000€ - 300.000€ if you have to hire everybody.
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Slightly related, if you want to explore a matching EQ algorithm you could check out MelMatch - https://github.com/brummer10/MelMatchEQ.lv2
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@d-healey nice find! Though this kind of static thing seems simple enough "on paper", like you can do this using higher order filterband in Faust (though it doesn't have triangular filters) but keeping track of data could prove tricky, you'll have to do it in Faust using tables (if it's even possible) because vbargraph is broken in compiled Faust nodes so you can't take it out of ScriptNode).
But then pro-q's matching algorithm constantly shuffles around until it gets to the best fit, and prefers using higher order peak filters... If you compare all other matching algorithms, they still can't beat even the old pro-q2.
