Today, we’re going to be taking a look at one of my new favorite EQs, if not my new favorite EQ. It’s called “The Hoser,” and it’s from David Bendeth and Boz Digital Labs. They’ve done an insane job putting this thing together. Super CPU efficient. It sounds ridiculous, and I’m going to put it through its paces.

So, those of you guys who follow me know I don’t really do plug-in reviews so to speak, but I like to take plug-ins that I like and put them through their paces and then showcase how I’m using it.

So we’re going to do that today with The Hoser, and in this situation I’ve got it on my 2-buss, and I’ve got it in mid/side mode. You’ll notice we’ve got stereo mode, you can use the left independent from the right. Anything you do here won’t move the right. Then you can link it. Kind of a quick look, and then they’ll move together.
Then you’ve got my new favorite, mid/side mode. You can control – those of you who don’t know, you can control the middle content. All that information down the middle is going to be separate than this stuff on the side.

So jumping right in, man, I’ve got a track here, and after listening back, I felt like this could use a little more warmth on the sides and a little more fullness, and even a little bit more low end down the middle, then also I felt like on the sides I wasn’t getting enough of the acoustic guitar stuff, so I wanted to pull up a little bit of that high end information as well.

So let’s take a listen before and after. Here’s what we’re working with.

[song plays]

Alright, so we’ve got a pretty good mix going, but again, I feel like we could just use a little bit more fullness on the sides, a little bit better low end, then there’s also some acoustics going on, and I want to try to bring those out with the side top end over here. So let’s take a look at what it does.

I’m actually going to play it bypassed, then I’ll un-bypass it about halfway through.

[song plays, bypassed EQ and re-enabled]

Okay, man, so you can definitely feel the fullness, the warmth, everything that I’m talking about. This thing is incredible.

One more time I’m going to hit it. Let’s go to maybe another section in the song and do a little bit different comparison here.

[music]

Yeah, man. So definitely bringing out that top end. Anyways, MS EQ on the 2-buss is a beautiful thing. I’ve used a ton of other plug-ins before for this, and The Hoser has kind of become my new favorite.

There are a couple other videos like I mentioned on this guy right here. My buddy Jake’s got one, and then there’s another one where the guy walks through the different features and stuff.

Those are really great, man, I definitely would recommend checking those out, but just to kind of demonstrate the sound – and then if you’re into the visual aspect of seeing what you’re doing, you can click on The Hoser EQ there and you can actually see what you’re doing relative to the graphic there. So that’s kind of cool.

If you’ve got this going on, maybe you want to tighten that up and go with the bell. You can actually see the peak, what you’re doing… It’s cool. You might like that. This is a pretty rad thing. I’m really digging this guy.

Actually, let’s go back over to the – I’m going to put that back to a shelf and pull it back down a little bit – I heard something on the electric lead guitar that I think this may be able to help us out with. Let’s come back over here.

[song plays]

There it is. The outro lead guitar.

[guitar plays]

Okay, let’s see if we can get something going on there. Let’s pull these out of solo, and let’s throw the Boz Digital Labs – Hoser, and we’re going to go ahead and try to give some love to that mid-range there.

[song]

Yeah, let’s hear that. I’m going to put it in solo just so you can really feel it.

[guitar]

Without it.

[guitar without EQ]

Hmm. My buddy Vic killing it there. Let’s hear it in, then I’ll take it out.

[guitar, enabling and disabling EQ]

I dunno. It gets a little puny without it, right? So…

[guitar]

Let’s see if we can feel that in the mix.

Yeah, I’m kind of all over the place with it. Yeah, man, it’s definitely bringing it forward. I’m loving it, I’m digging it.

One last spot that I wanted to check this out for this tutorial – I’ve got another one coming that I think you guys are going to enjoy.

So the acoustic. The top end on the acoustic left and right here I’ve got going to a buss, got a little bit of surgical processing, some compression happening, and I wanted to use The Hoser for some top end. Let’s hear it at the verse right here.

[song]

Yeah, man, so this top end is ridiculous. There is a video I keep mentioning, but one where I think it’s Boz Miller goes through the science behind creating the plug-in, and he talks about the top end and analog EQs vs digital, and the whole stuff that’s way out of my league intelligence wise. He does a great job explaining it, but I’m hearing all of that stuff that he’s talking about. I hear it and I can feel it in the top, and that’s pretty sweet.

But yeah, man. Check this one out if you haven’t already. The Boz Digital labs and David Bendeth EQ called “The Hoser” modeled after the Canadian Ward Beck EQs. They did an incredible job. I’m going to be using it like crazy. I hope you dig that, man.
davidglennrecording.com, theproaudiofiles.com, and we’ll catch you on the next one.