- Product: Causa
- Developer: GBC Audio
- Version: 1.0.0
- Format: VST3, AAX, CLAP
- Requirements: Windows 10 or later
- Source: https://gbcaudio.com/store/causa
Causa is a 24-band parametric EQ. Bands go straight onto the curve: place one, drag it, choose its shape. The vertical axis stretches on its own to fit whatever you build.
Most EQs that offer a choice of phase offer a choice between not moving it at all and moving it as little as possible. Causa adds a third option, the phase behaviour of a real analogue EQ, and one button takes you from there to phase that does not move at all. Whichever you pick, the frequency response does not change by a hair.
Flat phase comes with a little energy arriving ahead of the sound. Perceptual mode holds that back while keeping the character of flat phase, which is the reason it is there.
Any band can also carry dynamics, on its own: Dynamic moves the whole band once the level crosses a threshold, Spectral holds down only what protrudes inside the band, and Expansion lifts whatever falls below.
Key features
Four phase modes
Native with no latency at all, Analog at 6.7 ms for an analogue EQ’s phase at much higher precision, then Perceptual and Linear. The menu runs top to bottom by increasing latency.
The curve does not move
Switching phase changes what happens to phase and nothing else. The frequency response is the same in all four. Switching settles in about 0.1 to 1 second and audio keeps playing throughout.
24 bands, eight shapes
Bell, Low Shelf, High Shelf, Notch, High-Pass, Low-Pass, Band-Pass and Tilt Shelf. High-Pass and Low-Pass run 6 to 48 dB/oct. Notch, HP, LP and Band-Pass carry no gain and act as frequency handles.
Q to 40
10 Hz to 30 kHz, ±30 dB, Q from 0.1 to 40. Wide enough to shape a whole region and narrow enough to take out one resonance.
Dynamics, per band
Dynamic, Spectral or Expansion on any band, one at a time. Threshold sits at AUTO by default, which leaves RNG as the only control you need. RNG is the depth itself, so −3 moves 3 dB.
Spectral
Looks inside the band and holds down only what protrudes above the rest of it, which is a different aim from moving the whole band together. FOCUS runs from broad to sharp-peaks-only; SOFT lets short sounds through and catches what is sustained.
DELTA
Hear only what a band’s dynamics are changing. It exists to answer how much the effect is actually doing, which is the question a depth control never answers on its own.
Mid/Side, per band
Stereo, Mid, Side, Left or Right, chosen band by band rather than for the whole instance.
Surround to 32 channels
On a surround bus each band also gets a Speakers choice: 12 groups, from All Speakers to LFE, Centre, Wide, Top Front and Top Rear. Speakers decides which outputs a band reaches; Channel decides how it is treated within them.
Resizable, and it tells you where you are
Drag the bottom-right corner to fit the window to your screen. Every readout takes a typed value on a double-click, the LED above each switch follows host automation, and the build you are running is printed under the meters.