Orra EQ User Manual

What is Orra EQ?

Orra EQ is a professional 16-band parametric equalizer for music production, mixing, and mastering. It combines transparent equalization with sophisticated saturation processing, dynamic saturation, dynamic EQ capabilities, and vintage analog emulation in an intuitive interface.

Key Features

• •16 fully parametric EQ bands with extended frequency range (10 Hz to 22 kHz)
• •Eight processing modes per band: EQ, Orra Tube, Tape, Models (10 saturation types), Dynamic EQ, Excite, Width, and Make Room
• •Low Cut and High Cut filters in EQ mode, Butterworth response, slopes up to 96 dB/oct
• •Per-band sidechain for Dynamic EQ: Off / External / Link 1 to 36
• •Sidechain any track via Orra Link, regardless of DAW routing limitations
• •Orra Link 2 integration: pick sidechain sources by track name, and view any linked track's spectrum and masking behind your EQ curvev1.4.0
• •Per-band pitch tracking: a band's frequency can follow the pitch of its input, the sidechain, or any Link 2 trackv1.4.0
• •Vertical display zoom: zoom the gain axis from Full down to ±3 dB for fine, surgical movesv1.4.0
• •Rebuilt oversampling engine: cleaner anti-aliasing on all saturation modes, still with zero added latencyv1.4.0
• •Oversampling for saturation modes: Off / 2× / 4× to reduce aliasing on hot drive
• •Per-band Mid/Side processing
• •Real-time FFT spectrum analyzer with pre/post visualization
• •Settings panels with tabs: every band has its own settings area that opens automatically when selected
• •Piano view: vertical piano keyboard showing which note the band sits on
• •Zones view: frequency-region overview from SUB to AIR
• •Tips carousel: rotating workflow tips when no band is selected
• •Dynamic saturation system: upward compression for adding character to quiet signals
• •100-snapshot history system: Non-destructive experimentation with instant recall
• •Professional preset management: Factory presets plus unlimited user presets
• •Solo, Bypass, Delta, and Hide Curve modes for surgical EQ work
• •Comprehensive keyboard shortcut support
• •Input/Output metering with separate gain controls

System Requirements

Installation

1. 1.Download the Orra EQ installer from orraaudio.com
2. 2.Run the installer and follow on-screen instructions
3. 3.The plugin will be installed to your system's standard plugin directories
4. 4.Restart your DAW if it was running during installation
5. 5.Scan for new plugins in your DAW's preferences

Activation

Orra EQ requires activation to use beyond the 14-day demo period.

Main Layout

Orra EQ's interface consists of:

• •Header bar (top) with preset, oversampling, overlays, analyzer, scale, and license controls
• •EQ curve display (center) with 16 interactive control points
• •Settings panel (center-right) with per-band tabs and content, always visible, never collapses
• •Right panel (120 px) with band controls
• •Meter panel (far right, 120 px) with input/output meters

Header Bar

EQ Curve Display

The central display shows:

• •Frequency response curve (white for EQ, gold for saturation modes)
• •16 numbered control points (colored by band)
• •Real-time spectrum analyzer (green = input, blue = output)
• •Grid lines for frequency (10 Hz to 22 kHz) and gain
• •Frequency readout when hovering over the curve
• •A gain-range readout in the top-left corner of the dB ruler (see Vertical Display Zoom)v1.4.0
• •Mid and Side response curves (amber and teal) when using M/S processing
• •Optional Orra Link 2 source spectrum and masking overlays (see Orra Link 2 Source Overlays)v1.4.0

Right Panel - Band Controls

Top Row: State Buttons (Circular toggles)

• SSolo: Mutes all other bands to hear this band's effect
• BBypass: Disable this band
• DDelta: Hear only what the band removes/adds
• HHide: Hide this band's curve visualization

Core Parameters (when band selected)

• •Frequency Knob: 10Hz to 22kHz
• •Gain Knob: -60 dB to +30 dB (EQ mode), 0-100% (saturation modes), or 0-48 dB (Dynamic EQ amount)
• •Quality Knob: 0.1 to 40.0
• •Filter Type: Bell, High Shelf, Low Shelf (EQ and Dynamic EQ modes); Low Cut, High Cut (EQ mode only)
• •Slope: 12 / 24 / 36 / 48 dB/oct (shelf filters); up to 96 dB/oct for Low/High Cut
• •Mode: EQ / Orra Tube / Tape / Models / Dynamic EQ
• •Channel: Stereo, Mid, or Side (per band)
• •Sidechain (Dynamic EQ bands only): Off / External / Link channels, directly under the Channel selector, plus a per-band layers shortcut toggle for source overlaysv1.4.0

Creating Bands

Editing Bands

• •Moving Control Points: Click and drag vertically for gain (-60dB to +30dB), horizontally for frequency (10Hz to 22kHz)
• •Adjusting Q: Cmd + drag (macOS) or Ctrl + drag (Windows) for Q adjustment, or scroll over a band
• •Multi-Band Selection: Click and drag on empty curve area to draw selection box

Band Right-Click Menu

Right-click any control point to access:

Each of Orra EQ's 16 bands can operate in one of eight processing modes. The curve visualization changes color: white for EQ, gold for saturation modes.

The settings panel sits to the right of the EQ display and is always visible — it's permanent furniture, not a pop-out. Because it never collapses, the EQ display stays at a constant width and your band positions don't shift around as you work.

Behavior

• •Auto-open: selecting a band automatically opens the right view for that band's mode: Zones for EQ, Tape settings for Tape, Saturation settings for Models, Dynamic settings for Dynamic EQ, Dyn Sat for Orra Tube.
• •Mode switching opens the panel: switching a band to Tape, Models, Dynamic EQ, or Orra Tube automatically opens that mode's settings panel, so the new controls are in front of you immediately.v1.4.0
• •Tab memory: each band remembers its last visited tab, so jumping between bands restores what you were looking at.
• •Graceful fallback: if a tab no longer applies after a mode change (e.g. you switch a band from Tape to EQ), the panel falls back to the mode's default tab.
• •No band selected: the panel displays a rotating tips carousel — a quick refresher on shortcuts, mouse modifiers, and workflow features. Tips fade in and out every ~8 seconds.

Tab Layout

The panel header has up to two rows of tabs. Click any tab to switch the view; tabs highlight to show which view is active.

Tab Reference

• •TAPE — tape model, speed, and noise reduction
• •Models — saturation type, Tone, Bias, and type-specific parameters
• •Dynamic — in saturation modes: dynamic saturation enable, threshold, range, attack, release. In Dynamic EQ mode: attack, release, threshold, ratio
• •Zones — vertical strip of frequency regions (SUB to AIR) with a gold indicator showing where the band sits
• •Piano — vertical scrollable piano with the band's nearest key highlighted

A vertical scrollable piano keyboard, available on every band as a Row 2 tab in the settings panel.

• •Lays out all 88 standard piano keys plus extended octaves, so the full 20 Hz – 20 kHz range is reachable
• •The key that matches the selected band's frequency glows: green when perfectly in tune with a note, fading to yellow as the band moves off-pitch
• •Smooth crossfade animation when the active key changes
• •Mouse-wheel scrolls; the view auto-recenters on the active key whenever you change a band's frequency to a different note
• •Compact readout at the top shows Hz, note name, and cents off

Orientationv1.4.0

By default the Piano runs with low frequencies at the top. Right-click the Piano view and choose “Low frequencies at bottom” to flip it. The setting also flips the Zones strip so the two views always agree, and it is remembered globally, across every session and every plugin instance. The default remains low-at-top.

A vertical problem-zone strip showing the frequency regions every mix engineer ends up thinking about. Zones is the default settings tab for EQ-mode bands.

Orientationv1.4.0

Right-click the Zones strip and choose “Low frequencies at bottom” to flip both the Zones strip and the Piano view (the two always share orientation). The preference is remembered globally across all sessions and plugin instances. The default is low frequencies at top.

Each Dynamic EQ band has its own Sidechain source picker in the right panel, directly under the Channel dropdown. Select what audio drives the band's level detector — independently per band. Duck the mud band off the bass DI, dip the boxy band off the snare, and ease the harsh band off the lead vocal, all at once, off three different sources, in one plugin instance.

Sidechain Modes

Frequency-Independent Detection

When the band uses an External or Link sidechain, the detector bypasses the band's own bandpass — it reads the full sidechain signal directly. Moving the band's frequency knob doesn't change how the kick triggers it; the frequency knob only controls whichfrequencies get ducked. This matches the convention in Pro-Q 3, Pro-MB, and other modern dynamic EQs. In contrast, self-detect mode (Off) keeps the frequency-conscious bandpass behavior — the band only sees energy near its own center frequency.

Routing an External Sidechain in Major DAWs

Sidechain Any Track via Orra Link

Orra Link is a free companion plugin (bundled in the installer of each compatible Orra product) that bypasses DAW routing entirely. It writes audio into a shared memory region with numbered channels, and any Orra EQ band can read from any of those channels. Orra Link 2 adds named tracks, color, and source overlays on top of the same system.

Picking Link Sources by Namev1.4.0

With Orra Link 2 inserted on your source tracks, the sidechain picker gets much friendlier.

• •The picker lists every live Link 2 track by name, each with its track color shown as a swatch, so there is no more remembering which channel number was which.
• •Selections persist by track name and survive session reloads. If you rename a track and give it Link 2's custom name field, the band follows that name.
• •Two tracks with the same name: the first one found wins. Give tracks unique names (or use Link 2's custom name field) so a band always keys off the source you meant.
• •The numbered Link channels submenu now only shows channels that are actually live. When a sender publishes a name the entry reads like “Link 3, Drums”. The submenu hides entirely when no numbered channels are live.

Offline Rendering with Link Sidechainsv1.4.0

Offline bounces now use time-stamped Link reads, keeping sidechain timing sample-aligned no matter how the host schedules its tracks during a render. And track freeze / commit / AudioSuite-style renders, where the Link source track isn't actually running, now cleanly treat the source as absent from the very first sample instead of consuming stale audio.

When you're running Orra Link 2 on your source tracks, Orra EQ can draw those tracks' spectra right behind your EQ curve, so you can see what you're EQing against, not just hear it. Overlays are purely visual: they add no CPU cost on the audio path and nothing to latency, and your overlay setup is saved with the session.

Global Overlay Panel

Click the layers button in the header to open the overlay panel. It lists every live Link 2 track with independent Spectrum and Masking toggles per track, so you can build up exactly the picture you want.

• •Enable a track's Spectrum to see its curve; enable Masking to see the collision shading; enable both, or neither, per track.
• •Entries whose track has vanished (closed or disabled) are shown greyed out with a remove button, so stale entries never clutter the panel.

Any band's frequency can follow the pitch of a monophonic source in real time. Put a notch, a boost, or a saturated band on a bass note or a vocal and it rides the note as the performance moves, without writing anything to automation.

Turning It On

Right-click a band node and open Pitch Tracking. Choose:

While Tracking

• •The node shows a musical-note badge and follows the tracked pitch on screen.
• •Horizontal dragging is disabled (the pitch is driving frequency now), but gain dragging still works, so you can ride the amount while it tracks.
• •The FREQ knob value is left untouched; nothing is written to automation. The band returns to its knob frequency whenever tracking is turned off or the source goes silent.

Engine Facts

The EQ display's gain axis can be zoomed in for fine, surgical moves. At the wide end you see the whole picture; at the tight end you can place a boost to a hundredth of a dB.

Display Ranges

At ±3 dB the display resolves better than 0.01 dB per pixel, mastering-grade precision for tiny tonal moves.

Zooming

• •Scroll on empty display space, or on the dB ruler, to change the range. (Scrolling on a band node still adjusts that band's Q, as always.)
• •Double-click the dB ruler to reset straight back to Full.
• •Click the range readout at the top of the ruler for a menu of ranges.

A global Oversampling control in the header lets you reduce aliasing artifacts on any saturation band (Orra Tube, Tape, Models, Dynamic Saturation).

The v1.4.0 Enginev1.4.0

The up/downsampling behind every saturation mode was rebuilt around a minimum-phase elliptic IIR design, giving proper image rejection on the way up and steep anti-alias filtering on the way down. On a hot-drive test tone, measured in-band alias suppression is roughly -90 dB at 2×, and better still at 4×.

• •Still zero added latency. There's no lookahead, only a few samples of high-frequency group delay.
• •Phase-matched wet/dry mix. A matching filter on the dry side keeps the wet and dry paths aligned, so blending saturation back in no longer risks comb filtering.
• •Tape noise stays native. Tape mode's noise generation runs at the native rate, so oversampling doesn't alter the character of the hiss.

Changes in v1.4.1v1.4.1

• •No more high-frequency roll-off with oversampling on. In v1.4.0 the band's saturated signal was delay-matched against the dry band signal, but the untouched input it was added back to was not, so a saturation band combed against its own input: a dip near 7 kHz at 2×, near 5 kHz at 4×. All three legs of the mix are now delay-matched. 2× and 4× sound the same apart from alias suppression, and turning oversampling on no longer darkens the band.
• •Tape and Models keep their tone at 2× and 4×. The tape head-loss, low-shelf and DC filters, and the Models tone and console filters, are now derived for the rate they actually run at. Previously their corners slid up by the oversampling factor, so 7.5 ips at 4× lost most of its high-frequency roll-off. The Bit Crusher's sample-rate reduction likewise now crushes at the same audible rate with or without oversampling.
• •Oversampling is a global setting. Loading a preset no longer changes it, and a session always comes back with the oversampling it was saved with, even when the plugin window is closed.

Solo, Bypass, Delta, and Hide Curve

Multi-Band Selection

• •Click and drag on empty curve area to create selection box
• •Drag any selected band to move all selected bands together
• •Right-click selection for batch operations (filter type, mode, snap to key, reset, delete)

Align band frequencies to musical notes and keys for tonal, musical EQ adjustments. Orra EQ provides two snapping systems depending on whether you have a single band or multiple bands selected.

Preset System

Click the Preset button in the header to access the browser.

100-Snapshot History System

Orra EQ features a professional, non-destructive 100-snapshot history system.

• •Almost all parameter changes create a snapshot automatically
• •History stores last 100 snapshots (oldest removed when full, newest appear at bottom of list)
• •Each snapshot shows timestamp and description of changes
• •Click any snapshot to instantly restore that state

Spectrum Analyzer

Input/Output Metering

• •Input Meters: Shows signal level BEFORE any EQ processing (-60dB to 0dB)
• •Output Meters: Shows signal level AFTER all processing (-60dB to 0dB)
• •Gain Controls: -12dB to +12dB for both input and output

License Validation

• •Orra EQ validates license online periodically

Multiple Instancesv1.4.1

• •Activate once. Every other Orra EQ instance already loaded, in the same session or in another host running at the same time, picks the license up within a second or two. You no longer need to enter the key per instance or reload the session.
• •Re-entering a key you already own no longer spends an activation. Every entry used to create a fresh activation on the server, which is how a 3-activation license could run out in one session and look revoked. If you used extra activations on an earlier version, free them from the License panel (Deactivate This Machine) on the machine in question, or contact support.
• •Starting the demo unmutes audio immediately. It used to remove the overlay but stay silent until the session was reloaded. Deactivating a license now mutes audio as it should, and so does a server revocation reported by Validate.
• •Plugin scans and session loads no longer wait on the license server. Instances used to make a blocking online check on creation, which on an offline or slow connection could stall every instantiation for up to ten seconds.

Right-click the Tips button (?) in the header to view the full keyboard shortcut legend at any time.