MIXVAULT Manual

1Quick Start

MIXVAULT is a simple, smart and honest EQ. Instead of staring at a curve, you're shaping the sound in front of you. If something needs more energy, you pull that frequency closer. If it's too much, you push it away, and the whole room reacts as you work.

The bands are set and the Q comes optimised for you, so gain is the main control you ever reach for. If you want to, you can scroll your mouse over any band to fine-tune its Q, but mostly you're focusing on tonal balance, which is 95% of EQing anyway, without an overload of controls that only give you the final 5%.

1. Load MIXVAULT on any track, bus, or full mix.
2. Shape by feel. Pull a frequency towards you to make it louder, push it away to make it quieter, every move perfectly level-matched in real time.
3. Want a fast starting point? Hit ANALYZE, pick your source (mix, vocals, bass, drums, or music) and genre, and you'll get a Smart Preset built from your actual audio.
4. Step through the preset arrows to explore alternatives, each labelled with its character (dark, balanced, bright), and bypass to A/B against your original.

2The Immersive EQ

The visual is something you can reach out and grab. The room expands and contracts as you work, so you don't just hear your changes, you watch your sound take shape and get a real sense of depth as you move each node forward and back. It feels natural because it mimics how you experience sound in the real world, and it keeps you in your creative flow.

Honest by design

Humans hear louder as better, so any EQ move that nudges the level fools you into thinking you improved the sound. MIXVAULT level-matches every move in real time, so whether you're auditioning presets, bypassing to compare, or pushing a band, you're always hearing the true tonal change and nothing else. Every decision you make is an honest one.

Fast, but not lightweight

Don't mistake fast for lightweight. Under the immersive interface are filters designed for transparency. The band frequencies are fixed and phase-stable, so nothing smears. In a lot of EQs, dragging a frequency around introduces phase ringing that blurs transients and muddies the low-end. MIXVAULT's bands stay phase-stable whether you're setting the gain or scrolling to fine-tune the Q, so a boost or cut is a transparent gain change exactly where you need it. Open the top end and the transients stay sharp. Pull the low-mids down to clear the mud and the kick keeps its punch.

As your audio plays, a live delta visual paints onto the sides of the room, so you can see exactly how your EQ is shaping the signal while you work.

MIXVAULT delivers the exact frequency response of a market-leading linear-phase EQ, at its maximum quality setting - with 36x less latency.

Working with the bands

Whenever a band is highlighted, you can push and pull it from wherever your cursor lands, you don't have to hit the line exactly. The band frequencies are fixed, but the Q isn't locked: scroll your mouse over a band to tighten or widen its bandwidth, so you can narrow in on a problem area or open a move back out. To set a value precisely, double-click the dB readout and type it in. For finer control, hold Shift while you drag for gain or scroll for Q.

Auto Gain

Turn on Auto Gain in Settings and, whenever you click and hold a band, MIXVAULT drops the level of the other bands by 50% so the one you're working on stands out. It's a fast way to hear exactly what each band is doing to your sound before you commit to a move.

Zooming in on a frequency range

The Hz strips run down both walls of the room. Scroll your mouse over a strip to zoom in or out on that part of the spectrum, moving in closer when you want to dial in something specific, or back out for the full picture.

3Resolution: Broad, Balanced, Detailed & Bass

The dropdown at the top left sets how many bands MIXVAULT gives you. Fewer, wider bands for fast, broad shaping, or more, tighter bands when you want finer control.

Every option sounds just as clean, so pick whichever suits the moment. Switch between them at any time and MIXVAULT keeps the rough shape you were already working on, so moving from Detailed to Broad, or into Bass, carries your tonal intent across rather than starting over.

You can switch resolution straight from the keyboard. Tap 1 for Broad, 2 for Balanced, 3 for Detailed, or 4 for Bass, then tap the same key a second time to apply it. That lets you audition a different band count without leaving the flow you're in.

Fewer bands isn't a limitation. On a master, the best results are usually three or four gentle moves, not thirty. Balanced is the one to reach for most of the time. Drop to Broad when you just need to tilt the whole tone brighter or darker, and only reach for Detailed when there's a specific narrow area a broad move can't handle cleanly.

4Analyze & Smart Presets

ANALYZE gives you a strong starting point in seconds. You tell MIXVAULT the source and genre you're working on, but the Smart Preset it builds is shaped by your actual audio, not a stored curve. Not a template. Not an average of a thousand other records. Your actual audio, so a dark preset for hip hop bass is a completely different shape to a bright preset for modern rock vocals, because it should be.

How to Analyze

Choose your source type, mix, vocals, music, bass, or drums, then select the genre that best fits your track. Loop the most representative part of the song, usually the final chorus or the drop, and MIXVAULT analyses it against that choice, loading a Smart Preset as your starting point. From there, pull and push the frequencies to make it your own.

Analysis Length

By default, analyze is set to AUTO. But if you want to manually start and stop the analysis, click the settings cog wheel in the top right corner, then switch to 'manual' analysis mode. You can set times up to 3 minutes. You can then manually stop the analysis at any time after 5 seconds.

Navigating Presets

Use the arrows in the preset bar to step through alternative suggestions. They are labelled by character, running from darker to brighter, bass heavy, full bodied, dark, warm, balanced, bright, piercing. Back for progressively darker, forward for progressively brighter, so you're really auditioning tonal directions, and presets next to each other are close variations. You'll usually know within four or five clicks. Everything stays perfectly level-matched, so you can audition quickly and keep whichever feels right without louder ever skewing the choice.

Factory Presets

A small set of factory presets is also on hand for an instant result without running an analysis. They are a quick way in, but we always recommend a Smart Preset or a reference track, because those are tuned to the audio you are actually working on and give more relevant results.

5Reference Tracks

Your ears adjust to whatever you've been listening to, which is why a mix can sound perfect after an hour and wrong the next morning. The fix is to compare against a professional release you already trust, at matched loudness.

Import your own reference tracks and MIXVAULT will use them as a tonal target, just like STEREOVAULT and FASTER MASTER. Load the track, choose the drop or the final chorus because that's where it's most representative, ANALYZE, then click the reference to select it as your profile. MIXVAULT shows you the moves that get your track into the same pocket as the record you love. Because the comparison is perfectly level-matched, you're hearing a true difference in tone rather than the reference simply being louder, which is the fastest way to match a professional sound with total confidence in your ears.

6Trim & Visualizer

Trim

The Trim panel handles level and blend. MIX (%) blends between your dry and processed signal, IN (dB) and OUT (dB) set input and output gain, and LEVEL MATCH keeps the output matched to the input so you always compare tone rather than volume.

Visualizer

The Visualizer settings live in the bottom right corner and control what you see in the room. Open them to adjust the display to your taste, and make the visual your own.

7Toolbar

The toolbar runs along the top of the plugin and contains global controls.

8Keyboard Shortcuts

Keep your hands moving and stay in the flow. These shortcuts cover the moves you'll reach for most.

9System Requirements & Installation

The MIXVAULT interface is fully resizable, so you can scale it to suit your screen and workflow.