Queries related to Tone Control plug-in for Audacity

My work requires me to use Audacity frequently. I use the default audio equalizer available in Audacity. But I found that the default equalizer was not enough to manipulate the stereo sounds. So I asked my friend if she knew any other equalizer that can be used as substitute for Audacity’s equalizer. She suggested me that I should use Tone Control plug-in for Audacity. I haven’t found much detail about the plug-in. So can anyone else share some details about the plug-in if they have been using it?

The default equalizer provided by Audacity is a good for editing sound which is being recorded. It provides the flexibility required for adjustment of tone of recording. But somewhere one may experience lack of abilities in default equalizer, like need to give extra boost to the sound while maintaining the bass. Tone control plug-in provides a way to give quick boost to the audio when needed while maintaining the low & high frequencies. It maintains the bass and treble consistently without causing distortion in main audio.

If you use it, then you will notice in the filter window that the slopes of Filter are more gradual than they are in level 2 filters. This is made possible by using optional ‘slope’ parameter in code. The choices made for slope and gain frequency are random. You will see that turning down bass and treble will maintain frequency at approximately 1 KHz.

This plug-in includes function of Normalization. Without it, if boosting an audio was tried at bit depth level below 32 at 0 db, then distortion in quality of sound was observed. Normalization works on first 1 million samples of audio. But one major disadvantage about this function is that in long tracks many times first 1 million samples are quieter than rest of the part. To compromise for this drawback, normalization function also provides option to test 10 different spaces of same audio file for 1 million samples.

I am using Tone Control plug-in and found out that using Normalize function on long tracks can be dangerous. Normalize function requires a large amount of resources to analyze and process tracks. If it is loaded with too many samples, then chances of Audacity freezing and crashing increases. With numerous curves, sliders & filter length managers, this plug-in provides a great control while editing sound.