12/10/2023 0 Comments Mixbus quantizingHe has worked with At The Drive-In, Coheed and Cambria, Sparta, Gone is Gone, As Tall as Lions, and hundreds of other artists over the last 30 years. Mike Major is a Mixer/Producer/Recording and Mastering engineer from Dunedin, FL. Your music will thank you.ĭid we miss any of your favorites? How could we not? If so, tell us all about it in the comments below. There’s nothing wrong with having a bunch of “go-to” plugins, but you should always leave the door open to a different way of doing things. This is important to recognize because it shakes my foundation enough to keep my mind open about choosing an EQ for a specific use you never know which EQ may work the best! If nothing else, this will probably inspire me to give things a try in situations where I may not usually use them. I was admittedly surprised (and humbled) while doing some of the blind listening tests and evaluations, because I wasn’t always correct in my assumptions about which EQ I was listening to. I never feel like I don’t have the appropriate tool to deal with a particular problem, so it’s now easier to focus on the task at hand and just try to do great work. Where I used to be restricted to a few high-quality choices for the critical tasks, I am now flush with choices, colors and flavors. Having said that, it’s certainly not difficult to use at all, and its appearance has no bearing on the quality of the sound, which was stellar.ĭoing this roundup emphasized for me just how many fantastic choices we have these days in terms of high quality EQs. I’ve used hardware EQs for so many years that I prefer the EQ to look like I expect it to. But for me, it comes down to familiarity and ease of operation. I know some people prefer this since it forces you to listen instead of being seduced by its appearance, and I get that. The other thing that bothered me was the kind of old-looking, Windows 95-esque GUI. I am sure that its fantastic sound is why it uses so much CPU, so I guess that’s what this kind of processing costs! It wouldn’t matter so much on a mastering project, as you can deactivate tracks once things are set and committed, but it certainly made me more hesitant to use more than one. I had two minor gripes: First, it was a CPU hog. Its versatility is enhanced further with the ability to run it in minimum phase or linear phase per band. This is another one that can really work on anything, especially with the number of available bands (7) and filter types (5). If I had to only use one EQ for mastering all the time, this would probably be the one. You can choose filter types and frequency points freely, and also have the option to decide if you want that particular filter to affect the stereo mix or just the “mid” or “side” component of the mix. The Pro Q2 is also one of the most versatile EQs I’ve ever used. It always does what you want it to while acting like it’s not there at all. FabFilter Pro Q2 ($179)Ī good friend of mine, Dave Greenberg of Sonopod, was the first person to tell me how much he loves this EQ, and now that I’ve used it a bit, I can see why. I would say that the biggest deciding factor when choosing a transparent EQ for one of these tasks should be its feature set as much as its sound, because most of them sound pretty similar…with some minor exceptions. For that matter, they all performed so well that (as it seems in the earlier test) a clear-cut winner was not easy to determine, and without direct comparisons, the differences are practically imperceptible. There are a ton of choices in this particular category and they all performed very well. In other words, anything you can think of, they can do. This type of EQ is usually agile and does not limit you to specific frequency ranges or EQ curves. To that end, for this part of the roundup I chose EQs that are inherently transparent and are lauded for their ability to change the tonal balance with minimal effect on the character of the track. To be sure, I employ devices that musically color a track in a pleasing way whenever the situation demands it, but I always start with a “first, do no harm” approach. This is also my jumping-off point when I’m mastering the work of others. I prefer to choose my colors when I feel it is appropriate, and the rest of the time I want to maintain the integrity of the tracks as they were recorded. While most of the devices that are held in high esteem amongst audio geeks are often brimming with character and color, I am not always a fan of having this coloration thrust upon my tracks and then having to be married to it for the rest of the project. I have always had a soft spot for anything in audio that is transparent and neutral.
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