Eq

You create space by level and panning, and by not turning up the volume of every single track in hopes of creating impact. If your guitar are too loud and panned near the center of the mix, no amount of EQ will prevent your vocal from getting stepped on.

I think this is a bit of an oversimplification. By this logic playing a dog whistle would step on your vocal. Faders, eqs and pan knobs are all volume tools. And there’s not much difference between a pan knob and two faders.
 
I have way too many eq's but to my ears they all sound different, even if the difference is slight and only noticeable in a specific frequency range. I tend to use knob type eq's for color and timbre and graphic type for cleaning up and frequency dipping. My 2c
 
I find the graphic eq to be kind of useless for mixing. It seems like you have a lot of frequencies to mess with, but in reality you only have control over the same 3 notes in 10 octaves. If you have a problem witb a note that is not one of the three, you have to adjust the one above and below to affect the frequency you want to adjust.

Parametric eq's allow you to do nearly anything you need. But, you do need to train your ears to be able to find the spot you need to mess with.

It isn't difficult. If you simply adjust the bandwidth (q) to its narrowest setting, then boost the gain, you can sweep the frequency knob until you hear the sound you want more or less of. Then widen the bandwidth and adjust the gain to get the desired effect.
 
^^^This is what I meant. Modern "digital" eq's with continuously variable q, freq and boost/cut that use a "graphic" display as opposed to a console style knob oriented.
 
Goti it!

My go to has been the SSL channel strip by UAD and Waves, depending. I spent my formative years on consoles, so I don't relate to a graphic interface on an EQ
 
Waves must be following this thread...'cuz today they're doing a $29 sale on all their individual EQ plugins. :D

EQ Plugins | Waves

Thanks! On top of the discount, I added a coupon code I found through Google search. It took a few bucks more off.

Picked up API560 & SSL-G EQ's for $46 total. I know no one pays full price, usually, but it would've been over $450.

Thanks for the heads up. :thumbs up::guitar:
 
My "own question" was what everyone else likes, and why. Can't say I can answer that on my own. :guitar:

I like the waves and avid versions of MEq-5 for distorted guitars a lot of the time. The SSL e channel emu for general tone shaping for vox and most acoustic inst except acoustic guitar. 1073 emu for drums. I have the GEM eq that's a sort of emu of a Massengberg eq that I really like on just about anything. Same with the the PIA Millenia. I like the PIA Lindell TE100 for subtle passive eq emu. The Museq is also good for subtle changes esp on buses. Those are the most used anyway.
 
In other words, you can fiddle around with the stock Reaper EQ for hours and maybe figure out what some of the proportional ratios are, but you will struggle for days trying to get that EQ to deliver the same 'sound' as that API.
I mean, it's really just a combination of bandwidth and gain settings. If you really need those to change together, at least in Reaper that's possible but not exactly easy. If, though, it's actually the right sound for the track, you'll find those settings anyway. You'll turn up the G, then maybe adjust the BW, then maybe tweak the frequency then maybe back around a couple times based on what you're hearing and if it actually is exactly what you really want and need, then those settings will be as close to the API filter as possible.

BUT...

It almost certainly will not be exactly the same because the API filter isn't exactly what you really want/need for that track. And if you're using that API thing you might get really close but not quite what you want and then what do you do? Swap out the plugin for some other fancy GUI and hope that one comes closer. Whereas in ReaEQ you just change whichever parameter needs changing and go.

Except if the API actually is fully parametric, then we're really only talking about what happens as we're moving the knob looking for the settings we want. It might sometimes save you some time by changing one knob rather than two, but it just as likely will cause you turn another knob that you might not have to on another EQ. Maybe it matters if you automate the filter, but again it completely depends on what you're looking for and only matters when it's changing. By the time you've actually got it dialed in for your track and are ready to move on to other things, it ultimately doesn't matter which knobs you turned (or didn't) to get there, right? A lot like Pan Law. If you pan a track and it gets quieter, you'll turn it up. Pan Law might save you that extra step, but it is really only an estimate or guess that is maybe slightly more likely to actually be the right amount of adjustment than to be completely wrong.
 
Whereas in ReaEQ you just change whichever parameter needs changing and go.

I think there's more to it than just that, and you're kinda going on the assumption that just by changing parameters, you can always get exactly what you want with that EQ and that no others are ever needed or can give you options that you don't have with ReaEQ.

I seriously doubt that people use a slew or other EQs simply because they get them to some point faster/easier...and nothing more.
That's like saying all compressors do the same thing and sound the same...it's just a matter of changing the parameters...some faster/easier than others.

At least that's what it seems you're implying.
 
I was of course only talking about the filter action itself, not accounting for any nonlinearity that might be added in an analog emulation.

But ultimately it really is just a matter of parameters. Whether it's analog or digital, eq comp or whatever, how it sounds is determined by some parameter somewhere. It might be a part value or an operational limit in an analog circuit, it might be hard coded into a plugin, but it IS a parameter. If you have access to enough of the parameters, you really can get about anywhere you want with one single tool.

But who (besides me) really wants access to all of those different parameters? Some very smart dudes have made some very important choices in their circuit designs and created something that tends to work well for certain things and narrowed all those different parameters down to three or four knobs. If it sounds good to you and the controls that you can touch are responsive in a way that's meaningful to you, you don't have to design your own and choose your own component values. Great. Do it. To a certain extent, those kinds of devices - both analog and digital - are "presets".

I ultimately don't really care why other people use what they use. I know how to get what I want, and I use what I use and I just turn the knobs til it sounds good.
 
If you have access to enough of the parameters, you really can get about anywhere you want with one single tool.

OK...so now you're talking about..."IF"...but before you were talking about the ReaEQ....or any other EQ for that matter.
What soft/hard piece of gear truly gives us access to ALL the parameter needed to mimic every other similar piece of gear, and therefore we're not needing anything else but that one piece of gear...???
None that I know of.

So that's the real point.
Talking about "IF" we could get to all the circuit/algorithm level "parameters"...doesn't really have much validity when discussing the tools that are available. :)
Saying you can "get what you want" is also not the point...I mean, we may only think we know what we want based on the limitations of our tools. ;)
So...more tools = more options and less limitations.
 
In the end it IS all just math performed by the computer but the algorithm design and implementation determines the end result. I am not about to do the math, I don't think any of us would want to while mixing, no matter how interesting the different design philosophies might be. So I guess we're all back to the use what you want to get the result you want.
 
For some sources it doesn't matter. For other sources it can make or break the way the source sits in and glues into the mix.

Jkuehlin, have you ever used the Slate EQs- FG-S (SSL), FG-N (Neve), Custom EQ, or his new FG-A (API)?

Personally, I think they're fantastic.
 
I have the GEM eq that's a sort of emu of a Massengberg eq that I really like on just about anything.
Me too! That thing is hands down one of the easiest EQ's do 'dial in'. I just love the way the bellcurves make life so much easier than with other digital EQ's. That sucker was expensive for a graphical EQ but it was worth every penny.

Same with the the PIA Millenia. I like the PIA Lindell TE100 for subtle passive eq emu. The Museq is also good for subtle changes esp on buses. Those are the most used anyway.
Yeah man. I like that Millenia for for adding subtle non abrasive boosts to the top at the end of a signal chain. That thing, the Curve Bender, and the Kush Clariphonic are my go-to for nice airy shimmer.
 
I mean, it's really just a combination of bandwidth and gain settings. If you really need those to change together, at least in Reaper that's possible but not exactly easy. If, though, it's actually the right sound for the track, you'll find those settings anyway.

When it comes to a highly unique sounding EQ like the API or Neve there are more equations firing under the hood than bandwidth and gain. The first is non-linearities, and these can not be mimicked by a digital eq tool that is designed only to manipulate gain, frequency and Q. And the other is the q slope which (in my opinion) is the dominant reason that not all digital graphic eq's will give you the same sound. All digital graphic EQ's (Avid, Logic, Fab Filter, Reaper) give you control of the Q width but they don't give you control of the Q slope. Some will give you more options than others (reaper gives you about 3 I think). The importance of this is subject to some debate. And yes, I think any engineer who's really good at their craft can usually get an acceptable result from a batch of stock Avid EQ's strapped across the entire mix. But my point is that really understanding the differences between digital EQ's and reaching for the EQ that can get you there the fastest when mixing is essentially why there's meaningful discussion around this to being with.

Swap out the plugin for some other fancy GUI and hope that one comes closer. Whereas in ReaEQ you just change whichever parameter needs changing and go.
Personally, I try to know my libraries well enough to not reach for a 1073 when I need a Helios. It comes down to knowing the specific differences between the EQ plugins so thoroughly that you don't make a bad choice to begin with. So there are two separate issues here: How fast a certain EQ can get you to the sound you want vs whether the EQ can get the sound period. There's a lot of grey area in that dichotomy.

Except if the API actually is fully parametric, then we're really only talking about what happens as we're moving the knob looking for the settings we want.

it ultimately doesn't matter which knobs you turned (or didn't) to get there, right? A lot like Pan Law. If you pan a track and it gets quieter, you'll turn it up. Pan Law might save you that extra step, but it is really only an estimate or guess that is maybe slightly more likely to actually be the right amount of adjustment than to be completely wrong.
To clarify...you might be able to mimic the sound of a proportional EQ. You won't be able to match the sound of a normal EQ to a non-linear EQ. You won't be able to get a normal EQ to match the sound of an EQ that models distinct linearities. They the actual math in the plugin algorithms is completely different. Again, its really not about 'can I match the settings...' because sometimes you can't.
 
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