Sound & Vision
New member
So, over a period of a few years I have invested in some outboard EQ and compressor units. Some of them are duplicate units so I have more than one channel of them. That is my situation, and now I am beginning to seriously doubt that I ever needed to have more than one channel of any gear. This really comes down to your philosophy on how to use them, so I am looking for your opinions. I will state my current thought process and then hopefully others can chime in:
There seems to be a consensus on the boards to record all signals clean if possible (bypassing EQ and compressors) into your DAW (or analog equivalent) and process later. I definitely agree with this opinion from the standpoint that you don't want to screw up your signal and not be able to undo it later. (I do EQ and compress the signal a little sometimes though)
So, does everyone record their raw track and then make a 2nd track with the original take sent through their outboard gear? This would always leave you the original take to go back to, but the number of physical tracks in DAW projects would significantly increase. Also, If you are doing this process one mono track at a time, you never need 2 channels of any gear. This process would seem much more cumbersome than using non-destructive software plugins though (although I enjoy outboard gear).
SO...should I be using the aforementioned process, selling off my duplicate gear, and investing somewhere else? OR Should I be happy with the FLEXIBILITY that multiple channels of EQ/Compression gives me?
Thanks for any opinions.
There seems to be a consensus on the boards to record all signals clean if possible (bypassing EQ and compressors) into your DAW (or analog equivalent) and process later. I definitely agree with this opinion from the standpoint that you don't want to screw up your signal and not be able to undo it later. (I do EQ and compress the signal a little sometimes though)
So, does everyone record their raw track and then make a 2nd track with the original take sent through their outboard gear? This would always leave you the original take to go back to, but the number of physical tracks in DAW projects would significantly increase. Also, If you are doing this process one mono track at a time, you never need 2 channels of any gear. This process would seem much more cumbersome than using non-destructive software plugins though (although I enjoy outboard gear).
SO...should I be using the aforementioned process, selling off my duplicate gear, and investing somewhere else? OR Should I be happy with the FLEXIBILITY that multiple channels of EQ/Compression gives me?
Thanks for any opinions.