Mic preamps with Eq's. What is the story?

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I'm in the market for a new 2 channel mic preamp. Some come with Eq's, and I'm having a hard time understanding why one might want Eq on the way in. Doesn't the ability to Eq afterwards make the EQ on the preamp totally redundant? Why would one want an Eq on the way in?
 
There is a school of thought that capturing the sound you want at the beginning of the process is better. It also makes a difference if you are using an outboard compressor before the interface. A compressor will react differently, depending on the frequency content of the signal.
 
I have an SSL Alpha channel and so far I’ve only used the EQ on the way in for bass, but for those times, it has been TERRIFIC.
 
It's one of those, "better to have it and not need it than to need it but not have it," things.
 
I'm the opposite - preamps have gain and nothing else to degrade the path. (Ducks for cover - but I really do believe this, but know others really want coloration/tweaking and distortion)
 
The Tascam software has a DSP compressor and EQ for each channel which won't use any CPU power. I've never used the EQ, but I have used the compressor, especially for bass. I've also tried it on vocals a few times but it wasn't really any advantage other than making things sound more even for the singer.

I guess if you had a profile you liked for a particular singer/microphone combination, it would be handy to save that profile, and pull it up as needed.
 
Just for some context, back when the earth was cooling and all we had was analog tape and outboard gear, you sometimes needed to process signals on the way in. For example: if you only had one compressor, but knew that you wanted to compress the kick, bass and vocal, you would have to compress some of those as you record them because you could only compress one during the mix.

With tape, if you wanted something to be very bright, you would want to add that EQ on the way in, because if you add a bunch of high end in the mix, it would also bring up the tape hiss.

You also didn't want to record any useless low end (thumps and rumbles that weren't part of the sound you were trying to capture) because that would affect how the tape reacted to the signal.

Some people learned to record this way and still chose to use this method, even if it isn't strictly necessary.
 
We've had a a few topics on this and we always split between clean and untouched and 'character' and I think this has maybe always been the case since the early days of recording - There was a guy called Tony Waldron, who designed the Cadac audio mixers used in theatre and TV. He was almost single minded in his drive for purity in the signal path, and a really nice guy - but he would not accept anything that impacted on this. Others, including Rupert Neve wanted a particular sound and he was equally certain his path was the best one - and we're still buying preamps based on his designs listen from his early mixers. I suppose, we all need to be in one camp or the other. Neither is right or wrong - it's a choice. All we can agree on is that we don't want hiss, hum or any kind of noise.
 
I don't look at this as a preamp that changes the sound or has some sort of MOJO. I look at it as a clean preamp and an eq in the same box. If we knew which one he was looking at, we could determine if it had a bypass switch, which would take the eq out of the signal path. (And if it was a clean preamp or a MOJO preamp)
 
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