Saturday, 6 February 2016

An update to my compensatory eq

So a while ago I published a post on this blog talking about my use of compensatory eq. The idea was that I applied an eq, while I was working, over my entire mix. The reason for this was that I tend to hear things slightly differently to what modern mastered music sounds like. I always gravitate towards certain frequencies and sounds. As such when i'm working, as I now am, on expensive flat response speakers - everything tends to sound very scooped to me. As such I apply a reverse of this at the end of the mix chain. Previously I was performing this via logic's inbuilt eq but I have recently found a better solution.

This solution was brought about when my Apogee Ensemble soundcard became, how to put it, obsolete. The card's sound quality is excellent but it no longer works with the latest version of OSX (El Capitan). There has also always been issues with drivers and the controller software not working very well, so I wasn't that upset to be having to replace it. So with all this in mind, I plumped for a MOTU Track16. The feature list is insane for a card at the price and i've used MOTU products previously and was pretty happy with them. So far this has been, hands down, the absolute best card i've ever owned considering the relatively low price I paid for it.

One of the best features of the new card is that it has a built in DSP function which includes, amongst other things, an eq on every channel. This is great because its lets me apply the eq over everything I do, including reference tracks. This is where this solution is so much better than my old solution because I no longer have to important my reference tracks into logic to AB them against my work.
And without further ado, here is my final compensatory eq curve


And here are the settings on the motu DSP



If you would like to hear how this sounds, please check out my youtube video on the subject. I show the difference in sounds and also explain a bit more about the setup.


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