remove EQ from OP8 mixer and make EQ section an effect?

[voidloss]

I can`t believe there is a discussion about whether EQ is important in mixing.

Crazy.

[Jouni]

..it's...like...talking..about...do...you..need..legs..to...walk...

well sure you can crawl or have a wheel chair..

[ccpurno]

Ok then: option to hide the EQ to make everyone happy.

Built-in EQ gives much better overview of course peeps then all
sorts of floating around EQs

CC

[Muse]

I can`t believe there is a discussion about whether EQ is important in mixing.

Crazy.

Is there? You must be reading a different thread.

[akpop]

I can`t believe there is a discussion about whether EQ is important in mixing.

..it's...like...talking..about...do...you..need..legs..to...walk...

Seems you both didn't read this thread.

First this thread was about the question whether the channel EQ in DAWs occupies its large amount of screen space mainly for traditional reasons (the most experienced users answered this with No).

Then it turned into thinking about the relation between the EQing and artistic expression. For a pure sounddesigner this maybe is a non(sense)-issue. For an instrumentalist this is a surprisingly complex and often delicate matter.


---------------

Crazy.

Yeah, so crazy:

I do not have a studio background. I nearly always made music on my own without recording. I never touched a real mixer.

I started "producing" with Orion. In my first year I didn't use EQ. It sounded goog to me. Maybe lack of talent, surely lack of experience.

Then I used the channel EQ because everybody else used it, but I didn't hear much differences except in extreme settings.

My ears had to develop. No matter how talented we are, this takes time.
Now I use EQ like crazy (and I'm still lousy at mixing).

Recently I bought a decent microphone and started recording simple things, guitar and voice.
Absolutely completely different problems than seperating kick and bass.
First with no amount of EQing was I able to recreate the sound I heard while recording/playing. That gave me a strange feeling of being "disconnected" from my performance.
"Natural EQing" (Room, microphone position, playing technique...) turned out to be much easier to learn than EQing in a mixer. Hm.

And then the beautiful voice of the singer, so delicate, don't touch it... (and it turned out that Orions's channel EQ got me in 2 minutes what I couldn't achive with all my UAD plug-ins in an hour. Truly crazy.)

[petersky]

I can only say that i cannot imagine OP8 without EQ in mixer section

[Kriminal]

it is NOT losing the EQ section.....

[akpop]

I can only say that i cannot imagine OP8 without EQ in mixer section

I couldn't either. Thanks to this thread now I can.

it is NOT losing the EQ section.....

Probably not O9. But with O10 I'm not so sure...

[HYPNAGOGIA]

I can only say that i cannot imagine OP8 without EQ in mixer section

I couldn't either. Thanks to this thread now I can.

This thread changed your entire opinion of mixer EQs and you don't want to see them anymore?

it is NOT losing the EQ section.....

Probably not O9. But with O10 I'm not so sure...

I asure you that Orion will never lose it's EQ section, and I do mean never. A solution for those who do not want it may be found and implemented (like folding sections of some sort), but still it will be there.

[bones]

I think Muse's intention is it to capture the essence of his perfomances. If his microphoning can do that then he will feel no need to use eqing.
Every instrumentalist, at least if he is musical, has an extremely strong concept of the sound of his very instrument. Interfering this sound (as a main carrier of emotion) with heavy eqing often is not sought after..

That's just rubbish. I had to live and die that way for the best part of 20 years and the one thing that made a studio worth hiring was the ability to EQ everything so that those "essences" could all be heard together. It's quite clear you really don't understand the role of EQ in mixing. Think of a wall made of stones - you can spend ages trying to find stones that fit together or you can take to them with a cold-chisel to make them fit together. That allows you to choose the best stones to make the wall, rather than having to work with whatever fits together. Think of EQ as the cold chisel, it allows you to use all the right sounds and make them work together, rather than being restricted to sounds that don't clash in the first place. It actually helps you to catch essence of a performance, rather than ruin it.

[akpop]

Bones, true. But Muse is not a producer/soundengineer team that tries to help a band compete with the other stuff on the radio. In a way hi _is_ "trying to find stones that fit together". And if he happens to find (or believes he found) some then nothing is wrong with that.
I think if a classical ensemble records, they'll probably do eqing, too, but surely not like with a chisel. I'm sure there are other musicians who also do restrict themselfs to non clashing sounds.

[akpop]

This thread changed your entire opinion of mixer EQs and you don't want to see them anymore?

No, I still have no problem with Orion's mixer. But this thread made me think about plug-ins in general. (So strictly speaking, my ramblings here are off topic.)

Maybe I'm wrong, but here's what I think:
I feel that the whole plug-in thing is still in its infancy.

For a long time mixing had been channel based with some outboard equipment added. When recording and mixing became computer based the well understood concepts of hardware naturally were guidelines for the developers.
But this might change, for reasons like the following:

- More and more plug-ins are developed, more and more gear addicts crave for them because it's fun or inspirational or whatever. At the same time the overall plug-in quality is getting better.

- More and more producers and musicians will grow up without any experience with hardware.

- The possible flexibility of software is still not exhausted. I'm sure there will be knew combinations of generators and effects, new possibilities for processing and routing audio and MIDI. The various plug-in standards will evolve.
Things like Uhbik-X or the stunningly powerful Edit Area/Sound Matrix of Kore2 are giving a glimpse into this future.

- Also, I think, more and more producers will have their favourite plug-ins for every single kind of sound. Finally many of them will want better possibilities to manage, combine, integrate and apply them.
And for someone who mostly uses plug-ins all those unused console knobs only take up screen space.

- Probably there will be new kinds of human interfaces computers and we'll probably see new workflows emerge and DAWs naturally will follow to better support these new workflows.

Of course I don't know if Orion will or shoud be one of them. Thats absolutely not my point.

[bones]

Again, that has nothing to do with it. it is about making each piece sound as good as it possibly can. Take the live context - a sound engineer will spend half a day tuning a PA for a venue, but each band will still need to spend an hour or two EQing all their instruments so that they sound good and what works for one band will not usually work for another, so each band needs it;s own settings, just to make sure that they project that "essence" properly.
The more you post, the clearer it becomes that you have no idea. Only an idiot would restrict themselves to sounds that fit together when it is trivial to work with the best possible sounds to do the piece full justice. No matter what it is you want to achieve, using the best sounds will always improve things.

[Muse]

I don't see why this has to get complicated. I simply do not like to mess with my music too much after I have played it - I prefer to let it be, for better or worse, flaws and all. The sound that it has is the sound that sounded right to me while playing - in the moment - for me that is what's most important and I made a decision long ago to live with what I make and not to fuss over it. I don't care to try and make it prettier afterwards so I use eq at most sparingly and with caution rather than habitually.

That being said I have never made an argument against using eq per se and I do have some good eqs like Air Eq (and in my Creamware Scope system) so clearly I do not see it as unimportant either - just something for me that must be used very sparingly and subtly - more a delicate surgeon's or artisan's tool than a blunt workman's one.

[ydm]

My problem with the current EQ UI is that i find it hard to visualize the sound spectrum. Especially when the number of tracks start to grow, I dont know where to cut or boost anymore.
Any tips on how to manage this or cope with this?