[Scott Dorsey]

Sean Conolly wrote:
Depends...What price are you getting on the Alesis? It is a digital
graphic eq...it isn't a Pultec EQP with tons of musicality...heck,
isn't parametric...do you like the intervals and the Q on each...do
you think theywill work for you. On your follow up post, get the room
as good as you can get it...trying to "eq" a bad room to sound "good"
is the equivalent of polishing a turd...yes you can do it...but why?

I'd be more inclined to say that it will make a bad sound into a different
sound. You basically can't fix the sound of a bad room after it's been
recorded, but if it already sounds like crap and you have time for turd
polishing, then go for it and hope you get lucky. You may find something
interesting, or you may just waste more time.

The consequence of doing a lot of concert recording work is that I wind
up doing a lot of salvage work. And I will say that the tool for salvage
work is at minimum a fully parametric equalizer.

A graphic equalizer is like a sledge hammer. You cannot use it to repair
a watch. Some digital "parametrics" like the one in the dbx DDP have
adjustable Q but can only put the filters on third-octave centers, which
is effectively useless for dealing with guitar pickup clatter or horrible
out of controlled room modes.

Salvage work is no fun... it is WAY more pleasant and less work to just
record the track properly in the first place. But sometimes you can't
do that.

I think the old Orban 622 is still the first thing I reach for, in spite of
having a lot more modern solutions around here. There are certainly
cleaner ones today.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."