Solid State Logic X-EQ manual Some History, An Audio Engineer’s Best Friend

4. Some History

4.1 An Audio Engineer’s Best Friend
The equaliser is	the oldest	and t he most popular sound
processing tool. From the earliest days, its main function has
been to co rrect or enhance sound by boosting or cutt					ing
certain frequency ranges. Engineers have developed countless
equalisers for over 50 years		and s		ome of t hem becam e
legendary an d were considered			bench m arks. The m		ost
popular type of EQ in recording and post-production studios
is t he parametric equaliser		or	PEQ. It offers maxi		mal
flexibility due to direct access to all relevant filter parameters.
Properly used t he PEQ is a very powerful tool and the best
friend of every sound engineer in the battle for perfect sound.
If misused, it can be the greatest enemy of any recording.
4.2 The Best of the Analogue and Digital Worlds
X-EQ is a creative equalising tool combining the best of both
the an alogue and	digital worlds. We			recreated t he m ost

legendary analogue equalisers and added a few experimental characteristics only possible the in digital domain. By using proprietary filter algorithms, we have achieved a huge dynamic range as well as extremely low noise and distortion level, and thus unparalleled sound purity; impossible with any analogue circuitry.

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4.3 Analogue Parametric EQ Modelling

In today’s e ra o f digital a udio workstations, h undreds of software parametric equalisers are available. Many of them are intended to be “THE best sounding equaliser ever”. The truth is that only few of them are recognised and adored by the experts. You may ask why one equaliser sounds great while another d oes n ot. T his question is a lmost as ol d a s th e equaliser itself and still is not com pletely answered. On the one hand t here are some obvious rules wh ich must be followed when designing a good sounding PEQ, on the other hand some n ever r eally proven esoteric claims driven by marketing departments or sel f-nominated audio evangelists. Especially treasured analogue equalisers are c onsidered by some people as being absolutely unique and unmatched by any ‘dirty’ digital equaliser. The truth is that with a properly designed, fully parametric analytic EQ every amplitude and phase characteristic of a ny o ther equaliser setup c an be recreated. Of course, the contribution of distortions to the specific sound of a p articular analogue equaliser caused by the respective e lectronics h as to b e considered. If the distortions are ‘good’, they may make certain applications sound better. Usually however, ‘bad’ non linear distortions and other deficiencies like limited dynamic range are surely not responsible for a ‘m agic’ sound. Therefore our policy in digital PEQ design has always been to make the equaliser