I'm pretty much convinced that tracking with EQ useing a digital board is a good thing. I don't know what happens, maybe better conversion because your feeding the converters what you want, and filtering out what you don't want. I had my Prodeus client in yesterday, we tracked a new song, this time with EQ thru the Focusrite Tone Factory.
I EQ'ed each instrument to tape. It took a rather bland sound and made it great. I can't get that kind of EQ, (sound ) from the DA7 EQ. Quite an amazing difference.

But you could still use an outboard EQ like the Focusrite during mixdown. This prevents you from making a bad decision at tracking time.

It's very difficult to predict what EQ will work until you get the entire context of the song in the mix. For some things, it's not too hard, but for most, I like to wait till mixdown time.

If necessary, you can EQ a signal during a test mix, and send the EQ'd copy to a spare track. Then the EQ device will be free to handle a different signal on the next mix run.

Of course, you can get stuck in a loop when you find out that *now* you don't like that original EQ'd track...

You missed my point. I think you get a BETTER
sounding conversion when your feeding the converters more of the frequency's that you want, and filtering out the ones you don't.
I'm not talking about extreme EQ. For example, mic'ing an acoustic guitar. There's alot of low end boominess most times. If you EQ them out BEFORE they hit the converters, it well sound better than if you EQ them out later. The reason is the converter is not having to deal with all that low end junk. It's working more effectivly on the sound you want, better conversion. Plus your printing more bits of information of the sound you want, instead of unwanted information, higher resolution. I've recorded
alot of junk that after EQ'ing it out, I lost alot of gain, then having increase the fader to make it up. I don't think that's a good way to go. If you know your room and monitors well enough, you can do this without
making a serious mistake.

I read somewhere a long time ago how Roger Nichols recorded in a home studio with a couple of R-Dats, building a recording, sound with sound, bouncing between the two recorders and adding tracks during each pass. He started with the drums, then added other instruments. He said he "knew how the drums should sound in the beginning to get them how he wanted them the sound in the mix in the end. I guess experience helps here, but I'm sure you can relate this issue to recording with a bit of eq cut as Jeremy is speaking about.
Jim K.

Yeah... Truth be known, the characteristics of the sound are influenced by mic choice and placement just as much (or more) than EQ. Once you get the sound to track - you can't change those aspects either.

At some point you have to lock yourself down. It's a question of when, and in what way, you want to lock yourself down. I use EQ filters, expanders and peak limiters during tracking because it's what I'm comfortable with. I already know that I'll need to clean up the low end with a heavy (RATM type) rock band. If I can successfully clean up the low end before I begin mixing then I'll actually have more apparent options during mix down. I also don't have waste bandwidth on something that is more or less already fixed.


[This message has been edited by marcn (edited 07-24-2000).]

Yes, Jeremy, there probably is something to cutting "unnecessary" signal. But I think this is a headroom consideration. Thus, if there's subsonic or supersonic crap, it's a potential problem. But I'm not convinced that audible signal will degrade the conversion. Not unless you're trying to slam every last bit, and I doubt that.

As for losing gain during the mix, you can crank the channel and fader as much as you like. There is no added noise as on an analog board. Gain in a digital board is done by math, not by amplifiers. Sometimes I've cranked +10dB in the channel.