TOP 3 EQ's I USE EVERY DAY | Best Mixing and Mastering EQ's 2020

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, I'm Streaky. And today I'm going to tell you the three best mixed bus EQs. Before we get into it, if you're new here, my name is Streaky. I've been a mastering engineer for the past 25 years, mastering for all kinds of people. So I'm here to tell you everything I know about mixing and mastering. I've spoken to various mix engineers and mastering engineers to find out their favorite top three EQs. And these seem to be their top three in the box EQs. So let's get going. And as with all spammy videos, number 3 is my favorite. So hold on till the end.

EQ number one is the Curve Bender. It's basically the Chandler Limited, which is the sort of Abbey road desk, the Curve Bender. Now a lot of people use this. They like it for the warmth. It really colors the sound. And when I say coloring the sound, it thickens the sound, makes gluey sound. It's not really sharp as you'd find with other EQs. It gives a real warmth to the sound. A real analogy feel to it. So a lot of ways that people are using this. Let me show you briefly is these filters on the side here, the high pass. A lot of guys like using that. So that's definitely worth checking out for you. And also the low pass about 30k is quite nice. Obviously, 30k is above what we can hear, but the actual curve itself starts a lot lower than that. So that is a nice sound.

They're also using the top end around 16, 12, and not too much. But that's a nice sound they're going for. Low end is good too. You can get a real fattish sound in the low end. So that's the use. For me on mastering, I always use this at the end of my chain, if I just want to put a bit of color in the very highs at the very end. It's quite nice to do that. You can use this also in M/S mode. So it's quite useful. You can go quite loud with it, because it does times 1.2 on the gain as well. So very good EQ. Also, you can use it if you've got it in M/S. If you don't link the channels, you can use it for widening the stereo as well a little bit. If that's what you want to do on that side or all the things you can do with M/S. Watch my M/S video for that which I'll link above.

EQ number two. It's the FabFilter Pro-Q 3. Now I'm sure you would have known this. I was going to say this one because I use this all the time on everything, and a lot of demos that I do. If you haven't seen me use this, then you haven't been watching my channel enough. This has loads of different phase settings. I like linear phase in high. Because the reason I liked this EQ so much, it's super versatile. You can do so much with it. You can use it in dynamic mode, just so that you can use it to bounce around only for when those frequencies are being used. It's a really clean sounding EQ.

So it's not colored like the Chandler one before. It's just really clean, really precise. You can really drill into stuff and you can go wide. You can literally do everything you could possibly want to do when it comes to EQ with this. It's an amazing bit of kit. It's even got tilt EQs and stuff. It's just great. It does everything you want it to do. This is definitely one of my favorites. I use it all day every day. It's great. You can do everything on it. So definitely use this. If I would suggest one EQ that people use and you don't use anything else, I would just say, get into the FabFilter Pro-Q 3 and just learn it, and just watch every video you can on it. Watch all my videos on EQ and you'll see me using it a lot.

It can do everything you want it to do. So if you can know this EQ, then you can pretty much take all of the stuff you learned from using this to other EQs. And you can basically use any EQ in the same way. But this does everything. So definitely my favorite.

EQ number three. And yes, this is of course my favorite because I've used the hardware version a lot is the Acustica Audio Ivory. Now this is a copy of the Maselec. The Maselec is better than this as hardware, but they've stopped making that I think now. And there's a lot out there, but they are quite pricey. This is really great if you're in the box. I use this in the box too because I really like it. Settings, it's a pretty standard EQ. A stereo EQ. There's no M/S features on it. It's just straightforward. A bit more here or a bit less there. So I use this as a general stereo EQ. I'm not doing too many tricks on this. It's just okay. I want some top. The 12k is lovely. Put 12k on there. 60 Hertz at the bottom on a shelf. Great. I could go on all day with settings on this. I won't, because I've done other videos on that. But this is definitely worth checking out. Make sure you get the pre in makes a massive difference. But I never use these input-output trims, but I just love this EQ. It sounds great. You can't go wrong. So using all three of these EQs that I've shown you today, all together works for different things. Getting bass boost, doing trims, doing some little lifts in the mids, loads of different stuff. So this is number three and it is probably my all-time favorite because I love the Maselec hardware version too.

You have it. There the top three mixing and mastering EQs, for in the box, allegedly. So if you've got a cracker that I haven't mentioned today, please put it in the comments. I'd love to hear what you're using and why you're using it. Please also, if you have any tracks that I can use, because I'm sick of using my assistance tracks for these demos, please send those into demos@streaky.com. And then I'll feature your tracks on this channel. So if you want to see me mastering in the box in Ozone, then this video coming up right now will take you there and you can see exactly what I use and you can copy it so that you can master your tracks in Ozone too.