Digidesign: EQ III plug-in

Finally! An EQ plug-in from Digi that rivals most third- party EQ plug-ins-and even better, it's free!! Prior to the release of EQ III, if you didn't own a good third-party EQ plug-in, mixing in Pro Tools was a bit crippling if you were submixing in Pro Tools and bussing through a console; and mixing completely "in the box" was even more problematic. EQ III has a solid GUI that offers similar control to the best third-party EQ's (e.g., Sony Oxford, Universal Audio's Cambridge, and the Waves plugs), with color-coded knobs and drag points on the frequency plot above the knobs. EQ III comes in one, four, and seven-band versions. Best of all, due to double-precision 48-bit internal processing, it sounds great-a huge improvement over the older EQ II. I first used it while helping a friend do some mixes on his Digi 002 system. It was easy to dial in sounds, but admittedly, I didn't know his monitors well enough to make a real qualitative judgment. I haven't had a lot of time to use it on my own monitors, but engineer Thom Monahan (Pernice Bros) has been in my studio mixing the new Devendra Banhart CD at 96k, and he reports that it sounds great-as good as the Waves EQ's he usually uses. His only complaint is that the frequency bands do not overlap; oftentimes you have to switch bands to hit the frequency you want. The only other downside is that you'll need Pro Tools 6.7 or higher to use it. But hey, did I mention that it's free!?! (free; www.digidesign.com)