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Digital control with an analogue feel is an oft-attributed quality, yet few can truly say they have conquered all the points on the agenda. Dave Foister discovers a high definition digital EQ that gets pretty damn close
Digital EQ has come a long way, and eventually its path was bound to cross that of Daniel Weiss. Several times now I have seen Weiss' convertors held up as the reference to which others should aspire, particularly in a mastering context, and my own experience with the ADC1 mic amp-convertor (Studio Sound, September 96) supports this. There are many people who depend on Weiss' DSP expertise for critical work, and they will no doubt be first in the queue for the new version of the company's digital parametric, the Gambit EQ1.
The box and overall design are in themselves not new, having been available for some time; what is new is the double-sampling capability, and since the unit has not been covered in these pages before a full run-down is in order.
The Gambit EQ1 is a full-blown 7-band parametric equaliser, operating entirely in the digital domain, but offering analogue-like control. It is rare, and very refreshing, to see a digital processor with quite so many controls on it, and the way those controls are used, and the interaction with the display, makes this a masterpiece of ergonomic design.
The front panel is dominated by 21 black control knobs, immediately indicating that all seven bands have real controls for all three of their parameters. A further encoder handles other functions, and sits next to a big bright display screen that manages to convey a lot of information at once. Eight dedicated pushbuttons deal with memories and channel ganging, leaving only four softkeys beside the display to worry about, controlled in turn by a menu key.
The joy of the system is that these softkeys are only really needed for set-and-forget utilities and 'are-you-sure?' type confirmations; the real job of the equaliser is always live on the panel. Most of the display screen is given over to a real-time frequency response curve, complete with flags showing the selected frequencies of the seven bands. The rest changes function according to what you're doing, generally showing the numeric values...