Earlier this year I was employed to teach music technology, mixing and mastering for a term at an Arts College. This institute had an amazing studio with plenty of outboard gear. One of the lessons I covered was mastering. I showed the students some cool tone shaping techniques using an outboard EQ that was sitting in their rack. This particular unit was a Sontech 432 parametric EQ, a device I had not used or heard of before. This EQ made quite the impression on me, it sounded absolutely stunning across everything we threw at it that day. After this experience I searched the net to find out how much these devices change hands for on the used market. To my surprise I found a recent Reverb listing for nearly £9,000, well and truly out of my budget.
I checked the usual hardware emulation haunts to see if there were an emulations of the 432. A quick browse through Waves and Universal Audio’s website didn’t turn anything up so I left it there and forgot about it, until the other morning when I was on IK Multimedia’s website and as luck would have it I stumbled across an image of a plug-in that resembled the 432. A quick read through of the blurb confirmed my suspicions and happy days, there was an emulation of the Sontech EQ that I had been looking for a couple of months ago… but is it any good? Does IK Multimedia’s Master EQ 432 plug-in perform and sound how I remember the hardware did?
In this free video tutorial I show you why I’m so enthusiastic about this particular EQ. It’s utterly transparent and always manages to add that sheen to music through it’s simple to set EQ without resulting masters sounding overly harsh or overdone.
Watch this video to learn why I love IK Multimedias Master EQ 432… and why you should too.