chapTer 3:
a BiT of hiSTory
in the beginning...
most early recording consoles had very primitive equalization capabilities,
often consisting of only two knobs. These consisted of either a simple ‘tone
control’ type shelving equalizer, or a ‘low’ and ‘hi’ control knob with a fixed
frequency center. one of the most significant advancements in early studio
recording came with the advent of dedicated equalizers. The invention of
dedicated equalizers inspired desk manufacturers to start putting more
comprehensive equalization into their desks. This addition, more than any
other, brought about what we would consider the modern recording desk.
many of the earliest outboard equalizers were passive devices, operating
in a purely subtractive manner, requiring a preamplifier (either in the form
of outboard gear, or routed back into an unoccupied channel of the console).
Not only did the equalizer lose signal level by performing equalization; but
often caused ‘loading loss’ merely by being patched in, resulting in added
noise, hum or buzz, and loss of tone or high frequencies. by the time an
equalized signal was preamplified again and passed through additional
console circuitry, the signal to noise ratio was often worse off. This
made eq difficult to use without negatively affecting the signal quality.
7
