Review: Arsenal Audio Dual Channel EQ-R24

[binsys]

Everybody seemed to be interested in these, so here's a quick review:

I LIKE IT.

The very first impression I got while installing it was that it is a quiet, professional, solid piece of audio equipment. We all know there are so many ways you can spend $1000.00 and end up with a noisy piece of junk that it's almost pitiful - this is NOT that.

I miss having a console in my project studio, but I didn't want a fancy channel strip - I got this specifically because it just drives me nuts (and results suck) trying to use a mouse and a plugin to fine tune the one fussy track that I didn't record correctly, or just to nudge something into place. Even though I have been a senior software engineer for 20 years I can't help it - I am old and I like knobs.

I used it on various recorded source material - electric guitar, vocal, acoustic piano, acoustic nylon string guitar, and a pop/rock mix. I have both Mytek 96 and Lavry Blue converters under Pro Tools HD, so at least what ever signal is there was pushed through it properly.

The EQ itself gives the impression of being very smooth, with the Q of the individual sections being selected to play well with others. While you can vary the notch point, this thing remains musical and never gets 'notch-ee ' or severe - I would think most people would find that it's a great tool for gentle corrections, mild-to-medium changes to overall character, and for 'guiding' a track into place rather than doing too much 'effect' work with it.

However - it will boost and cut the targeted frequencies quite severely when requested - it just always seems to remain rather mellow in character without adding too much distortion. The 'hiss' doesn't go up with the high frequency gain... I would call it quite musical.

So, although I didn't really test it very much as a 2-mix treatment, I think in a pinch you could do a lot worse if you had one of these in the rack - it at least won't add anything undesirable until you turn a knob in the wrong direction (of your own choice), and again, for gentle sweetening, it might do better then good!

I have to give this the thumbs up if you are looking for a general purpose, musically pleasant EQ with simple operation and a great price point.

[Jeff16years]

thanks for the review, i've been dying to hear about this.

[jbjoubaud]

Cool, thx for the review

[pan60]

i have a couple of the V14s and love-em!

will be post a review coming soon!