Great River EQ-2NV

Most of us are familiar with Great River as a company and their 1 and 2 channel preamp, the ME-1NV & MP-2NV. Dan Kennedy, the designer of Great River products has made another hit with his one and two channel equalizer based on the familiar circuitry of the NV preamp, called the EQ-1NV and EQ-2NV. I've been using this EQ non stop for the last year, so I figured I'd cram in an additional couple hours into my 90 hour work week and write a review. As most of you know, in the studio we are using a modified Sound Workshop console. It's a good workhorse board that has a big open sound, but as with any console manufacturer, some of the first places to skimp are the master section and PSU. So I had my tech allow us to replace the master section with whatever else I wanted to patch in. We lost our auxiliaries for the moment (we working on this currently), but we send auxes out of the DAW digitally to the efx units anyhow, and return through D/A's into the consoles faders so it doesn't really matter. What did matter is that the improvement was obvious and significant. After doing many tests with multiple pieces of gear, the EQ2NV was what I chose to sit on the master bus.

I personally enjoy mixing into a stereo EQ on the 2 bus (mostly of the time after the stereo bus compressor, which at this point in time the Roll Music 755 Super Stereo is permanently on the 2 bus also)..call it pre-mastering or whatever it is, I find that it works. The problem during the search, was to find the right piece that could deliver both coloration and still retain transient detail. I didn't want to soften things up too much, I already have a lot of coloration in my individual tracks, not to mention we mix to tape @ 15ips, so whatever we chose had to be fat and punchy (not soft and pillowy), not to mention have a lot of flexibility from a functional standpoint. AS far as describing the actual sound of the unit, the closest I can get is that it is somewhere between the character of an API 550a and the EQ in a Neve 10xx series, with a lot more functional flexibility than either of those pieces ...very much a best of both worlds.

On to the design of the EQNV. As would be expected from Mr. Kennedy, the EQNV is an all class A Discrete design. The EQ controls are familiar one - 4 bands per channel, with a low frequency roll off. On the two mid bands, bandwidth 'Q' is selectable by a button switch giving narrow, medium, or wide settings. On the high and low bands, curves are selectable between shelf and peak. This makes sense to me, the outer extremes tend to be tone shapers in most cases, and the mid bands go high or low enough (i.e. 8.2khz on the hi mid, and 220Hz on the low mid, to cover most problem areas if a thinner bandwidth is desired). Cut and boost is a standard +/- 15 decibels, like most EQ's used for tracking and mixing (although this EQ is easily sonically high quality enough to be used for mastering, a mastering version with different transformers and precision matched gain detents will be available sometime in the future, hopefully by late 2006).

The basic design of the unit was based on the 10xx series of Neve (tm) EQ's, but other than being 'inspired' by those vintage designs, the comparisons stop there - both in functionality and it's character. Is it as good as those vintage designs? Easily said - yes. The vintage console designs of yesterday definitely have their place, would I personally want to make an entire album with one (or even the majority?), no I would not. Every flavor has it's place...engineering is a lot like cooking, if all we used was sugar in every dish, things would be a bit strange (even though we all agree we like the taste of sugar, it seems to be programmed into the species). One of my favorite features is the input sensitivity controls. Since the Great River EQNV is transformer balanced on the input, depending on how the input sensitivity is hit, the unit changes the amount of harmonic distortion it generates. These days I find that it's permanently set to L+4, which is basically unity through the unit (run 1.23 volts into it, you get 1.23 volts out of it), and sonically speaking this is the best balance between color and detail that I've found when running at +4 pro levels. Upping the input by one click (to L+8) causes the unit to soften the audio in a pleasing way, causing transient detail to smooth out and distortion to increase. This can be a good or bad thing depending on what the engineer is trying to achieve, but as we all know it's about using our ears, and the choice is only a click away. For -10 project studios, or for guitar and bass rigs, settings have been included that can adapt to these lower levels.

For two bus usage, I found the extra coloration of the higher input sensitivity setting to be too much, but for tracking and mixdown purposes (on individual tracks or stereo sub bus), even without the EQ portion engaged, this is a valuable function for the digital world. We are always looking for ways to make things more musical, usually it comes down to harmonic distortion and flattening the waveform, that IS the sound of rock and roll. The EQ2NV can function in two ways. As a standalone unit, fully balanced in and out (again transformer input, transformerless output when as a stand alone), or in conjunction with the Great River 2NV microphone preamp. When the EQ-2NV is patched into the MP-2NV preamp, the output transformer of the MP-2NV preamp is utilized for the EQ, so you can have access to transformer in and output, yielding more of that ever desirable transformer sound (I personally believe that transformers are dominantly responsible for what is many times attributed to the sound of analog tape or filament tubes...even though tape and tubes do have a unique 'sound', much of the grungey goodness is in the iron...just listen to a transfomerless tube design, or the difference between an Otari 2" and an Ampex 2" and you'll see what I mean). When combining with the 2NV mic preamp, the input sensitivity must be set to MP1. So in summary, the EQ2NV is a very flexible all around EQ for the project studio, professional commercial studio, or whatever sub category of studio you find yourself running - to yield clean or dirty, with enough horsepower for broad 'machete' type tone shaping or for putting the audio under the knife for precision 'scapel' type detailing. So that's about it for now, if anyone has any questions that I haven't addressed here, feel free to call or email me personally.


Best Regards
Nathan Eldred
www.AtlasProAudio.com