Alesis DEQ230D User Manual

 
 
 

 

 

This section is designed to get you started with the DEQ230 by 

giving some sample settings. These are merely suggested settings; 

experiment and find your own once you begin to hear what the 

DEQ230 does to your sound. 

 

In a way, it’s absurd to suggest EQ settings without knowing what 

the source sounds like. EQ is a tool that’s used to change the 

timbre of  a sound, and it’s impossible to suggest an EQ setting 

that, for example, will make all guitars sound better. So the goal of  

this section is to give you some ideas for using EQ on your own 

tracks. 

 

 

 

A rock and roll kick drum is usually EQ’d quite a bit to make it 

sound the way it does on the radio. Usually an engineer will choose 

to cut some of  the woofy low-midrange, while boosting the high-

end "slap" and maybe even some of  the lows. Here is a setting to 

try on a close-miked kick drum: 

 
•  Select all frequencies below 80Hz and boost 3dB 
•  Cut 500Hz by 8dB 
•  Boost all frequencies above 5kHz by 4dB 

 

You may also want to apply some compression and gating with the 

Alesis CLX-440.  

 

 

 

A popular effect on vocals is to boost the high frequencies to add 

"air" to the vocal. This is an especially popular effect on ballads 

sung by R&B divas. This effect is achieved by boosting the high 

frequencies:  

 
•  Boost 16 kHz by 6dB  
•  Boost 20 kHz by 6dB 
 

 

 

If  a recording has a lot of  tape hiss, such as one transferred from 

cassette, you can usually get rid of  it by dropping the high 

frequencies a bit:  

 
•   Select all frequencies from 8kHz up and cut them by 6dB 

 

Adjust the gain of  different bands to compromise between 

keeping the high end of  the recording and eliminating tape hiss.