You might be sitting there thinking (hey my Waves, URS, Vox, blah blah sound completely different). With some emulation plugins you have EQ+X. X can = Saturation, bandwidth limits, softclips, offset numerical values, & so on. Separate the X variable what do you have? The EQ algorithm.
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If you find yourself asking the question “is my mix missing that magic EQ?????” Don’t. Your EQ needs are fully covered using a fully variable EQ & a saturation tool of choice.
The quality variables come down to, unlocked filter flexibility, internal resolution, oversampling capabilities, & so on. There is no magic in audio DSP, It’s math. If you make your EQ decisions while listening, you can get to the same aesthetic result with tools at hand.
Go ahead and read this article and check out the video below:
P.S. I’ve created a test song in Reason 8 using both MClass EQ and the SSL EQ (download link). Because we cannot fine tune parameters in Reason extremely precisely I couldn’t match the EQ and gain settings 100% but just listen and you will find out that both EQ’s are the same and will phase cancel almost perfectly (they would if we were able to match both settings!).