I also find I have to work the highs and mids quite a lot, but even a tiny amount to the left on the low knob takes out a significant amount. I think part of this might be the way the pot curves are done in the mixer firmware. I’ve said for quite some time that the bass knob is definitely too touchy and could use more nuance, but I get what you’re saying about the other knobs maybe not doing enough. The happy medium could be somewhere in between such curve extremes.
Yes. Even an iso all centered, assuming it’s not X18xx that does an auto bypass, will cause phase distortions and color the sound in unique ways. Isolators are just crossover filter networks that are summed, as opposed to true EQs that usually cause more phase distortion the further from center you are. On an iso, tone knobs are controlling trim-gains for the bands passing through filters. On an X18xx, just one tone knob on that channel tweaked from center will bring channel’s filter network into the virtual signal path.
Besides the mentioned DDM4000, you can use the DB4 to test this very quickly, too. It’s not just the bands and corner frequencies used, though, but the type of tone controls implemented – iso vs EQ, corner frequencies, filter type, etc. It’s also hard to say how much of a mixer’s sound is inherent to the main line-level pass through and how much are the filters and tone controls. Many analog mixers’ true EQs are also often not perfectly component matched in the way that’s easy to do on digital mixers’ firmware.
A mixer with hardware tone controls bypass (Xone 62), auto bypass (X18xx), or just a lot of different options (DB4) will let you quickly hear the primary path. For instance, in bypassed tone knob filter mode the DB4 sounds closer to a mint Mackie d.4 (that always has its isos in the path) than it does to any other analog Xone mixer, but you turn on either EQ mode or especially isolator mode and it starts to sound very much like other Xones… just cleaner and more precise. I guess the Mackie’s isos must be pretty good.
By the way, that only affects its iso mode on the tone controls, as the EQ mode is a parametric style with fixed parameters. When the tone knobs are closer to 12 o’clock for a channel in EQ mode, the closer to zero effect on the sound they have, which is usual for most digital mixers’ EQ modes, with the DB4 being the exception off the top of my head where its EQ mode slightly colors the sound compared to filter bypass.
True, and also curious how high-end digital mixers, in particular, tend to sound strangely different from each other, like at that tier you’re able to hear the subtle differences more, not less. The Djr-400, Model 1, Xone 96, and FF4000 all seem more similar sounding to each other than an X1700, X1800, DJM-900NXS2, and MP2015 that have very unique flavors. It could be because digital is worse, but I tend to lean towards it being a combination of better per dollar and different. At least some of this is probably related to what Max and Kris are talking about.
