Hey, there’s nothing inherently wrong with presets. Presets can be a great starting place or an easy tool to reverse engineer a sound you like. But a lot of these I treat as suspect.
Compression and EQ presets come immediately to mind. Like if we all agreed that there were corrections that were necessary for acoustic instruments, wouldn’t we just record them like that in the first place? So when somebody suggests to me that this is the way you EQ or compress X, Y, or Z, it feels a little bit like they’re sending me into a shoe store and just saying, “Buy shoes.” Not all feet are the same.
So if you’re frustrated when people say things like, “Use your ears,” this is what they’re talking about. You can’t fix a problem that you can’t identify. If this was helpful, save this post and look out for our workshops and our classes.
