Okay, I didn't really read the rest of the thread (seems there has been some sort of kerfuffle, ugh) but many of Danny's points apply to me directly as a relative newcomer and his thoughts on the chosen frequencies for the Quad EQ make sense. I didn't know why but there have been MANY times when I'm messing around with something trying to get it sounding better quickly and found that really just turning the default bands up/down and/or making the band wider/narrower gets me pretty much where I want. It kind of freaks me out because after years of screwing around with 10 band EQs or whatever and having to fiddle with things forever using trial and error it was weird just having the right frequencies right out of the gate. I'd think "well geeze if it sounds that good without moving the band maybe if just nudge it over a bit I can really hone in on an even sweeter spot". Most times it will make it sound worse... like significantly worse. So I don't know what kind of fancy voodoo they did to come up with those bands or whether that's how the hardware versions were set but man... it is really spot on and really convenient.
I would however like to see an option for more bands though. The quad is great for getting close but yeah, I do end up tossing the Sonitus EQ on stuff a lot of the times to do some fine tuning. However I usually don't have to do much which is again a huge time saver. I'm not used to getting my EQing done so quickly and I mean this is even before I actually did some hardcore studying on general EQ principals. Now it's like I just go in there and within seconds I got something cool happening.
The CA2A is another massive time saver. It's not great for everything but man... it sure does work for most stuff I'm doing and again it doesn't take me forever to dial in like some of the other ones. I was able to use it rather easily before studying up on compression as well so that's a good thing for a n00b.
As far as the CE... I kind of like it but I don't use it as recommended. I'll try it on specific tracks or busses to see what it does. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes you just can't hear it at all. I like a bit of old school grit on stuff because... well I listen to tons of old metal, punk, country, rock, etc that was recorded with less than stellar equipment and I like to put a bit of that into my sound. It may seem weird to some but I just don't like ultra clarity. Too cold and sterile. I would likely be better off with some of the fancy tape sim plugs but I don't really have money for that kind of thing so the CE is just something cool to have around. I would die without it though. Edit: That should have read I WOULDN'T die without it. lol
Meh. Just some ramblings. Cheers.