Dana Gumbiner has heard the original UTA console EQs at Eric Valentine's Barefoot Recording, the same EQ the MPEQ-1 hardware was built from. So when Tape Op handed him the plugin for issue 175, he came in knowing exactly what it was supposed to sound like. Here's the short version of what he found, and why it matters if you're on the fence.
The hardware is hard to find. The plugin isn't.
The MPEQ-1 started life as a single channel of the UTA consoles: mic preamp, DI and EQ in one rack space, with Class A amplification at every gain stage rather than just the output. Once the hardware was discontinued, used units became scarce and expensive. Dana points out that sixteen channels of the original would likely run past $75,000, assuming you could find sixteen owners willing to sell.
The plugin carries over everything that made the hardware unusual: the variable Shape control that blends peak into shelf, the wide-range Q, the flexible filters, and Vari-Phase, which flips the phase of a single band.
Drive the fundamental, leave the rest clean
The plugin adds something the hardware never had: a separate saturation stage on every band, with Solid State, Smooth and Tube flavors. Dana's favorite use was on individual drums. He pushed only the fundamental of a snare, kick or tom into saturation and left the other bands clean, which is a move you can't make with a full-band saturator. Add the option to run bands in series or in parallel, and there's a lot of territory in one instance.
It runs light
This is the part we'd point a skeptic to. On an Apple M3 Ultra, Dana ran more than 16 instances at 96 kHz, a 128-sample buffer and 4x oversampling, and the CPU meter sat around 20 percent. If you're short on headroom, oversampling can drop to 2x or off.
The wish list
A fair review has one. Dana would like a full manual and an opacity setting for the interface, since running it at full size with the spectrum display open takes a lot of screen. Both are reasonable asks.
The verdict
"At this price point, this EQ is a no-brainer for me."
That's his line, not ours. Headliner Magazine came to a similar conclusion in its own review, which you can read here.
Read the full Tape Op review · Try the MPEQ-1 free for 14 days · Buy it for $149
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