Right, like Jazzwire just said: Empeg doesn't implement the EQ in software. The DSP hardware does it for them, and the 4x5 or 10x2 limitation is entirely within the DSP and out of Empeg's control. There is no way they could program it to do otherwise.

One of my earliest complaints was: Why offer separate left/right controls at all, why not have 10 front bands and 10 rear bands? The reason is that you can't even do THAT in the DSP, and Empeg has no control over it. All they can do is throw parameters at the DSP.

Now, this brings us to the next point, which is the parametric options in the EQ. For most professional audio work, 10 bands of parametric EQ is overkill. If your EQ is parametric, you don't actually need more than a few bands at most. Think about it. If you set up your ten EQ bands to look like this:

..............|....
..|.........|.|.|..
|.|.|.....|.|.|.|.|
|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|
|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|
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Although that might look like ten bands, it's actually only two bands with low Q values. By overlapping the curves and adjusting the parameters correctly, I could draw you just about any useful real-world EQ curve you needed with only three parametric bands.

Now, before you go whining and saying "but I can't see the curves graphed on the screen", just stop. Because most hardware parametric EQs aren't even graphic at all, they just have three knobs for each band. Audio producers and musicians have been adjusting their parametric EQs by ear since before you were born. Young whippersnapper.

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Tony Fabris