?I feel that, to a beginner, they would be better of if they only were allowed 4 EQ to use on an entire mix. If I knew this going in, I would work harder to get the tone of each instrument right at the source. I'd work harder in mic placement, and I'd tell the acoustic guitar player to play softer and avoid the low mud that shows up when he hits the strings too hard, for example. I wouldn't rely on all the fancy gadgets that are included in recording software programs.

Then, after I had gotten the feel for engineering without much EQ, I could start adding EQ more appropriately and in subtle amounts. The same goes for compression.

In my opinion, the best mixes I've done have involved me doing the least. In other words, there is a certain magic fidelity to tracks when you do nothing but play with volume faders. Once you start fiddling around with EQ and such things make a turn. Sometimes it's for the worst. The best mixes I've done have involved me taking a very minimalist approach to mixing where I basically don't do anything to the tracks but volume, may be a little high pass filtering and that's about it. Then I look at the most obvious elements and enhance those just a little bit.

So if you can avoid the temptation to play with all of your new toys, your recordings will probably come out sounding better.