I'm no mastering engineer, but lately I have been asked to "de-digitalize" a friends weirdly balanced and really harsh-sounding (1-5 kHz) music.
I found the Voxengo curve eq to be really flexible due to its mid and side options, as much of the harshness was centered in mono. By using two of these in a serie, one for M and the other for S, it was actually really inspiring to establish some kind of balance. Might not be the best way to go, but it worked very well in this case, and allowed some of the "lower air" in the S-band to remain untouched in contrast to just bang one eq over the whole field of information.
The curve eq also feels very clean to my ears in its LP mode, but has the flexibility to add some "funky
" coloring. So, it's really...flexible for people with limited finances.