Subject: Clarity - and I like to add transparency

Plugins: EQs, saturation and arrangement

Procedure:

1. Give your sounds a task, like lead, rhythm, melody, upfront, background, add ons... This will help you to make clear decisions.
2. Spread your sounds from fully left to center to fully right.
   But this doesn't mean you should make the sounds fully wide, rather the opposite.
   Three sounds at 100L(or 100L-80L), 70L(-50L) and 40L(-20L) will sound more transparent than to set all three to 100L-20L.
   With a lot of narrowed down sounds, one or two with full width can be catchy.
3. The less sounds you use, the better when it comes to calrity/transparency. Like with a crowd of people. You can easily differentiate six people who are standing still or moving around slowly, but with 60 people jumping around wildly, no chance.
   
4. A supporting pad, be it vocals or strings, must not have the same dominating frequencies as the lead sounds (vocals, synth, guitar).
5. I'm a friend of low cuts. There are some technical reasons why every recorded sound (samples are recorded too) has a bunch of low frequencies which do not belong to the instrument at all. The lowest note of a standard tuned six string guitar has a fundamental frequency of ~ 80Hz. But every analyzer will show you frequencies down to 20Hz for this instrument.
   I use low cuts on almost every sound to get rid of these artifacts and to narrow the frequency spectrum to the desired range. You normally don't need 80Hz in guitar. This is mainly the range for bass drum and bass. Although pianos and organs, to mention only two, can easily go lower than 80Hz, I normally low shelf or cut this range in those instruments too. The less instruments occupy the same frequency range the more transparent the mix is. And clean, defined and transparent low freqs are incredibly important for a mix.
6. But low cuts have a drawback. 'Normal' EQs shift the source's phase. The more you dial it in, the more the phase is shifted and this can in deed be audible. And since a cut is the maximum 'invasion', the phase is maximal shifted/distorted. Therefore for lowcuts I use linear or minimum phase EQs.
   But this has a drawback too, latency. Linear phase EQs always come with latency. So, as long as the recording process isn't finished linear phase EQs are not a good idea. I use them only when this is done and I can focus on mixing or mastering only.
7. 'But what is with all these expensive and saught after analogue EQs and their emulations?' Good question, I thank you for that.
   In the old days they just didn't have linear phase EQs, so they couldn't use them (they are purely digital). On the other hand high quality hard- or software EQs can contribute to the sound even for low cuts or shelfs and furthermore, 6 or 12dB slope low cuts don't twist the phase that much. This is to some extend also a matter of taste. Just try and compare yourself.
8. When it comes to higher frequencies these phase shifts are not so huge anymore (rarely steep cuts here in mixing) and they do in fact sound more musical, more pleasant.
9. Before adding EQs in the mids and highs and raise them up to the sky, I normally try saturation. I could demonstrate more than once, that to add a low cut at ~ 400Hz, a saturator and raise ~ 4kHz just by 1 - 2dB can make female vocals more transparent and upfront and keep them more natural than by just rising 4kHz sky high. Same goes for other sounds (with different freqs) aswell.
10. Normally you do not need the sound's fundamental freqs, because our brain rebuilts them!
11. Additionally the range from 100 - 200Hz tends to sound boomy, so I normally eq a small gap in here.
12. In the mid range nearly all instruments are present and sometimes it can really be difficult to achieve clarity/transparency here. First make a decision if two or more sounds are meant to work as a layer or if they should be audible as separate sounds.
    If the latter is the case, different pan positions, pitch and eqing will contribute to the transparency (see link below, Educational Series: Width). Avoid different movements (rhythms, melodies, arps...) for different sounds in the same pitch and pan position at the same time! This will mess up your mix.
13. As a general approach it is useful to find the dominating frequencies of the various sounds. Normally, a sound has a body and a harmonic range, emphasise these (unless it's the vocals' ess-sound, ofc) and lower the others a bit. This keeps the sounds most natural.
    There are two exceptions of this rule. Usually, the freq spectrum of an acoustic BD is more or less turned upside down and you don't need to emphasise the low freqs of a bass, normally. An acoustic bd has no high level lows so these are raised, mostly mids so these are lowered and hardly any kick sound so it is dialed in. Depending on the genre these can range from just a few dB up to more than +/- 12dB.

Summary (for the TLDR-generation ): Different tasks, different pan, narrow pan, low cuts, focus on a sound's characteristic frequencies and saturation will contribute to clarity and transparency.

So, these are my suggestions. What do you think and which are yours?

My special thanks go to Giggity, who initiated this series to help others and to stir an exchange of ideas and experiences

Please, see also
Educational Series: Width and Educational Series: Depth

 

Last edited: Oct 29, 2019

Easier said than done, but I'll think about it.

 

Ok, when you get three 'agree' ratings I do this.

EDIT: I do down to two and changed my rating.

 

Last edited: Oct 29, 2019

Thanks for the compliment, but this forum isn't (that) lousy, imho.

 

Probably because it's easier to be done, people are used to eq sounds and it's a deliberate and targeted change.